Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
See Clinical Perspective

H ypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a heterogeneous condition with highly variable phenotypic expression and is the leading cause of sudden cardiac death in young athletes worldwide. 1 The clinical profile of athletes with HCM capable of competing in sporting activities at an extraordinarily high level has not been characterized. Traditional methods for differentiating physiological left ventricular hypertrophy (athlete's heart) from HCM have relied on parameters derived from sedentary HCM patients and healthy athletes. Anecdotal evidence suggests that such algorithms 2 may not be directly applicable to athletes with HCM. This study sought to characterize the clinical profile of young athletes with HCM diagnosed during preparticipa-tion cardiovascular evaluation or in the context of family screening. The results were compared with young sedentary HCM patients to determine differences in disease phenotype between individuals with HCM who exercise regularly and those who are sedentary. The results from a small subset of athletes with HCM revealing mild (13–16 mm) concentric left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) were also compared with a group of healthy athletes with physiological LVH to ascertain the reliability of current discriminating structural and functional left ventricular (LV) parameters used to differentiate between the 2 entities. Methods Setting This study was collaboration between 2 specialist cardiomyopathy centers in the United Kingdom and France. These institutions receive direct referrals from preparticipation cardiovascular evaluation of young professional athletes, including those suspected with HCM. Background—The phenotype of individuals with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) who exercise regularly is unknown. This study characterized the clinical profile of young athletes with HCM. Methods and Results—The electrical, structural, and functional cardiac parameters from 106 young (14–35 years) athletes with HCM were compared with 101 sedentary HCM patients. A subset of athletes with HCM exhibiting morphologically mild (13–16 mm), concentric disease was compared with 55 healthy athletes with mild physiological left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). Most athletes with HCM (96%) exhibited T-wave inversion and had milder LVH (15.8±3.4 mm versus 19.7±6.5 mm, P<0.001), larger left ventricular cavity dimensions (47.8±6.0 mm versus 44.3±7.7 mm, P<0.001), and superior indices of diastolic function (average E/E′ 7.9±2.4 versus 10.7±3.9, P<0.001) compared with sedentary HCM patients. In athletes with HCM, LVH was frequently (36%) confined to the apex and only 15 individuals (14%) exhibited mild concentric LVH mimicking physiological LVH. In these 15 athletes, conventional structural and functional cardiac parameters showed modest sensitivity and specificity for differentiating HCM from physiological LVH: 13% had a left ventricular cavity >54 …
GM2-Activator Protein: A New Biomarker for Lung Cancer

Introduction: Effective biomarkers for early diagnosis of lung cancer are needed. A recent study demonstrated that urinary GM2-activator protein (GM2AP) level was increased in lung cancer patients. This study aims to validate the potential application of GM2AP as a biomarker for diagnosis of lung cancer. Methods: Serum and urine samples were obtained from 189 participants (133 patients for treatment naive lung cancer, 26 healthy volunteers for urine, and 30 healthy volunteers for serum). GM2AP level was detected by Western blotting and quantified using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The GM2AP expression in tumors and nontumor parts of lung tissues from 143 nonsmall cell lung cancers was detected by immunohistochemical stains. Results: There was an 8.11 ± 1.36 folds increase in urine and a 5.41 ± 0.73 folds increase in serum level of GM2AP in lung cancer patients compared with healthy volunteers (p < 0.0001), achieving a 0.89 AUC value in urine and 0.90 AUC value in serum for the receiver-operating characteristic curves. Both serum and urine levels of GM2AP correlated significantly with pathology stages (urine, p = 0.009; serum, p < 0.0001). Using immunohistochemical, positive expression of GM2AP was found at 83.9% of nonsmall cell lung cancers patients and none in normal tissue. The GM2AP expression was significantly correlated with pathology stage (p = 0.0001). Patients with higher GM2AP expression had shorter overall survival (p = 0.045) and disease-free survival (p = 0.049) than lower GM2AP expression. Moreover, the multivariate analysis suggested GM2AP as an independent predictors of disease-free survival and overall survival. Conclusions: Our study demonstrates that GM2AP might serve as potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers in patients with lung cancer.
Leaching of Contaminants from Recycled Asphalt Pavement used in Highway Construction

