Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Periodontal Health Status in a Colony of 109 Cats

Periodontal disease has not been well characterized in the cat, and it is not known if feline tooth resorptions (TR) are equivalent to those observed in humans and dogs. The aim of this study was to investigate the different patterns of periodontal inflammation in cats, and to evaluate their prevalence in a standardized healthy population (n=109). Particular emphasis was placed on the potential associations between TR and periodontal parameters, as well as the influence of potential risk factors (including breed, sex, and age). A single complete periodontal examination was performed, including periodontal probing of each tooth and exploration of the tooth surface using a dental explorer; at least 10 radiographs were taken for each cat. Missing teeth with radiographic evidence of root apices were present in 34.0 % of cats. Periodontal disease was common, and 13.0 % of cats had aggressive periodontitis. All of the cats had some form of periodontal inflammation, and only 4.0 % of cats were free from gingival inflammation. Moderate to severe gingivitis was present in 13.0 % of teeth. Dental furcation exposure was present in 18.0 % of all multi-rooted teeth. Periodontal bone loss was observed in 31.2 % of teeth, with the majority (98.2 %) of all cats having some form of periodontal bone loss. Breed effects were identified for some variables. Eight of 14 periodontal variables were statistically correlated with Type 1 TR. Two of 14 variables (and age) were statistically correlated with Type 2 TR. In conclusion, the cats of this colony had a wide range of periodontal inflammation, including aggressive periodontitis. Type 1 TR and Type 2 TR were identified to be two significantly different manifestations of TR, with a strong association between Type 1 TR and periodontal disease.
Nucleotide sequence and genetic characterization of staphylococcal bacteriophage L54a int and xis genes

The nucleotide sequence of a staphylococcal bacteriophage L54a DNA fragment containing genes involved in site-specific recombination was determined. Mutations generated by in vitro mutagenesis were used to map and characterize the int and xis genes. The site-specific recombination functions are tightly clustered within a 1.75-kilobase stretch of DNA fragment with the gene order of attP-int-xis. The int and xis genes are transcribed divergently. The Int protein deduced from the nucleotide sequence has a molecular weight of 41,000. Int is a basic protein with 354 amino acids of which 72 are basic and 38 are acidic. The Xis protein consists of only 59 amino acids with a molecular weight of 7,180. Unlike the Xis proteins of the lambdoid bacteriophages which are all basic proteins, L54a Xis is an acidic protein containing 13 acidic and 8 basic amino acids. The Int protein is required in both integrative and excisive reactions, whereas Xis is only required in excisive reaction. A well-conserved 40-residue region, including three perfectly conserved residues found in 15 site-specific recombinases of the integrase family that have been characterized, was also found in the L54a Int protein.
Three-Year Follow-up of a Novel Aqueous Humor MicroShunt

Aims:An observational study to determine the safety and efficacy of filtering surgery employing a microlumen aqueous drainage device (InnFocus MicroShunt), used intraoperatively with Mitomycin C, implanted alone or in combination with phacoemulsification. Materials and Methods:Single-site, prospective, nonrandomized study of 23 eyes that had failed maximum tolerated glaucoma medication, followed for 3 years. A MicroShunt was implanted ab externo through a needle tract under the limbus, draining aqueous from the anterior chamber to the scleral surface. Prespecified outcome measures include: intraocular pressure (IOP) control, with and without supplemental medication, success rate, medication use, and adverse events. Results:Fourteen patients received the MicroShunt alone and 9 with cataract surgery. At 1 (n=23), 2 (n=22), and 3 (n=22) years of follow-up; the qualified success rate (IOP⩽14 mm Hg and IOP reduction ≥20%) was 100%, 91%, and 95%; mean medicated IOP was reduced from 23.8±5.3 to 10.7±2.8, 11.9±3.7, and 10.7±3.5 mm Hg, and the mean number of glaucoma medications/patient was reduced from 2.4±0.9 to 0.3±0.8, 0.4±1.0, and 0.7±1.1, respectively. The most common complications were transient hypotony (13%, 3/23) and transient choroidal effusion (8.7%, 2/23), all resolved spontaneously. There were no leaks, infections, migrations, erosions, persistent corneal edema, or serious long-term adverse events. Conclusion:Surgery with the InnFocus MicroShunt transscleral aqueous drainage tube with Mitomycin C achieved IOP control in the low teens in most subjects up to 3 years of follow-up with only transient adverse events occurring within the first 3 months after surgery.
Combining self-reported and automatic data to improve programming effort measurement

