Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Change in Blood Pressure and Pulse Pressure in Preterm Infants After Treatment of Patent Ductus Arteriosus With Indomethacin

Background and Objectives Patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) is associated with increased morbidity and mortality in premature infants. Therefore, an early diagnosis and treatment of a hemodynamically significant PDA are very important. A widened pulse pressure is considered to be a well known clinical sign of a PDA in older infants and children; however, whether this is also applicable in the case of preterm infants remains to be confirmed. The aims of this study were to investigate the change in blood pressure (BP) before and after medical treatment of a PDA with indomethacin and to evaluate if the change in the pulse pressure in preterm infants with a medically treated PDA could be used as a reliable clinical predictor of a hemodynamically significant PDA. Subjects and Methods Between January 2005 and June 2009, a retrospective analysis was performed in preterm infants with a hemodynamically significant PDA (PDA group, n=72) and preterm infants without a PDA (control group, n=72) at the Chonnam National University Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The PDA was closed by treatment with indomethacin. The BP was compared between the two groups over the seven days after the first dose of indomethacin. Results In preterm infants with a hemodynamically significant PDA, the mean systolic (55.1±6.0 mmHg) and diastolic BPs (31.4±6.2 mmHg) were lower than those in the controls (mean systolic BP 58.0±6.4 mmHg, mean diastolic BP 34.7±6.0 mmHg) before indomethacin treatment. When the ductus arteriosus was successfully closed by indomethacin treatment, there was a gradual increase in both the systolic and diastolic BPs without any change in the pulse pressure. Conclusion The results of this study show that a widened pulse pressure is not a useful clinical sign of a hemodynamically significant PDA in preterm infants. However, low systolic and diastolic BPs may be useful clinical signs of a hemodynamically significant PDA in preterm infants. If the systolic and diastolic BP is low, a PDA should be considered and echocardiography should be performed for early diagnosis and treatment.
New meanings of Panafricanism in the era of globalisation

Get Africa moving, collaborate in its organization, its regroupment, on revolutionary principles. Participating in the coordinated movement of a continent; that, definitely, is the task I had chosen …. Having taken Algeria to the four corners of Africa, we now have to go back with the whole of Africa to African Algeria, towards the north, towards the continental city of Algiers. That is what I want: great lines, great channels of communication across the desert. To wear out the desert, to deny it, to bring together Africa and to create the continent. … Take the absurd and the impossible, rub it up the wrong way and hurl a continent into the assault on the last ramparts of colonial power. (Frantz Fanon, ‘Cette Afrique a venir’. Cited in Macey 2000:439-440)
Leaching of Mycobacterium avium Subsp paratuberculosis in Soil under In Vitro Conditions

Mycobacterium avium subsp paratuberculosis (Map), the causative agent of Johne's disease, has a robust ability to survive in the environment. However, the ability of Map to migrate through soil to drainage tiles or ground water, leave the farm, and leak into local watersheds is inadequately documented. In order to assess the ability of Map to leach through soil, two laboratory experiments were conducted. In the first study, 8 columns (30 cm long each) of a sandy loam soil were treated with pure cultures of Map. Two soil moisture levels and two Map concentrations were used. The columns were leached with 500 mL of water once a week for three weeks, the leachate was collected, and detection analysis was conducted. In the second experiment, manure from Map negative cows (control) and Map high shedder cows (treatment) were deposited on 8 similar columns and the columns were leached with 500 mL of water once a week for four weeks. Map detection and numeration in leachate samples were done with RT-PCR and culture techniques, respectively. Using RT-PCR, Map could be detected in the leachates in both experiments for several weeks but could only be recovered using culture techniques in experiment one. Combined, these experiments indicate the potential for Map to move through soil as a result of rainfall or irrigation following application.
Economic Geography and Economic Voting: Evidence from the US States