Title of Thesis: Leaching of Contaminants from Recycled Asphalt Pavement used in Highway Construction Ousmane Seybou Insa Master of Science, 2017 Thesis directed by: Prof. Ahmet H. AYDILEK Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) is a material resulting the removal and reprocessing of the existing asphalt pavement. Annually, more than 80 million tons of RAP is produced in the United States. Most of the RAP is landfilled, which constitutes a significant economic burden and a waste of landfill space. RAP has great potential in highway construction due to its good physical properties. However, concerns have been raised due to potential surface water and groundwater contamination by metals including some heavy metals and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) present in RAP. A series of batch-level pH-dependent leaching tests and Toxicity Characteristics Leaching Procedure (TCLP) tests were conducted to investigate the leaching of metals from seven RAPs collected across the state of Maryland. The results of the pH-dependent leaching tests indicated As to be slightly above the U.S EPA Water Quality Limit (WQL). The results of a series of TCLP tests showed that two PAHs, chrysene and Indeno[1,2,3-cd]pyrene, may be present in the leachates, albeit, at concentrations very comparable to those leach from a new asphalt material. The results of the geochemical modeling indicated that the leached metals were solubility-controlled. Oxide and hydroxide minerals control the leaching of Al and Fe; whereas, leaching of Ba, Ca and Mg were controlled by carbonate and/or sulfate minerals. LEACHING OF CONTAMINANTS FROM RECYCLED ASPHALT PAVEMENT USED IN HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION
A Unified MAC Layer Framework for Ad-Hoc Networks With Smart Antennas

Smart antennas represent a broad variety of antennas that differ in their performance and transceiver complexity. The superior capabilities of smart antennas, however, can be leveraged only through appropriately designed higher layer network protocols, including at the medium access control (MAC) layer. Although several related works have considered such tailored protocols, they do so in the context of specific antenna technologies. In this paper, we explore the possibility for a unified approach to medium access control in ad hoc networks with smart antennas. We first present a unified representation of the PHY layer capabilities of the different types of smart antennas, and their relevance to MAC layer design. We then define a unified MAC problem formulation, and derive unified MAC algorithms (both centralized and distributed) from the formulation. Finally, using the algorithms developed, we investigate the relative performance trade-offs of the different technologies under varying network conditions. We also analyze theoretically the performance bounds of the different smart antenna technologies when the available gains are exploited for rate increase and communication range increase.
Mechanistic Studies of Antibody-Mediated Clearance of Tau Aggregates Using an ex vivo Brain Slice Model

Recent studies have shown that immunotherapy clears amyloid beta (Aβ) plaques and reduces Aβ levels in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), as well as in AD patients. Tangle pathology is also relevant for the neurodegeneration in AD, and our studies have shown that active immunization with an AD related phospho-tau peptide reduces aggregated tau within the brain and slows the progression of tauopathy-induced behavioral impairments. Thus, clearance of neurofibrillary tangles and/or their precursors may reduce synaptic and neuronal loss associated with AD and other tauopathies. So far the mechanisms involved in antibody-mediated clearance of tau pathology are yet to be elucidated. In this study we have used a mouse brain slice model to examine the uptake and localization of FITC labeled anti-tau antibodies. Confocal microscopy analysis showed that the FITC labeled anti-tau antibody co-stained with phosphorylated tau, had a perinuclear appearance and co-localized with markers of the endosomal/lysosomal pathway. Additionally, tau and FITC–IgG were found together in an enriched lysosome fraction. In summary, antibody-mediated clearance of intracellular tau aggregates appears to occur via the lysosomal pathway.
Use of the Violence Risk Scale—Sexual Offender Version and the Stable 2007 to Assess Dynamic Sexual Violence Risk in a Sample of Treated Sexual Offenders

