Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Isolation of fibroblasts and epithelial cells in Bronchoalveolar Lavage (BAL)

ABSTRACT The long-term outcome of lung transplants is poor with 60%–70% of patients developing chronic rejection. Chronic rejection is manifested histologically by obliterative bronchiolitis with bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome (BOS), the clinical surrogate. Recent studies suggest that fibroblasts and epithelial cells present in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) may be a clinically relevant biomarker for BOS. The goal of this investigation was to develop a fast, repeatable method to individually isolate these low-frequency cell types. Fibroblasts and epithelial cells were isolated from BAL using attachment methods and the phenotype of the cells confirmed using immunostaining for vimentin (fibroblasts) and epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM, epithelial cells). Both fibroblasts and epithelial cells were isolated in every sample of BAL processed with the frequency of fibroblasts ranging from 0.03% to 0.48% and epithelial cells ranging from 0.05% to 1.5% of the total sample. Additional studies were performed using cytospins of cells after macrophages were depleted; cells exhibiting characteristics of both fibroblasts and epithelial cells were observed. The frequency of the cells of interest suggests that conventional methods of immunomagnetic isolation will not be effective in isolating these subpopulations. Finally, some of the low-frequency cells isolated via cytospin exhibit characteristics of epithelial to mesenchymal transition (which was not observed in plating incubations), indicating that the epithelial to mesenchymal cell transition fibroblasts may be nonadherent. In future studies, this technique and dataset may be of use to statistically correlate low-frequency cell type abundance to the onset and development of BOS.
Antioxidants and Natural Compounds

Oxidative stress happens in body when the production of oxidants exceeds the anti‐ oxidant capacity of body system and plays a role in pathogenesis of several chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, stock, and renal failure. Tea, ses‐ ame seed, and burdock root ( Arctium lappa L.) may improve oxidative stress and suppress the side effects of diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. Total extract of black tea and its fractions can increase antioxidants such as Super oxide Dismotase (SOD), Glutathione Peroxides (GPX) and total antioxidants and can de‐ crease oxidants like malondialdehyde (MDA). So, these herbal compounds can im‐ prove oxidative stress in diabetes rats. The injection of total extract and 20% fraction of black tea had positive effect on blood lipid profile in diabetic rats. Sesame seeds improved the antioxidants capacity in arthritis; therefore, decreased pain. Burdock root, in arthritis patients improved the antioxidants capacity and decreased the in‐ tensity of the pain. It can be concluded that the positive effects of these herbal com‐ ponents are due to the presence of antioxidants. The aim of this chapter is to review the antioxidant capacity of tea, sesame seed, and burdock root as well as to discuss their biological effects in human being.
Single-Length Method Used to Determine the Dielectric Constant of Polydimethylsiloxane

A new transmission-line method has been developed which is used to determine the propagation constant of a novel microwave material. Rather than requiring two or more transmission-line lengths to determine the propagation constant of a material, our method relies on a single fixture of known length and the use of a dielectric material of known properties to set a baseline measurement. By using a single fixture to make the measurements, we avoid introducing additional parasitic elements that would produce errors. We applied this approach to find the dielectric constant of the polymer polydimethylsiloxane over a frequency range of 0.1-40.0 GHz.
Care needs of home‐based cancer patients and their caregivers Quantitative findings

The purpose of this study was to identify care needs of home-based patients receiving treatment for cancer and their caregivers. The sample consisted of 30 patients receiving radiation therapy and/or immunologically based treatments for a variety of cancers and 29 caregivers. Patient and caregiver needs scales were used to elicit the needs of patients and caregivers. Patients and caregivers were able to cite their unique needs. Patients had more needs for themselves in the areas of personal care, activity management, and interpersonal interaction than did the caregivers. The necessity for individualization of care was noted by both patients and caregivers, an area that nursing is in a unique position to address.
New methods to realize the cluster consensus for multi‐agent networks

This paper investigates the cluster consensus problem for multi‐agent networks via a new method. Firstly, a distributed cluster consensus protocol is proposed by constructing a new Laplacian matrix, which is not required to be row‐zero‐sum. It is shown that the cluster consensus of directed multi‐agent networks can be achieved under the presented protocol, and the final cluster consensus values of the considered system are also given in this paper, which only depend on the initial states of all agents. Next, a pinning cluster consensus law is provided to force the dynamics of the agents to the desired trajectory. Furthermore, it is found that the cluster consensus of directed networks can be reached even in presence of arbitrary finite communication delays. Finally, effectiveness of the obtained results is demonstrated by numerical examples.
Distribution of the avian hematozoa of North America.