If voters use information about the economy to assess the competence of incumbents, a connection between economic conditions and incumbent success should only be discernible in settings where public policy might plausibly affect the economy, and where the assignment of government responsibility is relatively straightforward. Applying this logic to gubernatorial elections in the United States, we test the following hypothesis: the connection between economic conditions and incumbents' vote shares is mediated by the structure of the state economy. This hypothesis is premised on the idea that voters understand that raw macroeconomic aggregates â€“ when driven by factors like weather, commodity prices and federal policy â€“ are poor signals of incumbent performance. Using data from gubernatorial elections held between 1950 and 1998, we show that the connection between macroeconomic indicators and incumbent success is weak in states dominated by natural resources and farming but quite strong elsewhere. This finding helps explain why earlier studies found no connection between state-level economic conditions and gubernatorial elections.
Bioavailability of uranium and nickel to vegetation in a contaminated riparian ecosystem

The lower portion of Tims Branch (TB), a second‐order stream system on the Savannah River site (SC, USA), receives influx of mixed waste‐contaminated sediments from Steed Pond, a former settling basin for target processing wastes for over three decades. The magnitude and distribution of U, Ni, and other metals and the potential for trophic movement were studied to facilitate risk assessment and determine potential remedial action. Total and sequential extraction of TB soils demonstrated contaminant heterogeneity both spatially and between operationally defined fractions. Metal concentrations were elevated within riparian zone soils in contrast to stream sediments, suggesting off‐site transport. Leaf tissue from TB contained an order of magnitude more Ni than tissue from reference sites. Leaves from streamside trees contained no U but elevated Ni up to 75.4 (±25) mg/kg dry weight (dry wt). Understory flora (Discanthelium sp. and Andropogon sp.) contained high concentrations of U associated with leaves up to 518 (±7.5) mg/kg dry weight U. The contrast in contaminant content and ratio of streamside and understory vegetation may result from resuspension of particulate U and Ni onto leaf surfaces and represents a potential pathway for trophic movement. The findings of this study have important ramifications for remediation of the ecosystem, suggesting that a strategy based on contaminant immobilization may be the most appropriate.
Unsupervised change detection by multichannel SAR data fusion

In the contexts of environmental monitoring and disaster management, multichannel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data present a good potential, thanks both to their insensitivity to atmospheric and Sun-illumination conditions, and to the improved discrimination capability they may provide as compared to single-channel SAR. In this paper an unsupervised contextual change-detection method is proposed for two-date multichannel SAR images, by adopting a data-fusion approach. Each SAR channel is modelled as a distinct information source and Markovian data fusion is used by introducing a suitable Markov random field model. The task of the estimation of the model parameters is addressed by combining the expectation- maximization algorithm with the recently proposed "method of log-cumulants. " The proposed technique is experimentally validated on SIR-C/XSAR data.
Scalable Multitask Representation Learning for Scene Classification

The underlying idea of multitask learning is that learning tasks jointly is better than learning each task individually. In particular, if only a few training examples are available for each task, sharing a jointly trained representation improves classification performance. In this paper, we propose a novel multitask learning method that learns a low-dimensional representation jointly with the corresponding classifiers, which are then able to profit from the latent inter-class correlations. Our method scales with respect to the original feature dimension and can be used with high-dimensional image descriptors such as the Fisher Vector. Furthermore, it consistently outperforms the current state of the art on the SUN397 scene classification benchmark with varying amounts of training data.
Open Access Research Article Transcriptome Analysis of Porcine Pbmcs after in Vitro Stimulation by Lps or Pma/ionomycin Using an Expression Array Targeting the Pig Immune Response