The present study provides an examination of dynamic sexual violence risk featuring the Stable-2007 (Hanson, Harris, Scott, & Helmus, 2007) and the Violence Risk Scale—Sexual Offender version (VRS-SO; Wong, Olver, Nicholaichuk, & Gordon, 2003) in a Canadian sample of 180 federally incarcerated sexual offenders who attended a high-intensity sexual offender treatment program. Archival pretreatment and posttreatment ratings were completed on the VRS-SO and Stable-2007, and recidivism data were obtained from official criminal records, with the sample being followed up approximately 10 years postrelease. VRS-SO pre- and posttreatment dynamic scores demonstrated significant predictive accuracy for sexual, nonsexual violent, any violent (including sexual), and general recidivism, while Stable-2007 pre- and posttreatment scores were significantly associated with the latter 3 outcomes; these associations were maintained after controlling for the Static-99R (Helmus, Thornton, Hanson, & Babchishin, 2012). Finally, significant pre-post differences, amounting to approximately three quarters of a standard deviation, were found on Stable-2007 and VRS-SO scores. VRS-SO change scores were significantly associated with reductions in nonsexual violent, any violent, and general recidivism (but not sexual recidivism) after controlling for baseline risk or pretreatment score, while Stable-2007 change scores did not significantly predict reductions in any recidivism outcomes. Applications of these tools within the context of dynamic sexual violence risk assessment incorporating the use of change information are discussed.
Kinetics of Isomerization and Inversion of Aspartate 58 of αA-Crystallin Peptide Mimics under Physiological Conditions

Although proteins consist exclusively of L-amino acids, we have reported that aspartyl (Asp) 58 and Asp 151 residues of αA-crystallin of eye lenses from elderly cataract donors are highly inverted and isomerized to D-β, D-α and L-β-Asp residues through succinimide intermediates. Of these Asp isomers, large amounts of D-β- and L-β-isomers are present but the amount of D-α-isomer is not significant. The difference in abundance of the Asp isomers in the protein may be due to the rate constants for the formation of the isomers. However, the kinetics have not been well defined. Therefore, in this study, we synthesized a peptide corresponding to human αA-crystallin residues 55 to 65 (T55VLD58SGISEVR65) and its isomers in which L-α-Asp at position 58 was replaced with L-β-, D-β- and D-α-Asp and determined the rate of isomerization and inversion of Asp residues under physiological conditions (37°C, pH7.4). The rate constant for dehydration from L-α-Asp peptide to L-succinimidyl peptide was 3 times higher than the rate constant for dehydration from L-β-Asp peptide to L-succinimidyl peptide. The rate constant for hydrolysis from L-succinimidyl peptide to L-β-Asp peptide was about 5 times higher than the rate constant for hydrolysis from L-succinimidyl peptide to L-α-Asp peptide. The rate constant for dehydration from L-α-Asp peptide to L-succinimidyl peptide was 2 times higher than the rate constant for dehydration from D-α-Asp peptide to D-succinimidyl peptide. The rate constants for hydrolysis from L-succinimidyl peptide to L-β-Asp peptide and for hydrolysis from D-succinimidyl peptide to D-β-Asp peptide were almost equal. Using these rate constants, we calculated the change in the abundance ratios of the 4 Asp isomers during a human lifespan. This result is consistent with the fact that isomerized Asp residues accumulate in proteins during the ageing process.
The Interaction Between Moist Convection and African Easterly Waves.

