Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prospective follow-up of 838 fetuses conceived after ovarian stimulation with corifollitropin alfa: comparative and overall neonatal outcome.

STUDY QUESTION Is treatment with corifollitropin alfa, a new recombinant gonadotrophin with sustained follicle-stimulating activity, safe in terms of perinatal complications and birth defects in infants conceived following corifollitropin alfa treatment for contolled ovarian stimulation (COS)? SUMMARY ANSWER In terms of neonatal outcome and risk of malformations, treatment with a single dose of corifollitropin alfa during COS is as safe as treatment with daily recombinant FSH (rFSH). WHAT IS KNOWN AND WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS This is the first pooled analysis of individual safety data in terms of neonatal outcome and major and minor congenital malformations collected following intervention trials of corifollitropin alfa. DESIGN Pregnancy and follow-up studies were conducted prospectively and data were collected from all Phase II and III trials with corifollitropin alfa intervention, including two comparative randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in which patients received either a single dose of corifollitropin alfa or daily rFSH for the first 7 days of COS. Patients with ongoing pregnancies at 10 weeks after embryo transfer were followed up to labour and the health of the offspring was assessed up to 4-12 weeks after birth. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING Following corifollitropin alfa treatment prior to IVF or ICSI, the health of 677 pregnant women, 838 fetuses and 806 live born infants was evaluated. MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE Among 440 fetuses in the corifollitropin alfa arm and 381 fetuses in the rFSH arm of the two RCTs, there were 424 (96.4%) and 370 (98.7%) live births, respectively. Neonatal characteristics, the frequency of premature births and the incidence of infant adverse events were similar in both treatment arms. The overall incidence of any congenital malformations in live born infants was 16.3 and 17.0%, with major malformation rates of 4.0 and 5.4% in the corifollitropin alfa and rFSH groups, respectively [odds ratio (OR) for major malformations, 0.71; 95% confidence interval, 0.36-1.38]. From 838 fetuses assessed in all corifollitropin alfa intervention trials, there were 806 (96.2%) live births with a major malformation rate of 4.5% in live born infants. BIAS, CONFOUNDING AND OTHER REASONS FOR CAUTION Both RCTs had a double-blind and active-controlled design and the adjudication of congenital malformations was also performed in a blinded fashion. As the total number of major malformations was limited (37), the confidence interval around the OR was rather wide. GENERALISABILITY TO OTHER POPULATIONS: The similarity of corifollitropin alfa and rFSH with respect to the incidence of congenital malformations was consistent across the RCTs and pregnancy type (singleton, multiple). This suggests that this similarity could hold in general. Overall incidences, however, may depend on the definitions of malformations and rules to adjudicate these events as major or minor.
[Epidemiologic study of Clonorchis sinensis infestation in a rural area of Kyongsangnam-do, South Korea].

OBJECTIVES To investigate the prevalence of Clonorchis sinensis infestation and to determine the associated risk factors among a population in a part of the rural area of Gyeongsangnam-do, Korea, which is an area known to have a high mortality from liver cancer and a high infection of C. sinensis. METHODS The study population consisted of those people who have lived in rural areas and who were over 40 years old. This study was performed in 5 areas during the period from 1999 to 2003. Informed consents were obtained from the 2,381 study participants, and these people were interviewed about their life style habits with using the structured questionnaire that was administered by trained staff members. The subjects underwent blood sampling and their stool specimens were examined by using the Formalin-ether sedimentation technique. RESULTS Among the study subjects (N=2,381), the positivity for C. sinensis in the stool was 34.4% (95% CI= 36.3-42.5); it was 39.4% (95% CI=36.3-42.5) in the males and 30.9% (95% CI=28.5-33.3) in the females. The positivity for C. sinensis was associated with current alcohol drinking (odds ratio=1.8, 95% CI: 1.5-2.1) and raw fish consumption (odds ratio 1.2, 95% CI: 0.9-1.6). CONCLUSION The present study confirmed the high prevalence of C. sinensis in the study subjects. It is necessary to establish consistent medical management and education programs for the treatment and prevention of C. sinensis infestation in the rural inhabitants of Korea.
Control of thermostatic loads using moving horizon estimation of individual load states