article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons At-tribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Designing sustainable animal production systems that better balance productivity and resistance to disease is a major concern. In order to address questions related to immunity and resistance to disease in pig, it is necessary to increase knowledge on its immune system and to produce efficient tools dedicated to this species. Results: A long-oligonucleotide-based chip referred to as SLA-RI/NRSP8-13K was produced by combining a generic set with a newly designed SLA-RI set that targets all annotated loci of the pig major histocompatibility complex (MHC) region (SLA complex) in both orientations as well as immunity genes outside the SLA complex. The chip was used to study the immune response of pigs following stimulation of porcine peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or a mixture of phorbol myristate acetate (PMA) and ionomycin for 24 hours. Transcriptome analysis revealed that ten times more genes were differentially expressed after PMA/ionomycin stimulation than after LPS stimulation. LPS stimulation induced a general inflammation response with over-expression of SAA1, pro-inflammatory chemokines IL8, CCL2, CXCL5, CXCL3, CXCL2 and CCL8 as well as genes related to oxidative processes (SOD2) and calcium pathways (S100A9 and S100A12). PMA/ionomycin stimulation induced a stronger up-regulation of T cell activation than of B cell activation with dominance toward a Th1 response, including IL2, CD69 and TNFRSF9 (tumor necrosis factor receptor superfamily, member 9) genes. In addition, a very intense repression of THBS1 (thrombospondin 1) was observed. Repression of MHC class I genes was observed after PMA/ionomycin stimulation despite an up-regulation of the gene cascade involved in peptide processing. Repression of MHC class II genes was observed after both stimulations. Our results provide preliminary data suggesting that antisense transcripts mapping to the SLA complex may have a role during immune response. Conclusion: The SLA-RI/NRSP8-13K chip was found to accurately decipher two distinct immune response activations of PBMCs indicating that it constitutes a valuable tool to further study immunity and resistance to disease in pig. The transcriptome analysis revealed specific and common features of the immune responses depending on the stimulation agent that increase knowledge on pig immunity. Background Understanding resistance to disease is a major concern for all living organisms. Thus, it is necessary to design strategies to address related questions according to …
Affinities and Taphonomy of a Cambrian Discoid from Guizhou, South China

Abstract Disc-like fossils from siltstones of the Taozichong Formation (Cambrian) in the Qingzhen area, Guizhou, South China are reported here. They are similar to some Ediacaran and Phanerozoic discoidal fossils, and assigned to Tirasiana? disciformis? Palij, 1976. Based on the study of 43 specimens, dewatering or fluid escape structures, soft-sediment loading, scratch circles or other inorganic origins are ruled out, and the fossil is interpreted as a discoidal body fossil of unknown affinities rather than trace fossils. Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and elemental mapping analyses reveal that the discoid fossils contain higher concentrations of C, Fe, and P than the surrounding matrix, indicating the possible presence of pyrite, apatite, and organic carbon as a result of authigenic mineralization in association with decay and early diagenetic processes. The possible presence of extracellular polymeric substance suggests that the discs were surrounded by thin microbial mats composed primarily of extracellular polymeric substances, which facilitated their fossilization by promoting conditions that are favorable to secondary mineral precipitation. The new specimens provide useful information about the phylogenetic affinities of these early discoidal fossils and help us to better understand the taphonomic modes of non-biomineralizing organisms in Ediacara-type and Burgess Shale-type biotas.
Issues in World Commission on Dams report development: inconsistencies between the facts found and the guidelines