RUSSELL, JAMES OLIVER HARVEY. The Interaction Between Moist Convection and African Easterly Waves. (Under the direction of Anantha Aiyyer). This dissertation addresses the relationship between African Easterly Waves (AEWs) and moist convection. AEWs are analyzed in two convection-permitting simulations and in composite averages using two reanalyses. This approach allows us to examine the mesoscale characteristics of moist convection while also investigating the synoptic-scale evolution of the AEW. Potential Vorticity (PV) and its budget in various forms, are used extensively to understand the dynamics of the AEWs. Over land, moist convection is typically in the form of multiple Quasi-Linear Convective Systems (QLCSs) within the northerlies of the wave. Convective initiation in the northerlies occurs through a superposition of the diurnal cycle with AEW-scale forcing for moisture, ascent, and convective inhibition. The resulting QLCSs are enhanced by larger CAPE and a favorable interaction between the enhanced shear and QLCS cold pools. Over ocean, deep moist convection occurs in the trough associated with enhanced moisture and ascent. The coupling of moist convection with the AEW resembles Mapes et al. (2006) stretched building block theory. This manifests in deep moist convection in the northerlies and trailing upper-level stratiform convection in the trough. The AEW can be described as a system of interconnected moist and dry waves. The dry waves propagate through advection of the background PV gradient. The moist waves propagate via moist convective diabatic PV tendencies. The system as a whole is advected by the background flow associated with the AEJ. Barotropic instability, dry baroclinic instability, and a form of moist instability occur but combined, do not account for the total growth of the AEW. The AEW is destabilized via generation of mid-level moist PV anomalies by trailing stratiform associated with the aforementioned QLCSs. This process is likened to the stratiform instability mechanism of Mapes (2000). The superposition of this moist PV anomaly with the barotropically unstable dry PV allows for the growth of the canonical mid-level southern track AEW. Finally, deep moist convection in the northerlies generates low-level moist PV anomalies which maintains the upright AEW PV column against the effects of background shear. This has implications for tropical cyclogenesis. © Copyright 2019 by James Oliver Harvey Russell
Serum concentrations of activin and follistatin are elevated and run in parallel in patients with septicemia.

OBJECTIVE Activin is a growth and differentiation factor of many cell types, and has recently been implicated in inflammatory processes. Clinical data linking activin and its binding protein, follistatin (FS), are lacking. We measured serum levels of activin and FS in patients diagnosed with septicemia. PATIENTS AND MEASUREMENTS Eight male and seven female patients of different ages, various forms of septicemia and different clinical outcome were investigated and compared with age- and sex-matched healthy controls. Serum concentrations of FS, activin, C-reactive protein (CRP) and blood leukocyte counts were determined during septicemia. RESULTS The median of the maximum activin concentrations of septicemic patients was 3.9-fold higher than in age- and sex-matched healthy control subjects (P<0.01); the median of the maximum FS concentrations was 2.6-fold higher (P<0.01). The highest increase of activin in septicemic patients was approximately 15.8-fold, whereas FS increased by up to 13.2-fold above normal. FS, activin and CRP serum levels generally paralleled each other, but were not correlated with leukocyte counts or clinical outcome. CONCLUSIONS Circulatory concentrations of activin and FS are elevated in patients diagnosed with septicemia, consistent with potential roles in the systemic inflammatory response.
Preliminary Phytochemical Screening, Quantitative Analysis of Alkaloids, and Antioxidant Activity of Crude Plant Extracts from Ephedra intermedia Indigenous to Balochistan

The aim of this study was to evaluate the antioxidant activity, screening the phytogenic chemical compounds, and to assess the alkaloids present in the E. intermedia to prove its uses in Pakistani folk medicines for the treatment of asthma and bronchitis. Antioxidant activity was analyzed by using 2,2-diphenyl-1-picryl-hydrazyl-hydrate assay. Standard methods were used for the identification of cardiac glycosides, phenolic compounds, flavonoids, anthraquinones, and alkaloids. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was used for quantitative purpose of ephedrine alkaloids in E. intermedia. The quantitative separation was confirmed on Shimadzu 10AVP column (Shampack) of internal diameter (id) 3.0 mm and 50 mm in length. The extract of the solute in flow rate of 1 ml/min at the wavelength 210 nm and methanolic extract showed the antioxidant activity and powerful oxygen free radicals scavenging activities and the IC50 for the E. intermedia plant was near to the reference standard ascorbic acid. The HPLC method was useful for the quantitative purpose of ephedrine (E) and pseudoephedrine (PE) used for 45 samples of one species collected from central habitat in three districts (Ziarat, Shairani, and Kalat) of Balochistan. Results showed that average alkaloid substance in E. intermedia was as follows: PE (0.209%, 0.238%, and 0.22%) and E (0.0538%, 0.0666%, and 0.0514%).
Coding for Network Coding

