Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Left Atrial Function in Diastolic Heart Failure

Background—Abnormalities in left ventricular (LV) structure and function occur in patients with diastolic heart failure (DHF). The reasons for the transition from asymptomatic dysfunction to heart failure need better definition, including noninvasive measurements that can detect the transition. Methods and Results—In 64 patients undergoing right heart catheterization, simultaneous echocardiographic imaging was performed. As a control group, 27 healthy subjects were included. There were 25 with ejection factor (EF) <50%, 20 in DHF, and 19 with normal EF and LV hypertrophy but not in heart failure (diastolic dysfunction). LV volumes, mass, left atrial (LA) volumes and EF, annular atrial velocity (a′), and LA strain during systole (LAS), and atrial contraction (LAA) were measured. The ratio of wedge pressure to LAS strain was used as an index of LA stiffness, as was the ratio of E/e′ to LAS strain. All 3 patient groups had increased LA volumes and depressed LA EF, a′, and LAA strain, with no significant difference between patients with DHF and diastolic dysfunction in LA systolic function indices, LV mass, LA volumes, LV, and arterial elastance. LAS strain was lower in patients with DHF, and LA stiffness (invasive and noninvasive) was higher (both P<0.01), related well to pulmonary artery systolic pressure (r=0.79, P<0.001), and was most accurate in identifying DHF patients from those with diastolic dysfunction (invasive area under the curve: 0.93, noninvasive: 0.85). Conclusions—Patients with DHF have increased LV mass and LA volume in comparison with normal controls, but not versus patients with LV hypertrophy who are not in heart failure. On the other hand, LAS strain is significantly reduced and LA stiffness is the most accurate index in identifying patients with DHF.
Management of caustic ingestion in adults

The treatment of 484 adults with caustic ingestion injury is discussed. Signs and symptoms are an unreliable guide to injury and a chest X‐ray and fibreoptic endoscopy should be performed as soon as possible. All of the 250 patients who developed superficial lesions of the oesophagus, stomach or duodenum experienced healing without sequelae. Forty‐four patients required emergency surgery of whom twenty‐four died and oesophagectomy without thoracotomy is now advocated for this group, followed by interval surgery to restore continuity. The remaining 190 patients suffered gastric or oesophageal ulceration without necrosis: 92 recovered without complication, 3 succumbed to aorto‐oesophageal fistula, 12 survived following delayed surgery for complications and 83 developed oesophageal and/or gastric stenosis which subsequently required endoscopic or surgical treatment.
Mangroves in the Gulf of California increase fishery yields

Mangroves are disappearing rapidly worldwide despite their well documented biodiversity and the ecosystem services they provide. Failure to link ecological processes and their societal benefits has favored highly destructive aquaculture and tourism developments that threaten mangroves and result in costly “externalities. ” Specifically, the potentially irreparable damage to fisheries because of mangrove loss has been belittled and is greatly underestimated. Here, we show that, in the Gulf of California, fisheries landings are positively related to the local abundance of mangroves and, in particular, to the productive area in the mangrove–water fringe that is used as nursery and/or feeding grounds by many commercial species. Mangrove-related fish and crab species account for 32% of the small-scale fisheries landings in the region. The annual economic median value of these fisheries is US $37,500 per hectare of mangrove fringe, falling within the higher end of values previously calculated worldwide for all mangrove services together. The ten-year discounted value of one hectare of fringe is >300 times the official cost set by the Mexican government. The destruction of mangroves has a strong economic impact on local fishing communities and on food production in the region. Our valuation of the services provided by mangroves may prove useful in making appropriate decisions for a more efficient and sustainable use of wetlands.
Differential Effects of Delivery of Omega-3 Fatty Acids to Human Cancer Cells by Low-Density Lipoproteins versus Albumin