Recent research has shown that thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs) can provide power system services. However, a key challenge is to achieve coordinated control of large populations of resources using existing communication and control infrastructure or with minimal addition of new infrastructure. In this paper, we assume that we only have access to realistic measurements, i.e. data from residential smart meters every 15 minutes and noisy real-time measurements of the aggregate power consumption of TCLs from distribution substations. Our contribution is to develop a moving horizon state estimator (MHSE) to estimate the states of individual stochastic TCLs from these measurements. This is in contrast to previous work that focused on estimating the states of aggregate system models. The proposed MHSE is benchmarked against a simpler model-based prediction. We also propose a scalable closed-loop control structure that uses the MHSE method to provide frequency control with TCL populations. We demonstrate our results via a number of case studies with different TCL aggregations, process and measurement noise characteristics, and controller forcing levels. Our simulations show that the MHSE generally provides accurate state estimates and improves the controller performance.
Antibacterial activity, chemical composition, and cytotoxicity of leaf’s essential oil from brazilian pepper tree (schinus terebinthifolius, raddi)

The antibacterial potential of leaf’s essential oil (EO) from Brazilian pepper tree (Schinus terebinthifolius Raddi) against staphylococcal isolates from dogs with otitis externa was evaluated. The minimum inhibitory concentration of EO ranged from 78.1 to 1,250 μg/mL. The oil was analyzed by GC and GC/MS and cytotoxicity tests were carried out with laboratory animals.
Predicting Quality of Web Service using IKS hybrid model

Internet and various services offered by it has become a daily routine. The Quality of Web Service (QWS) has become a significant factor in distinguishing the success of service providers. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze quality prediction using the IKS hybrid model with a new approach of data classification. We present the IKS hybrid model. The model combines selection of features, clustering and classification techniques. Three techniques are used (Information Gain (IG), K-means and Support Vector Machine (SVM)) over QWS dataset with collected 5,000 Web services. Our experiments and test results show that the proposed hybrid approach has achieved promising results in predicting the quality of web services and it represents a good basis for further development and research.
Giant Random Telegraph Signals in Nanoscale Floating-Gate Devices

The magnitude of a random telegraph signal (RTS) in nanoscale floating-gate devices has been experimentally investigated as a function of carrier concentration. Discrete current switching, which is caused by a single trap, has been found to be almost one order of magnitude higher with respect to what was predicted by the classical theory of carrier number and correlated mobility fluctuations. Nevertheless, the trap signature well fits the typical SiO2 trap spectroscopy. In addition, the rigid shift between the transfer curves related to filled- and empty-trap state, together with the normalized current fluctuation dependence on the channel carrier density, suggests that a pure number fluctuation is the correct theoretical interpretative framework. Thus, we propose a possible physical explanation for such a giant RTS on the basis of a quasi-1-D current filamentation.
Rare expression of KIT (CD117) in lymphomas: a tissue microarray study of 1166 cases

Aims : Imatinib mesylate specifically inhibits KIT tyrosine kinase activity, and has been proven to be effective in the treatment of gastrointestinal stromal tumours. Because other KIT‐expressing malignancies might benefit from Imatinib therapy, we evaluated the distribution and expression of KIT in 1166 cases of malignant lymphoma.
A preoperative biliary stent is associated with increased complications after pancreatoduodenectomy.