The World Commission on Dams (WCD) is an international and independent body consisting of 12 dam experts. It published its only and final report ‘Dams and Development’ in November 2000 after 2·5 years of preparation. The report is composed of two parts: part I contains the facts found and part II contains recommendations. The aim of part I was to present solid facts about both the benefits and the costs of building dams. The aim of part II is not as clear to the authors. Many members of the media in developed nations believed that part II proposed a concrete set of guidelines, a blueprint for the future. This perception was shared with many environmentally concerned non‐governmental organizations, who regarded the guidelines in part II as a blueprint to be observed. However, in February 2001, the Chair of the WCD stated that the guidelines were intended only to offer guidance, and are not a rigid regulatory framework. The question to be asked and answered is whether the guidelines in part II may be regarded as a rigid framework to be implemented as it stands. The authors do not regard the guidelines in part II as ready for implementation, as this part of the report has many shortcomings, which stem from a ‘missing link’ between part I and part II, in that the latter does not reflect the findings in the former. Moreover, part II of the report includes some suggestions that are not based on findings in part I. This paper tries to answer the following questions about the WCD's report: (1) Why was the set of guidelines in part II regarded as the blueprint by so many people and institutions? (2) What ‘incompatibilities’ exist between the two parts of the report? (3) Why were such incompatibilities mostly disregarded in developing the report? (4) How may the set of suggested guidelines in part II become an operational instrument. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Neisseria meningitidis Isolated in Postmortem Vitreous Humor in a Death Due to Meningococcal Sepsis

AbstractSepsis remains a difficult diagnosis at autopsy. With respect to meningococcal sepsis, a timely and definite diagnosis is critical because it requires public health department notification and the administration of prophylactic antibiotics to potential close contacts. A previous case series, in which both blood and cerebrospinal fluid were unavailable, suggested vitreous humor polymerase chain reaction might be a useful test in diagnosing meningococcal sepsis. We describe a fatal case of meningococcal sepsis where Neisseria meningitidis was detected in both vitreous humor and blood polymerase chain reaction, in addition to positive blood cultures. This gives further support to using microbiology of vitreous humor in suspected meningococcal sepsis, especially when microbiology samples are limited.
Recent advances in sonic Italian children2s speech recognition for interactive literacy tutors

Recent advances in SONIC Italian children’s speech recognition will be described. This work, completing a previous one developed in the past, was conducted with the specific goals of integrating the newly trained children’s speech recognition models into the Italian version of the Colorado Literacy Tutor platform. Specifically, children’s speech recognition research for Italian was conducted using the complete training and test set of the ITC-irst Children’s Speech Corpus. Using the University of Colorado SONIC LVSR system, we demonstrate a phonetic recognition error rate of 12,0% for a system which incorporates Vocal Tract Length Normalization (VTLN), Speaker-Adaptive Trained phonetic models, as well as unsupervised Structural MAP Linear Regression (SMAPLR).
Large-scale global identification of protein lysine methylation in vivo

Lysine methylation mediated by methyltransferase enzymes is present on multiple proteins throughout the cell; however, methods to uncover and characterize global protein lysine methylation patterns do not readily exist. Here we developed pan-specific methyl lysine antibodies that we utilized in immunoprecipitation experiments coupled with mass spectrometry to yield one of the first large-scale surveys of protein lysine methylation in vivo. In total, 552 different lysine methylation sites were determined, making this one of the most comprehensive global studies published to date. The large majority of these sites have not been yet reported. These sites showed significantly enriched sequence motifs and resided in proteins that are involved in diverse biological processes, particularly in chromatin organization. Our data provide a comprehensive view of lysine methylation in human cells and a powerful resource to facilitate investigations into the function of lysine methylation on non-histone proteins.
Aberrant Nucleo-cytoplasmic Cross-Talk Results in Donor Cell mtDNA Persistence in Cloned Embryos

Mitochondrial DNA is an extranuclear genome normally maternally inherited through the oocyte. However, the use of nuclear transfer can result in both donor cell and recipient oocyte mitochondrial DNA persisting through to blastocyst and being transmitted to the offspring. The degree of donor mitochondrial DNA transmission appears to be random and currently no evidence exists to explain this phenomenon. To determine whether this is a dilution factor or directly related to the transcriptional status of the donor cell in respect of mitochondrial DNA transcription factors, we have generated sheep nuclear transfer embryos using donor cells: (1) possessing their full mitochondrial DNA complement, (2) those partially depleted, and (3) those depleted but containing residual levels. For each donor type, donor mitochondrial DNA persisted in some blastocysts. It is evident from the donor cells used that nuclear-encoded mitochondrial DNA transcription and replication factors persist even after mitochondrial DNA depletion, as do transcripts for some of the mitochondrial-encoded genes. These cells are therefore still programmed to drive mitochondrial DNA replication and transcription. In nuclear transfer-derived embryos, we have observed the persistence of these nuclear-encoded mitochondrial DNA transcription and replication factors but not in those embryos generated through in vitro fertilization. Consequently, nucleo-mitochondrial interaction following nuclear transfer is out of sequence as the onset of mitochondrial replication is a postimplantation event.
A study of uvarovite