Purpose: Omega-3 (n-3) fatty acids (FA) have been proposed to confer tumor-inhibitory properties. In vivo, dietary FA are delivered to tumor cells by two main routes: low-density lipoproteins (LDL) and albumin complexes. High FA concentration in LDL and up-regulation of LDL receptors in tumor cells suggest that the LDL receptor pathway may be the major route for FA delivery. We compared effects of n-3FA delivered to human cancer cells by LDL and albumin. Experimental Design: LDL was isolated from plasma of African Green monkeys fed diets enriched in fish oil (n-3 FA) or linoleic acid (n-6FA) and used to deliver FA to MCF-7 and PC3 cancer cells. Cell proliferation, apoptosis, and changes in global gene expression were monitored. Results: Both LDL and albumin were effective in delivering FA to tumor cells and modifying the composition of cell phospholipids. The molar ratio of 20:4 (n-6) to 20:5 (n-3) in phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylethanolamine was profoundly decreased. Although cell phospholipids were similarly modified by LDL and albumin-delivered FA, effects on cell proliferation and on transcription were markedly different. LDL-delivered n-3 FA were more effective at inhibiting cell proliferation and inducing apoptosis. Expression microarray profiling showed that a significantly higher number of genes were regulated by LDL-delivered than albumin-delivered n-3 FA with little overlap between the two sets of genes. Conclusions: These results show the importance of the LDL receptor pathway in activating molecular mechanisms responsible for the tumor inhibitory properties of n-3FA.
Graph decomposition with applications to subdivisions and path systems modulo k

The existence of a function α(k) (where k is a natural number) is established such that the vertex set of any graph G of minimum degree at least α(k) has a decomposition A ∪ B ∪ C such that G(A) has minimum degree at least k, each vertex of A is joined to at least k vertices of B, and no two vertices of B are separated by fewer than k vertices in G(G ∪ C). This is applied to prove the existence of subdivisions of complete bipartite graphs (complete graphs) with prescribed path lengths modulo k in graphs of sufficiently high minimum degree (chromatic number) and path systems with prescribed ends and prescribed lengths modulo k in graphs of sufficiently high connectivity.
Impact of laccase enzyme inducers on solid waste compost maturity and stability

The influence of inducers of laccase produced by Pleurotus ostreatus-P1 on the physicochemical properties of solid waste compost was investigated. In order to examine the degree of humification and time period for maturity and stability of compost, three different treatments (T: laccase; T1: laccase+CuSO4; and T2: laccase+CuSO4+CaCl2) were inoculated on solid waste in the initial stage of the composting process. During the composting process, the carbon nitrogen ratio (C/N), nitrate (), ammonium nitrogen (), cation exchange capacity (CEC), humic acid (HA) and fulvic acid (FA) humification rate (HR), Humification Index (HI), and degree of polymerization (DP) were assessed for the evaluation of compost maturity and stability, and it was found that T2 treatment C/N, CEC, and HI was greater, 46.8%, 37.2%, and 38.46%, respectively, than T at the end of the maturation phase. Optimum degree of maturity was also appraised by the Germination Index, 98.25% was attained by T2, whereas 88.65% and 71.23% by T1 and T, respectively. Significant Pearson correlation was also found between compost characteristics such as C/N, CEC, HA, FA, DP, HI, and HR. In addition, also obstinate the mineralization's of nitrogen under laboratory incubation, using soil amended by 50 and 100 kg-N/ha and examined an increasing trend in nitrogen mineralization with the application rate. Moreover, it was concluded that the laccase inducers increase the disintegration and humification process during solid waste composting.
Needle segmentation using 3D Hough transform in 3D TRUS guided prostate transperineal therapy.