BACKGROUND A preoperative biliary stent is commonly used after the initial evaluation of the patient with a periampullary mass. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect of a preoperative biliary stent on operative difficulty, postoperative complications, and length of hospital stay after a pancreatoduodenectomy. DESIGN A retrospective review of a prospectively collected consecutive series. SETTING The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's Surgical Service, New York, NY. PATIENTS AND METHODS Seventy-four patients underwent pancreatoduodenectomy between March 1, 1994, and February 15, 1996. Thirty-five did not receive a biliary stent, and 39 received a biliary stent prior to medical evaluation. We analyzed patient, nutritional, laboratory, and operating room factors. Univariate analysis was by Student t test, chi2 test, and Fisher exact test; multivariate analysis was by logistic regression. Significance was defined at P<. 05. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Operative time, amount of blood loss, complications, and length of hospital stay. Wound complications were defined as cellulitis, superficial infections, and deep infections. Intra-abdominal complications were defined as intra-abdominal abscesses and pancreatic or biliary fistula. RESULTS Groups were equivalent for tumor size, risk of comorbidity, time spent in the operating room, and amount of blood loss. There was 1 perioperative death. Patients with a stent had significantly lower bilirubin (P<.03) and aspartate aminotransferase (P<.04) levels and a significantly increased risk of nodal positivity (P<.05). The patients with a biliary stent had an increased risk of wound or abdominal complications on univariate (P<.003) and multivariate (P<.02) analysis and tended toward a prolonged hospital stay (P<.04, Wilcoxon signed rank test). CONCLUSIONS A preoperative biliary stent was associated with an increased risk of wound or intra-abdominal complications; a stent may prolong the length of hospital stay. However, length of time under anesthesia, amount of blood loss, and transfusion requirements were not altered. A biliary stent should be used with a high degree of selectivity in the management of patients with resectable periampullary masses.
Dingo: taming device drivers

Device drivers are notorious for being a major source of failure in operating systems. In analysing a sample of real defects in Linux drivers, we found that a large proportion (39%) of bugs are due to two key shortcomings in the device-driver architecture enforced by current operating systems: poorly-defined communication protocols between drivers and the OS, which confuse developers and lead to protocol violations, and a multithreaded model of computation that leads to numerous race conditions and deadlocks. We claim that a better device driver architecture can help reduce the occurrence of these faults, and present our Dingo framework as constructive proof. Dingo provides a formal, state-machine based, language for describing driver protocols, which avoids confusion and ambiguity, and helps driver writers implement correct behaviour. It also enforces an event-driven model of computation, which eliminates most concurrency-related faults. Our implementation of the Dingo architecture in Linux offers these improvements, while introducing negligible performance overhead. It allows Dingo and native Linux drivers to coexist, providing a gradual migration path to more reliable device drivers.
The effect of cellulose degradation on the strength of wood pulp fibres

The relationship between fibre strength loss and cellulose degree of polymerization (D.P.) was examined for different pulps and chemical treatments in an effort to understand the cause of fibre strength loss a high -cellulose contents. Is was found that the decrease in fibre strength is caused by the degradation of cellulose. The nature of the degradation process controls the extent of the strength loss. Homogeneous and random degradation causes little strength loss, but localized degradation weakens fibres significantly. The intermediate stages of acid sulphite cooking, the final stages of kraft cooking combined with mechanical damage, treatments with cellulase enzymes or with liquid-phase hydrochloric acid all cause localized degradation resulting in a significant weakening of fibres.
3 D FLOOD INFORMATION FROM SAR AS A MEANS FOR REDUCING UNCERTAINTIES IN FLOOD INUNDATION MODELING

SAR images of river inundation prove to be very relevant for operational flood management. However, common exploitation of satellite images of floods is generally restricted to a flood extent extraction. The usefulness of these images could be significantly improved by providing a hydraulic-coherent 3-dimensional (3D) characterization of floods and by integrating these Remote Sensing-Derived (RSD) spatial characteristics of floods in hydraulic models in order to render flood inundation forecasts more reliable and accurate. This study aims at developing SAR image analysis methods that go beyond flood extent mapping in order to demonstrate the potential of these images in the spatio-temporal characterization of flood events. To fulfill this objective, two research issues were addressed. The first issue relates to water level estimation. Applied to an ENVISAT image of an Alzette River flood (2003, Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg), the developed method provides ± 54 cm average vertical uncertainty water levels, that were validated with ground surveyed high water marks. The second issue aims at evaluating how far RSD flood characteristics could allow a better constraining of hydraulic models. To achieve this goal, various calibration scenarii using only recorded hydrographs or recorded hydrographs and RSD flood characteristics are computed. These scenarii show that the integration of the RSD characteristics leads to better constrain the model (i.e. the number of parameter sets providing acceptable results with respect to observations is reduced) and render it more reliable, even in the case of quite rather abundant ground observed data.
Patterns of Interpersonal Problems in Borderline Personality Disorder