Measuring effort accurately and consistently across subjects in a programming experiment can be a surprisingly difficult task. In particular, measures based on self-reported data may differ significantly from measures based on data which is recorded automatically from a subject's computing environment. Since self-reports can be unreliable, and not all activities can be captured automatically, a complete measure of programming effort should incorporate both classes of data. In this paper, we show how self-reported and automatic effort can be combined to perform validation and to measure total programming effort.
Ferroelastic Phase Transition of BiVO4 Single Crystals with Prominent W -Domain Walls by Stress-Strain Hysteresis Measurements

The phase transition of BiVO4 crystals with prominent W-domain walls was investigated by carrying out stress-strain hysteresis measurements. The change in the strain under a stress of 0.4 MPa was determined, and the non-linear behavior of the strain below TC was found to be due to the switching of the ferroelastic domains. Above TC , the strain has a minimum value, which indicates the presence of a paraelastic phase. A configuration of domain boundaries with two orientations separated by parallel lines was observed with polarizing microscopy in the ferroelastic phase, and these domain walls are not present in the paraelastic phase. Further, the stress-strain hysteresis loop has a shape typical of a ferroelastic phase below TC , and above TC has a shape indicative of a paraelastic phase. These results show that BiVO4 crystals undergo a ferroelastic phase transition near TC = 255° C.
Prediction of time series by statistical learning: general losses and fast rates

Abstract We establish rates of convergences in statistical learning for time series forecasting. Using the PAC-Bayesian approach, slow rates of convergence √ d/n for the Gibbs estimator under the absolute loss were given in a previous work [7], where n is the sample size and d the dimension of the set of predictors. Under the same weak dependence conditions, we extend this result to any convex Lipschitz loss function. We also identify a condition on the parameter space that ensures similar rates for the classical penalized ERM procedure. We apply this method for quantile forecasting of the French GDP. Under additional conditions on the loss functions (satisfied by the quadratic loss function) and for uniformly mixing processes, we prove that the Gibbs estimator actually achieves fast rates of convergence d/n. We discuss the optimality of these different rates pointing out references to lower bounds when they are available. In particular, these results bring a generalization the results of [29] on sparse regression estimation to some autoregression.
Microglia Polarization with M1/M2 Phenotype Changes in rd1 Mouse Model of Retinal Degeneration