PURPOSE Prostate adenocarcinoma is the most common noncutaneous malignancy in American men with over 200,000 new cases diagnosed each year. Prostate interventional therapy, such as cryotherapy and brachytherapy, is an effective treatment for prostate cancer. Its success relies on the correct needle implant position. This paper proposes a robust and efficient needle segmentation method, which acts as an aid to localize the needle in three-dimensional (3D) transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) guided prostate therapy. METHODS The procedure of locating the needle in a 3D TRUS image is a three-step process. First, the original 3D ultrasound image containing a needle is cropped; the cropped image is then converted to a binary format based on its histogram. Second, a 3D Hough transform based needle segmentation method is applied to the 3D binary image in order to locate the needle axis. The position of the needle endpoint is finally determined by an optimal threshold based analysis of the intensity probability distribution. The overall efficiency is improved through implementing a coarse-fine searching strategy. The proposed method was validated in tissue-mimicking agar phantoms, chicken breast phantoms, and 3D TRUS patient images from prostate brachytherapy and cryotherapy procedures by comparison to the manual segmentation. The robustness of the proposed approach was tested by means of varying parameters such as needle insertion angle, needle insertion length, binarization threshold level, and cropping size. RESULTS The validation results indicate that the proposed Hough transform based method is accurate and robust, with an achieved endpoint localization accuracy of 0.5 mm for agar phantom images, 0.7 mm for chicken breast phantom images, and 1 mm for in vivo patient cryotherapy and brachytherapy images. The mean execution time of needle segmentation algorithm was 2 s for a 3D TRUS image with size of 264 × 376 × 630 voxels. CONCLUSIONS The proposed needle segmentation algorithm is accurate, robust, and suitable for 3D TRUS guided prostate transperineal therapy.
Numerical Simulation of an Indentation Process for Defining the Viscoelastic Characteristics of Time-Dependent Materials

The aim of the paper is to find a practical numerical approach to define the time-dependent mechanical characteristics of a rheonomic material from microindentation data. The ANSYS FEM program for viscoelastic bodies is used for numerical simulations of the indentation process. All three parts of the indentation process (loading), dwell time with indentation creep and unloading, are well modelled and the histories of the relaxation modulus, the bulk or shear moduli are defined in the form of Prony series. The results obtained by numerical simulation are compared with satisfactory accuracy to the values from an analytical approach based on the linear theory of viscoelasticity and to results of standard macro tests of the material, which had been previously measured by the authors.
MicroRNA profiling reveals opposing expression patterns for miR-511 in alternatively and classically activated macrophages

Abstract Background: Macrophages are heterogeneous cells, which possess pleotropic effector and immunoregulatory functions. The phenotypic diversity of macrophages is best exemplified by the ability of IL-4 or IL-13, two key cytokines in asthma to promote macrophages into a suppressive/anti-inflammatory phenotype (e.g. alternatively activated or M2) whereas exposure to IFN-γ followed by microbial trigger renders macrophages pro-inflammatory (e.g. classically activated or M1). Intriguingly, only limited data exists regarding the expression of miRNA in M2 macrophages. Objective: To define the miRNA profile of M2 and M1 macrophages. Methods: Bone marrow-derived macrophages were activated to classically and alternatively activated states using IL-4, IL-13 or IFN-γ followed by Escherichia coli stimulation. Thereafter, an unbiased miRNA “mining” approach was utilized and the expression of several miRNAs was validated following in-vitro and in-vivo macrophage activation (qPCR). miR-511 over-expression was performed followed by global transcriptional and bioinformatic analyses. Results: We report unique miRNA expression profiles in M2 and M1 macrophages involving multiple miRNAs. Among these miRNAs, we established that miR-511 is increased in macrophages following IL-4- and IL-13-stimulation and decreased in M1 macrophages both in-vitro and in-vivo. Increased miR-511 expression was sufficient to induce marked transcriptional changes in macrophages. Interestingly, bioinformatics analyses revealed that miR-511 altered the expression of gene products that are associated with hallmark alternatively activated macrophage functions, such as cellular proliferation, wound healing responses and inflammation. Conclusions: Our data establish miR-511 as a bona fide M2-associated miRNA. These data may have significant implications in asthma where the expression of IL-4 and IL-13 are highly increased.
Preferential Recognition of TCR Hypervariable Regions by Human Anti-Idiotypic T Cells Induced by T Cell Vaccination1