Summary. Uvarovite and its relationships with grossular and andradite have been studied in order to understand better the geochemistry of uvarovite. Synthese have been carried out under both dry and hydrothermal conditions ; a solid solution with grossular was obtained under both conditions, but with andradite only under hydrothermal conditions. The results are discussed in relation to the chemistry of uvarovite. ItaE mineral uvarovite, which is the rarest of the common garnets, never been reported as a pure end-member, but usually as a solid solution with grossular, or most commonly with andradite. The ideal uvarovite should contain 30.38 % Cr20 ~, but chemical analyses of a number of specimens (see fig. 1) show that the Cr~Oa content may vary from 3"39 to 27"54 %. There appears to be a gap in the range of Cr20 ~ composition from approximately 15 to 22 % (Deer, Howie, and Zussman, 1962), but this gap may be just the result of insufficient numbers of analyses. Uvarovite has generally been found associated with serpentinite, chromite, metamorphic limestones, and skarn ore-bodies ; it has formed from contact metamorphic processes or hydrothermal processes. In the Bushveld area, grossular and uvarovite are rarely associated with each other, although the uvarovite is usually a solid solution with grossular (Frankel, 1959). Chemical analyses show that there is considerable divergence from the ideal molecular ratio of 3:1:3, with an excess of the CaO component. Frankel postulated an accommodation of the excess CaO group in 'cavities' within the unit cell and concluded that the garnet therefore is elastic. He further noted that compositional discrepancies occurred in those garnets that contained much TiO~ or FeO, with iron in the structure producing marked non-linear change in cell-size between grossular and uvarovite in the solid-solution series. That uvarovite is usually really a solid solution with grossular gives
Mesoscale Variability in the Atlantic Ocean from Geosat Altimetry and WOCE High-Resolution Numerical Modeling

Characteristic of the mesoscale variability in the Atlantic Ocean are investigated by analyzing the Geosat altimeter signal between 60°S and 60°N. The rms sea-surface variability for various frequency bands is studied, including the high-frequency eddy-containing band with periods <150 days. Wavenumber spectra and spatial eddy characteristics are analyzed over 10° by 10° boxes covering both hemispheres of the Atlantic Ocean. A comparison, with solutions of a high-resolution numerical experiment, developed as the Community Modeling Effort of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment, aids interpretation of the Geosat results in the tropical and subtropical Atlantic and provides a test of the model fluctuating eddy field. Results from Geosat altimetry show a wavenumber dependence close to k1−5 (k1 being the alongtrack wave-number) over almost the entire Atlantic Ocean except for areas in the tropical and subtropical Atlantic where the rms variability in the eddy-containing band is less than 5 cm, that is, not significantly different from the altimeter noise level. Characteristic eddy length scales inferred from Geosat data are linearly related with the deformation radius of the first baroclinic mode over the whole Atlantic Ocean, except for the equatorial regime (10°S to 10°N). The data-model comparison indicates that the high-resolution model with horizontal grid size of ⅓° and ° in latitude and longitude is quite capable of simulating observed eddy characteristics in the tropics and subtropics. In mid- and high latitudes, however, the model fails to simulate the pronounced poleward decrease in eddy scales. This leads to systematic discrepancies between the model and Geosat observation, with model scales being up to 50% larger than deduced from altimetry.