Microglia activation is recognized as the hallmark of neuroinflammation. However, the activation profile and phenotype changes of microglia during the process of retinal degeneration are poorly understood. This study aimed to elucidate the time-spatial pattern of microglia distribution and characterize the polarized phenotype of activated microglia during retinal neuroinflammation and degeneration in rd1 (Pde6βrd1/rd1) mice, the classic model of inherited retinal degeneration. Retinae of rd1 mice at different postnatal days (P7, P14, P21, P28, P56, and P180) were prepared for further analysis. We found most CD11b+ or IBA1+ microglia expressed Ki-67 and CD68 in rd1 mice and these cells migrated toward the layer of degenerative photoreceptors at the rapid rods degeneration phase from P14 to P28. These microglia exhibited typical ameboid activated shape with round bodies and scarce dendrites, while at late phase at P180, they displayed resting ramified morphology with elongated dendrites. Flow cytometry revealed that the percentage of CD86+CD206- M1 microglia increased markedly in rd1 retinae, however, no significant change was observed in CD206+CD86- M2 microglia. Interestingly, CD86+CD206+ microglia, an intermediate state between the two extremes of M1 and M2, increased markedly at the rapid rods degeneration phase. The immunofluorescence images revealed that microglia in rd1 mice highly expressed M1 markers including CD16/32, CD86, and CD40. In addition, increased expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-6, and CCL2) was observed in rd1 mice. Our findings unfolded a panorama for the first time that microglia conducted distinctive behaviors with the progression of retinal degeneration in rd1 mice. Microglia is activated and particularly polarized to a pro-inflammatory M1 phenotype at the rapid rods degenerative phase, suggesting that the involvement of M1 microglia in the retinal neuroinflammation and degeneration. Most microglia adopted an intermediate polarization “M1½” state in rd1, revealing that microglia orchestrated a complicated continuous spectrum in degenerative retina.
GH deficiency in patients after cure of acromegaly by surgery alone.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to determine the frequency and characteristics of severe GH deficiency (sGHD) in patients after treatment of acromegaly by surgery alone. DESIGN AND METHODS One hundred and eighty-six patients fulfilling the criteria for cure of acromegaly were examined by GH-releasing peptide-2 stimulation test or arginine stimulation test as well as oral glucose tolerance test (GTT). In addition, the Japanese adult hypopituitarism questionnaire was completed to determine the quality of life (QoL). RESULTS sGHD was found in 17 patients (9.1%; the GH-deficient group), and not found in 169 patients (90.9%; the GH-sufficient group). There were no significant differences in preoperative serum GH levels, IGF1 levels, incidence of hyperprolactinemia, tumor volumes, or incidence of microadenoma between the two groups. Upon follow-up examination, IGF1 levels and Z-scores of IGF1 levels were significantly lower in the GH-deficient group than in the GH-sufficient group, whereas neither basal GH levels nor nadir GH levels during 75 g GTT were significantly different between the two groups. Moreover, sGHD patients had a substantially higher incidence of multiple pituitary failures (17.6 vs 2.4%) and dyslipidemia (60 vs 16.2%). sGHD patients had a substantially poorer condition-related QoL. CONCLUSIONS This is the first large-scale, single-center, clinical study to evaluate sGHD in patients after cure of acromegaly by surgery alone. This study found that sGHD occurred in ~9% of patients and assessment of GHD by stimulation tests is critical after successful treatment of acromegaly by surgery.
Acetic acid used for the elimination of Pseudomonas aeruginosa from burn and soft tissue wounds

Acetic acid was used topically at concentrations of between 0.5% and 5% to eliminate Pseudomonas aeruginosa from the burn wounds or soft tissue wounds of 16 patients. In-vitro studies indicated the susceptibility of P. aeruginosa to acetic acid; all strains exhibited a minimum inhibitory concentration of 2 per cent. P. aeruginosa was eliminated from the wounds of 14 of the 16 patients within two weeks of treatment. Acetic acid was shown to be an inexpensive and efficient agent for the elimination of P. aeruginosa from burn and soft tissue wounds.
Gender differences in health and aging of Atlantic cod subject to size selective fishery

Summary We have analyzed health and physiological aging parameters in male and female Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua, captured in Kattegat, Skagerrak and in Öresund. Gender differences were clearly evident in a number of variables. Males had longer liver telomeres and higher catalase activities than females, while females had higher superoxide dismutase activity, liver somatic index and condition factor. Effects of age were found for males where levels of the antioxidant glutathione and telomere length declined with age, indicating physiological aging. Liver somatic index increased and percentage oxidized glutathione decreased with age. Between-site comparisons of males show that percentage oxidized glutathione and catalase were lowest in Kattegat, whereas protein carbonyls and condition factor were higher in Skagerrak. Females, on the other hand, showed no differences between sites or indications of somatic aging or age-related effects in egg quality, indicating that older and larger female cod are healthy and show no changes in eggs with age. In contrast, males showed indications of physiological aging and lower condition than females. The results emphasize the importance of conserving old mature fish, in particular high egg-productive females, when managing fisheries.
Energy Efficient Flat and Hierarchical Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks : A Survey