T cell responses to myelin basic protein (MBP) are potentially involved in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis (MS). Immunization with irradiated MBP-reactive T cells (T cell vaccination) induces anti-idiotypic T cell responses that suppress circulating MBP-reactive T cells. This T cell-T cell interaction is thought to involve the recognition of TCR expressed on target T cells. The study was undertaken to define the idiotypic determinants responsible for triggering CD8+ cytotoxic anti-idiotypic T cell responses by T cell vaccination in patients with MS. A panel of 9-mer synthetic TCR peptides corresponding to complementarity-determining region 2 (CDR2) and CDR3 of the immunizing MBP-reactive T cell clones were used to isolate anti-idiotypic T cell lines from immunized MS patients. The resulting TCR-specific T cell lines expressed exclusively the CD8 phenotype and recognized preferentially the CDR3 peptides. CDR3-specific T cell lines were found to lyze specifically autologous immunizing MBP-reactive T cell clones. The findings suggest that CDR3-specific T cells represented anti-idiotypic T cell population induced by T cell vaccination. In contrast, the CDR2 peptides were less immunogenic and contained cryptic determinants as the CDR2-specific T cell lines did not recognize autologous immunizing T cell clones from which the peptide sequence was derived. The study has important implications in our understanding of in vivo idiotypic regulation of autoimmune T cells and the regulatory mechanism underlying T cell vaccination.
Primary Treatment of Low-grade Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma with the Combination of Fludarabine and Mitoxantrone: A Phase II Study of the Hellenic Cooperative Oncology Group

The treatment of patients with recurrent low-grade lymphoma with the combination of fludarabine, mitoxantrone and dexamethasone has been associated with significant activity but has also caused frequent infectious complications. We designed a phase II study for previously untreated patients with the combination of fludarabine and mitoxantrone but without steroids. Our aim was to assess the activity of this combination as primary treatment for low-grade lymphoma and to avoid the additional immunosuppression induced by dexamethasone. Twenty seven patients with low-grade lymphoma received fludarabine 25 mg/m 2 /day IV on days 1-3 and mitoxantrone 10 mg/m 2 IV on day 1. The treatment was repeated every 28 days for a maximum of six cycles. Twenty patients (74%) achieved an objective response including 12(44%) complete and 8(30%) partial responses. The main toxicity was grade III or IV neutropenia, which occurred in 40% of patients but there were no severe opportunistic infections. The median time to progression for all patients was 32 months. With a median follow-up of 33.4 months, six patients have died and the probability of survival at 3 years is 75%. We conclude that the fludarabine and mitoxantrone regimen is safe and effective for newly diagnosed patients with low-grade lymphoma who require treatment. Prospective randomized trials are needed in order to assess the impact of this treatment on patients' survival.
Is Extreme Bite Performance Associated with Extreme Morphologies in Sharks?*

As top predators in many oceanic communities, sharks are known to eat large prey and are supposedly able to generate high bite forces. This notion has, however, largely gone untested due to the experimental intractability of these animals. For those species that have been investigated, it remains unclear whether their high bite forces are simply a consequence of their large body size or the result of diet‐related adaptation. As aquatic poikilotherms, sharks can grow very large, making them ideal subjects with which to investigate the effects of body size on bite force. Relative bite‐force capacity is often associated with changes in head shape because taller or wider heads can, for example, accommodate larger jaw muscles. Constraints on bite force in general may also be released by changes in tooth shape. For example, more pointed teeth may allow a predator to penetrate prey more effectively than blunt, pavementlike teeth. Our analyses show that large sharks do not bite hard for their body size, but they generally have larger heads. Head width is the best predictor of bite force across the species included in our study as indicated by a multiple regression model. Contrary to our predictions, sharks with relatively high bite forces for their body size also have relatively more pointed teeth at the front of the tooth row. Moreover, species including hard prey in their diet are characterized by high bite forces and narrow and pointed teeth at the jaw symphysis.
Cohort profile: the Dutch Hunger Winter families study.