The literature pertaining to the prevalence of avian hematozoa in North America, north of Mexico, together with unpublished records from the files of the International Reference Centre for Avian Malaria Parasites, have been collated and analyzed with respect to the distribution of parasite genera by region, host family, and vertical stratification of nesting sites. The blood parasites of 57 026 birds of 388 species (representing 55 families) breeding in North America are the basis of this analysis. A total of 21 048 (36.9%) birds harbored one or more species of Haemoproteus (19.5%), Leucocytozoon (17.7%), Trypanosoma (3.9%), Plasmodium (3.8%), microfilariae (3.1%), and Haemogregarina/Lankesterella (0.6%). The continent was arbitrarily divided into seven regions along a topographic basis. Overall hematozoan prevalence varied markedly from region to region, as did the relative frequencies of the different genera. Overall hematozoan prevalence also varied markedly from avian family to family, as did the rela.
Alcohol consumption and alcohol counselling behaviour among US medical students: cohort study

Objective To determine which factors affect alcohol counselling practices among medical students. Design Cohort study. Setting Nationally representative medical schools (n=16) in the United States. Participants Medical students who graduated in 2003. Interventions Questionnaires were completed (response rate 83%) at the start of students’ first year (n=1846/2080), entrance to wards (typically during the third year of training) (n=1630/1982), and their final (fourth) year (n=1469/1901). Main outcome measures Previously validated questions on alcohol consumption and counselling. Results 78% (3777/4847) of medical students reported drinking in the past month, and a third (1668/ 4847) drank excessively; these proportions changed little over time. The proportion of those who believed alcohol counselling was highly relevant to care of patients was higher at entrance to wards (61%; 919/1516) than in final year students (46%; 606/1329). Although students intending to enter primary care were more likely to believe alcohol counselling was highly relevant, only 28% of final year students (391/1393) reported usually or always talking to their general medical patients about their alcohol consumption. Excessive drinkers were somewhat less likely than others to counsel patients or to think it relevant to do so. In multivariate models, extensive training in alcohol counselling doubled the frequency of reporting that alcohol counselling would be clinically relevant (odds ratio 2.3, 95% confidence interval 1.6 to 3.3) and of reporting doing counselling (2.2, 1.5 to 3.3). Conclusions Excessive drinking and binge drinking among US medical students is common, though somewhat less prevalent than among comparably aged adults in the US general population. Few students usually discussed alcohol use with patients, but greater training and confidence about alcohol counselling predicted both practising and believing in the relevance of alcohol counselling. Medical schools should consider routinely training students to screen and counsel patients for alcohol misuse and consider discouraging excessive drinking.
Semantic Tagging with Deep Residual Networks

We propose a novel semantic tagging task, semtagging, tailored for the purpose of multilingual semantic parsing, and present the first tagger using deep residual networks (ResNets). Our tagger uses both word and character representations, and includes a novel residual bypass architecture. We evaluate the tagset both intrinsically on the new task of semantic tagging, as well as on Part-of-Speech (POS) tagging. Our system, consisting of a ResNet and an auxiliary loss function predicting our semantic tags, significantly outperforms prior results on English Universal Dependencies POS tagging (95.71% accuracy on UD v1.2 and 95.67% accuracy on UD v1.3).
A Novel Hematopoietic Granulin Induces Proliferation of Goldfish (Carassius auratus L.) Macrophages*