Wireless sensor network (WSN) is an emerging technology for exchanging data in various real-time monitoring systems. The WSN has distributed nature and dynamic topology which introduces very special requirements in routing the data. Various protocols developed for routing in WSNs are broadly classified in to four categories i.e. based on Network Structure, Communication Model, Topology and Reliable Routing. Many energy efficient routing protocols are proposed for WSNs in recent years. Network structure based routing protocols are more commonly used in various applications. To save the energy and for providing the extension of the network life time network structure based protocols are used. The routing protocols based on network structure can be further classified as flat or hierarchical. Finally, a comparison on flat and hierarchical protocols is done, which shows for the energy efficiency hierarchical protocols are more suitable in larger WSNs applications.
Regional cerebral blood flow autoregulation in normotensive and spontaneously hypertensive rats--effects of sympathetic denervation.

The present study was designed to investigate the effect of acute sympathetic denervation on the regional cerebral blood flow (CBF) autoregulation during acute elevation of blood pressure in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and normotensive Wistar Kyoto rats (WKY). CBF to the parietal cortex and thalamus was measured by the hydrogen clearance method and, to test autoregulation, systemic arterial blood pressure was elevated by intravenous infusion of phenylephrine. Superior cervical ganglia were removed on both sides to interrupt sympathetic innervation in the deeper structures of the brain. Acute bilateral sympathetic denervation did not alter the resting blood pressure or CBF in either SHR or WKY. In innervated SHR, resting mean arterial pressure (MAP) was 165 +/- 5 mm Hg (mean +/- SEM) and the upper limit of autoregulation in the cortex was 210 +/- 3 mm Hg, which was significantly lower than that in the thalamus (229 +/- 3 mm Hg, p less than 0.02). In bilaterally denervated SHR, the upper limits were lowered to 193 +/- 4 mm Hg in the cortex (p less than 0.02 vs. innervated SHR) and to 207 +/- 5 mm Hg in the thalamus (p less than 0.02 vs. innervated). In WKY, resting MAP was approximately 55 mm Hg lower than that in SHR. Acute denervation reduced the upper limits from 142 +/- 3 mm Hg to 130 +/- 4 in the cortex (p less than 0.05) and from 158 +/- 4 to 145 +/- 4 in the thalamus (p less than 0.05). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Prevalence of Depression Among Students of Urmia University of Medical Sciences (Iran)

Objective: A depressive disorder is an illness that involves the body, mood, thoughts and behaviors. This study was performed to identify the presence of depression among medical students of Urmia University of Medical Sciences. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on 700 undergraduate medical and basic sciences students. Beck depression inventory (BDI) used for data gathering. Results: Mean score of BDI was 10.4 ± 0.8 and 52.6% of students scored under the depression threshold. Four of them had severe depression. Results showed no significant relationship between depression and age, education, sex, rank of birth or duration of education. Conclusion: Prevalence of depression that can affect the students’ quality of education and social behavior was high in Urmia University of Medical Sciences.
Inhaled chemotherapy in lung cancer: future concept of nanomedicine

Regional chemotherapy was first used for lung cancer 30 years ago. Since then, new methods of drug delivery and pharmaceuticals have been investigated in vitro, and in animals and humans. An extensive review of drug delivery systems, pharmaceuticals, patient monitoring, methods of enhancing inhaled drug deposition, safety and efficacy, and also additional applications of inhaled chemotherapy and its advantages and disadvantages are presented. Regional chemotherapy to the lung parenchyma for lung cancer is feasible and efficient. Safety depends on the chemotherapy agent delivered to the lungs and is dose-dependent and time-dependent. Further evaluation is needed to provide data regarding early lung cancer stages, and whether regional chemotherapy can be used as neoadjuvant or adjuvant treatment. Finally, inhaled chemotherapy could one day be administered at home with fewer systemic adverse effects.
Energy-efficient resource optimization in spectrum sharing two-tier femtocell networks