Historical setting The winter of 1944–45 is known as the ‘Hunger Winter’ in The Netherlands, which was occupied by the Germans in May 1940. Beginning in September 1944, Allied troops had liberated most of the South of the country, but their advance towards the North came to a stop at the Waal and Rhine rivers and the battle of Arnhem. In support of the Allied war effort, the Dutch government in exile in London called for a national railway strike to hinder German military initiatives. In retaliation, in October 1944, the German authorities blocked all food supplies to the occupied West of the country. Despite the war, nutrition in The Netherlands had generally been adequate up to October 1944. Thereafter, food supplies became increasingly scarce. By November 26, 1944, official rations, which eventually consisted of little more than bread and potatoes, had fallen below 1000 kcal per day, and by April 1945, they were as low as 500 kcal per day. Widespread starvation was seen especially in the cities of the western Netherlands. Food supplies were restored immediately after liberation on May 5, 1945. On the basis of these historical data it is possible to accurately define the beginning and the end of the famine period. The famine affected fertility, weight gain during pregnancy, maternal blood pressure, infant size at birth and central nervous system development. The reduction in fertility was greater among manual workers than among those in other occupations. A decline in mean birth weight of 300 g was seen among those exposed to maternal undernutrition during the third trimester. After liberation and the restoration of food supplies, birth weights and other measures of infant size rapidly rebounded to pre-famine levels. Because the Dutch population was typically well fed before and after the Hunger Winter, the circumstances of the famine created what can be regarded as a ‘natural experiment’ in which exposure to famine is assigned based on an individual’s time and place of birth. This design was used to examine how maternal undernutrition during specific gestational time windows may affect the subsequent life course of offspring who experienced the famine in-utero.
A Routing Algorithm for ZigBee Network Based on Dynamic Energy Consumption Decisive Path

The energy-efficiency usage is relative to each layer of wireless sensor networks. In order to improve the ZigBee mesh routing protocol for energy-efficiency usage, we propose a routing algorithm combining AODVjr with the node residual energy. To reduce the energy consumption of bottleneck nodes and extend network lifetime, the improved routing algorithm aims to build a new balancing method between the energy-aware routing metric and the shortest path. Based on the energy model of CC2430 RF transceiver, the implemented routing protocol is simulated using NS2 (Network Simulator version 2). Simulation result shows that this improved protocol can extend the network lifetime very efficiently.
Is there a northern Lesser Antilles forearc block?

A systematic discrepancy exists between slip vectors of thrust fault earthquakes at the Lesser Antilles trench (LAT) and the predicted direction of North American‐Caribbean convergence. A possibility has been that the discrepancy resulted because neither was well constrained. Estimating Caribbean motion has been challenging owing to the limited data along the plate's complex boundaries. Similarly, earlier studies had few slip vectors because interplate thrust events are infrequent. To address these difficulties, we estimate a new Caribbean‐North America Euler vector using recently available GPS data from sites in the presumably stable interior of the Caribbean, and compare the predicted velocities to a larger set of slip vectors. The discrepancy persists, suggesting the northern Lesser Antilles forearc (NLAF) moves as a distinct entity from both the Caribbean and North America. For simplicity, we treat its motion as a coherent block, but because GPS sites are not within the NLAF, distributed deformation is also possible. Although there is no geologic evidence for the boundaries of the presumed NLAF block, GPS data show that the motions of Martinique, Barbados, and Trinidad are similar to that of the Caribbean, suggesting that none are on the NLAF block, and the southern LAT is weakly coupled.
Intermediary Asset Pricing

We present a model to study the dynamics of risk premia during crises in asset markets where the marginal investor is a financial intermediary. Intermediaries face a constraint on raising equity capital. When the constraint binds, so that intermediaries' equity capital is scarce, risk premia rise to reflect the capital scarcity. We calibrate the model and show that it does well in matching two aspects of crises: the nonlinearity of risk premia during crisis episodes; and, the speed of adjustment in risk premia from a cri- sis back to pre-crisis levels. We use the model to quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of a variety of central bank policies, including reducing intermediaries' borrowing costs, infusing equity capital, and directly intervening in distressed asset markets. All of these policies are effective in aiding the recovery from a crisis. Infusing equity capital into intermediaries is particularly effective because it attacks the equity capital constraint that is at the root of the crisis in our model.