Abstract Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by a wide variety of interpersonal problems. We examined whether there are different characteristic interpersonal patterns in BPD and how these patterns are related to symptom distress and therapeutic alliance. In 228 inpatients with diagnoses of BPD, interpersonal subtypes based on the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (Horowitz et al., Inventar zur Erfassung Interpersonaler Probleme, 2000) were examined through cluster analyses. The global symptom severity and therapeutic alliance were also assessed. We identified five characteristic interpersonal patterns, which we labeled as follows: Cluster 1, “Vindictive”; Cluster 2, “Moderate Submissive”; Cluster 3, “Nonassertive”; Cluster 4, “Exploitable”; and Cluster 5, “Socially Avoidant. ” The clusters differed significantly in terms of interpersonal distress, interpersonal differentiation, and severity of global symptoms. The ratings of the therapeutic alliance by therapists during treatment significantly differed between the interpersonal subtypes, and the lowest ratings for patients were in the “Socially Avoidant” cluster. Our results stress the impact of interpersonal style on the appearance and treatment of BPD.
Decreased Expression and Aberrant Methylation of Raf Kinase Inhibitory Protein Gene in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Raf kinase inhibitory protein (RKIP) gene is considered to be a suppressor of metastasis involved in various carcinomas. In the present study, we observed that promoter methylation repressed the expression of RKIP in TE-13 cell line. 5-Aza treatment and stable transfection of RKIP resulted in a significant inhibition of TE-13 cell proliferation. The promoter hypermethylation of RKIP was found to occur in dysplastic tissues and a close correlation was noted between RKIP methylation and the loss of mRNA and protein expression of the gene in ESCC specimens. In summary, RKIP may act as a tumor suppressor gene in esophageal cancer.
Probabilistic model checking in practice: case studies with PRISM

In this paper, we describe some practical applications of probabilistic model checking, a technique for the formal analysis of systems which exhibit stochastic behaviour. We give an overview of a selection of case studies carried out using the probabilistic model checking tool PRISM, demonstrating the wide range of application domains to which these methods are applicable. We also illustrate several benefits of using formal verification techniques to analyse probabilistic systems, including: (i) that they allow a wide range of numerical properties to be computed accurately; and (ii) that they perform a complete and exhaustive analysis enabling, for example, a study of best- and worst-case scenarios.
The diagnosis of deep vein thrombosis in symptomatic outpatients and the potential for clinical assessment and D‐dimer assays to reduce the need for diagnostic imaging

Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) has an annual incidence of between 48 and 182 per 100 000 (Coon et al, 1973; Anderson et al, 1991; Nordstrom et al, 1992; Hansson et al, 1997; Silverstein et al, 1998), so the oft quoted figure of 1 per 1000 is a reasonable estimate. Estimates of the case fatality rate range from 1% to 5% (Anderson et al, 1991). However, the incidence and the case fatality rate are very age dependent (Coon et al, 1973; Anderson et al, 1991; Nordstrom et al, 1992; Silverstein et al, 1998). There is also associated morbidity. Post-thrombotic syndrome, characterized by chronic pain, swelling and occasional ulceration of the skin of the leg occurs in up to one-third of patients who have had a DVT (Prandoni et al, 1996, 1999). The post-thrombotic syndrome can occur early or have a latency of up to 10 years, the cumulative frequency has been estimated as 23% at 2 years and 28% at 5 years (Prandoni et al, 1996). In patients who use elastic compression stockings for at least 2 years, the incidence of post-thrombotic leg can be halved (Brandjes et al, 1997). Increased awareness of DVT and its consequences has resulted in an increased number of patients being referred for assessment. Many of these patients are at low risk and this is reflected by the fall in the percentage of positive diagnoses of DVT in reported series. The objective diagnosis of DVT depends on imaging using compression ultrasound or ascending venography. However, because of the cost of these modalities, the increasing number of negative tests which are being requested and the resultant, frequently incurred delays in access to them, alternative approaches to diagnosis and decision making in suspected cases of DVT have been adopted. These rely on the use of information from clinical history and examination and assays to detect D-dimers. The main emphasis of these methods is on the safe exclusion of a diagnosis of DVT, thus reducing the use of imaging techniques and speeding up the diagnostic process. While clinical examination cannot be relied upon in isolation to make a diagnosis of DVT, in combination with appropriate history taking, it can provide useful information (Wells et al, 1995, 1997). Recently, sensitive D-dimer assays that can help to exclude the diagnosis have been developed. This guideline describes the use of these methods alone and in combination with each other to develop strategies that safely exclude the diagnosis in patients presenting with suspected DVT, without resorting to the use of diagnostic imaging. An understanding of the natural history of calf vein thrombosis, and the risk of extension and embolization is also important in designing a diagnostic strategy.
Relating Phylogenetic and Functional Diversity among Denitrifiers and Quantifying their Capacity to Predict Community Functioning

Genetic diversity of phylogenetic or functional markers is widely used as a proxy of microbial diversity. However, it remains unclear to what extent functional diversity (FD), gene sequence diversity and community functioning are linked. For a range of denitrifying bacteria, we analyzed the relationships between (i) the similarity of functional traits evaluated from metabolic profiles (BIOLOG plates) or from N2O accumulation patterns on different carbon sources and (ii) the similarity of phylogenetic (16S rRNA gene) or functional (nir gene) markers. We also calculated different proxies for the diversity of denitrifier community based on taxa richness, phylogenetic (16S rRNA gene) or functional similarities (based either on metabolic profiles or N2O accumulation patterns), and evaluated their performance in inferring the functioning of assembled denitrifying communities. For individual strains, the variation in the 16S rRNA gene sequence was weakly correlated with the variation in metabolic patterns (ρ = 0.35) and was not related to N2O accumulation. The latter was correlated with the similarity of nitrite reductase residues. When nir genes were analyzed separately, the similarity in amino acids coded by the nirS genes was highly correlated with the observed patterns of N2O accumulation (ρ = 0.62), whereas nirK amino acid residues were unrelated to N2O accumulation. For bacterial assemblages, phylogenetic diversity (average similarity among species in a community) and mean community dissimilarity (average distance between species) calculated using 16S rRNA gene sequences, and FD measures associated with metabolic profiles, poorly predicted the variation in the functioning of assembled communities (≤15%). In contrast, the proxies of FD based on N2O accumulation patterns performed better and explained from 23 to 42% of the variation in denitrification. Amongst those, community niche was the best metric, indicating the importance of complementarity for resources in the context of bacterial community functioning.
Comparing the reliability and intermetallic layer of solder joints prepared with infrared and vapour phase soldering

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare the reliability and intermetallic layer (IML) of solder joints prepared with infrared (IR) and vapour phase (VP) soldering. The reliability of 0603-sized resistors’ solder joints formed with IR and VP soldering was investigated. The IML of the joints was analysed based on image processing algorithm automatically. Design/methodology/approach – For the reliability analyses, the ageing method was a highly accelerated stress test (HAST) with +105°C maximum temperature, fully saturated (100 per cent) relative humidity at +0.5 atm overpressure. The joints were characterised based on the thickness of their IML and on their shear strength in as-reflowed stage, and after 400, 800, 1,200, 1,600 and 2,000 hours of HAST. An image processing algorithm was developed to measure the thickness of the IMLs on cross-sectional scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images automatically. Findings – The increase of the IML thickness is lower in the case of HAST ageing compared to o.