Due to the limited battery resources of mobile clients, uplink energy-efficient communication is becoming increasingly important. In this paper, we propose a convex pricing-based resource allocation algorithm to improve the energy-efficiency of two-tier co-channel femtocell networks. We model the subchannel allocation and power control problem as a non-cooperative game, where both the transmit power and circuit power are considered. To reduce the complexity while maintaining good performance, we decompose the power control and subchannel allocation problem into two sub-problems. A suboptimal subchannel allocation algorithm and a optimal power control algorithm are proposed to resolve the non-cooperative games. Numerical results show the proposed resource allocation schemes are effective in increasing energy-efficient performance while keeping low complexity.
Natural synthesis of provably-correct data-structure manipulations

This paper presents natural synthesis, which generalizes the proof-theoretic synthesis technique to support very expressive logic theories. This approach leverages the natural proof methodology and reduces an intractable, unbounded-size synthesis problem to a tractable, bounded-size synthesis problem, which is amenable to be handled by modern inductive synthesis engines. The synthesized program admits a natural proof and is a provably-correct solution to the original synthesis problem. We explore the natural synthesis approach in the domain of imperative data-structure manipulations and present a novel syntax-guided synthesizer based on natural synthesis. The input to our system is a program template together with a rich functional specification that the synthesized program must meet. Our system automatically produces a program implementation along with necessary proof artifacts, namely loop invariants and ranking functions, and guarantees the total correctness with a natural proof. Experiments show that our natural synthesizer can efficiently produce provably-correct implementations for sorted lists and binary search trees. To our knowledge, this is the first system that can automatically synthesize these programs, their functional correctness and their termination in tandem from bare-bones control flow skeletons.
Inclusive fitness of ‘kissing cousins’: new evidence of a role for kin selection in the evolution of extra‐pair mating in birds

Social monogamy is nearly ubiquitous across avian taxa, but evidence from a proliferation of studies utilizing molecular paternity analysis suggests that sexual monogamy is the rare exception rather than the rule ( Griffith et al. 2002 ). Efforts to explain the prevalence of extra‐pair paternity (EPP) have largely focused on the potential fitness benefits for offspring genetic quality, as females are less likely to benefit directly from seeking extra‐pair mates. In particular, there has been considerable interest in the degree to which EPP may represent an adaptive female strategy to avoid inbreeding (or outbreeding) depression when paired with a highly related (or unrelated) social mate ( Kempenaers 2007 ). Others have argued that, because relatives share many genes identical by descent, females might increase their own inclusive fitness by providing additional breeding opportunities to genetically related males ( Waser et al. 1986 ; Kokko & Ots 2006 ). Thus, in the absence of significant inbreeding depression, pursuing EPP with relatives should be favoured by kin selection, although there exist few unambiguous empirical examples of such preferences in the literature. In this issue of Molecular Ecology, Wang & Lu (2011) present an analysis of mating patterns with respect to genetic relatedness of social and extra‐pair partners in the ground tit (Parus humilis), a facultative cooperative breeder in which socially monogamous pairs occasionally form cooperative groups with unpaired helper males ( Fig. 1 ). Consistent with the predictions of the kin‐selection hypothesis, females in both bi‐parental and cooperative groups preferentially engaged in extra‐pair matings with relatives, irrespective of relatedness to their social mates, and while suffering no apparent costs of inbreeding depression in their progeny. These findings have several exciting implications for our understanding of avian mating system diversity and the evolution of cooperative breeding.
Classification of Log del Pezzo Surfaces of Index Two

In this article, a log del Pezzo surface of index two means a projective normal non-Gorenstein surface S such that (S, 0) is a log-terminal pair, the anti-canonical divisor −KS is ample and that 2KS is Cartier. The log del Pezzo surfaces of index two are shown to be constructed from data (X, E,∆) called fundamental triplets consisting of a non-singular rational surface X, a simple normal crossing divisor E of X, and an effective Cartier divisor ∆ of E satisfying a suitable condition. A geometric classification of the fundamental triplets gives a classification of the log del Pezzo surfaces of index two. As a result, any log del Pezzo surface of index two can be described explicitly as a subvariety of a weighted projec- tive space or of the product of two weighted projective spaces. This classification does not use the theory of K3 lattices, which is essen- tial for the classification by Alexeev-Nikulin (4). The comparison between two classifications is also discussed.