We consider communication over a noisy network under randomized linear network coding. Possible error mechanism include node- or link- failures, Byzantine behavior of nodes, or an over-estimate of the network min-cut. Building on the work of Kotter and Kschischang, we introduce a probabilistic model for errors. We compute the capacity of this channel and we define an error-correction scheme based on random sparse graphs and a low-complexity decoding algorithm. By optimizing over the code degree profile, we show that this construction achieves the channel capacity in complexity which is jointly quadratic in the number of coded information bits and sublogarithmic in the error probability.
Global wave‐2 structure of El Niño–Southern Oscillation‐modulated convection

The temporal and spatial structure of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)‐modulated convection is analysed. Computation of the leading empirical orthogonal function mode in filtered satellite outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) fields yields a time score with a 4–5 year cycle that follows Niño3. 4 sea surface temperature (SST), and a spatial loading pattern with global wave‐2 structure. Alternating centres of action are located over the central Pacific, West Atlantic, west Indian and Maritime Continent. The wave‐2 pattern is underpinned by a split Walker cell and June–August SST anomalies in the equatorial Atlantic opposite to the East Pacific and west Indian Oceans. Hovmoller plots of the upper velocity potential and sea surface height exhibit continuous eastwards propagation of a wave‐1 pattern in the 2010–2016 ENSO cycle. Atmospheric convection (OLR) reflects basin‐scale patterns that switch sign with ENSO phase, as coupled zonal propagating waves become super‐positioned.
Cross-convolutional-layer Pooling for Generic Visual Recognition

Recent studies have shown that a Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN) pretrained on a large image dataset can be used as a universal image descriptor, and that doing so leads to impressive performance for a variety of image classification tasks. Most of these studies adopt activations from a single DCNN layer, usually the fully-connected layer, as the image representation. In this paper, we proposed a novel way to extract image representations from two consecutive convolutional layers: one layer is utilized for local feature extraction and the other serves as guidance to pool the extracted features. By taking different viewpoints of convolutional layers, we further develop two schemes to realize this idea. The first one directly uses convolutional layers from a DCNN. The second one applies the pretrained CNN on densely sampled image regions and treats the fully-connected activations of each image region as convolutional feature activations. We then train another convolutional layer on top of that as the pooling-guidance convolutional layer. By applying our method to three popular visual classification tasks, we find our first scheme tends to perform better on the applications which need strong discrimination on subtle object patterns within small regions while the latter excels in the cases that require discrimination on category-level patterns. Overall, the proposed method achieves superior performance over existing ways of extracting image representations from a DCNN.
Soluble and Membrane-bound Forms of Signaling Lymphocytic Activation Molecule (SLAM) Induce Proliferation and Ig Synthesis by Activated Human B Lymphocytes

In this study it is shown that both membrane-bound and soluble forms of signaling lymphocytic activation molecule (SLAM) induce proliferation and Ig synthesis by activated human B cells. Activated B cells express the membrane-bound form of SLAM (mSLAM), the soluble (s) and the cytoplasmic (c) isoforms of SLAM, and the expression levels of mSLAM on B cells are rapidly upregulated after activation in vitro. Importantly, recombinant sSLAM and L cells transfected with mSLAM efficiently enhance B cell proliferation induced by anti-μ mAbs, anti-CD40 mAbs or Staphylococcus aureus Cowan I (SAC) in the presence or absence of IL-2, IL-4, IL-10, IL-12, or IL-15. sSLAM strongly enhances proliferation of both freshly isolated B cells and B cells derived from long-term in vitro cultures, indicating that SLAM acts not only during the initial phase of B cell activation but also during the expansion of preactivated B cells. In addition, sSLAM enhances production of IgM, IgG, and IgA by B cells activated by antiCD40 mAbs. SLAM has recently been shown to be a high affinity self-ligand, and the present data suggest that signaling through homophilic SLAM–SLAM binding during B–B and B–T cell interactions enhances the expansion and differentiation of activated B cells.
Expression of Tocopherol-Associated Protein in Mast Cells

ABSTRACT Tocopherol-associated protein (TAP) was expressed in mouse mast cells. TAP was predominantly localized in the cytoplasm, and the subcellular localization was not changed by α-tocopherol. The results suggest that the physiological role of TAP in mast cells is not regulation of tocopherol function but an as-yet-unidentified activity.