Granulins are a group of highly conserved growth factors that have been described from a variety of organisms spanning the metazoa. In this study, goldfish granulin was one of the most commonly identified transcripts in the differential cross-screening of macrophage cDNA libraries and was preferentially expressed in proliferating macrophages. Unlike mammalian granulins, which possess 7.5 repeats of a characteristic signature of 12 cysteine residues, the goldfish granulin encoded a putative peptide possessing only 1.5 cysteine repeats. Northern blot and real-time PCR analyses indicated that goldfish granulin was expressed only in the hematopoietic tissues of the goldfish, specifically the kidney and spleen, and in activated peripheral blood mononuclear cells. We expressed granulin using a prokaryotic expression system and produced an affinity-purified rabbit anti-goldfish granulin IgG. Recombinant goldfish granulin induced a dose-dependent proliferative response of goldfish macrophages that was inversely related to the myeloid differentiation stage of the cells studied. The highest proliferative response was observed in macrophage progenitor cells and monocytes. This proliferative response of macrophages was abrogated by the addition of anti-granulin IgG. These results indicate that goldfish granulin is a growth factor that positively modulates cell proliferation at distinct junctures of macrophage differentiation.
Large polarons in lead halide perovskites

Charge carriers in both hybrid and all-inorganic lead halide perovskites form large polarons. Lead halide perovskites show marked defect tolerance responsible for their excellent optoelectronic properties. These properties might be explained by the formation of large polarons, but how they are formed and whether organic cations are essential remain open questions. We provide a direct time domain view of large polaron formation in single-crystal lead bromide perovskites CH3NH3PbBr3 and CsPbBr3. We found that large polaron forms predominantly from the deformation of the PbBr3− frameworks, irrespective of the cation type. The difference lies in the polaron formation time, which, in CH3NH3PbBr3 (0.3 ps), is less than half of that in CsPbBr3 (0.7 ps). First-principles calculations confirm large polaron formation, identify the Pb-Br-Pb deformation modes as responsible, and explain quantitatively the rate difference between CH3NH3PbBr3 and CsPbBr3. The findings reveal the general advantage of the soft [PbX3]− sublattice in charge carrier protection and suggest that there is likely no mechanistic limitations in using all-inorganic or mixed-cation lead halide perovskites to overcome instability problems and to tune the balance between charge carrier protection and mobility.
DLID: Deep Learning for Domain Adaptation by Interpolating between Domains

In many real world applications of machine learning, the distribution of the training data (on which the machine learning model is trained) is dierent from the distribution of the test data (where the learnt model is actually deployed). This is known as the problem of Domain Adaptation. We propose a novel deep learning model for domain adaptation which attempts to learn a predictively useful representation of the data by taking into account information from the distribution shift between the training and test data. Our key proposal is to successively learn multiple intermediate representations along an \interpolating path" between the train and test domains. Our experiments on a standard object recognition dataset show a signicant performance improvement over the state-of-the-art.
Current and Emerging Roles of Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Inhibitors in Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Recent advances in basic and translational research have elucidated important molecular alterations that underlie neoplastic transformation and progression in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Specifically, the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) signal transduction pathway presents therapeutic opportunities at various levels from the extracellular ligands to the transmembrane receptor and associated intracellular tyrosine kinase and the downstream signaling molecules. Two main categories of molecular agents targeting the EGFR-associated network have been incorporated into clinical practice: monoclonal antibodies that interfere with the binding of the natural ligand to the receptor (e.g. cetuximab) or tyrosine kinase inhibitors (e.g. erlotinib, gefitinib) that inhibit the activation of receptor tyrosine kinase leading to abrogation of signal propagation. Several other EGFR-targeting agents are currently under intensive preclinical and clinical investigation. In the current review we summarize data concerning the current and emerging role of EGFR-targeting molecules in the treatment of NSCLC.
The Insertion Timing of PEGylated Lipids to Galactosylated Lipoplexes Is Important for Liver-Selective Transfection in Mice

In the present study, we demonstrated the importance of PEGylation timing of galactosylated liposome/plasmid DNA (pDNA) complexes (lipoplexes) for liver-selective transfection in mice. Because a fenestrated endothelium can be a barrier for penetration of lipoplexes though sinusoids, the particle size of lipoplexes is one of the determining factors for in vivo liver parenchymal cell (hepatocyte, PC)-selective transfection. Here, we found that syn-insertion, as a novel PEGylation timing, was useful to control the particle size of galactosylated lipoplexes. Syn-insertion of PEGylated lipids was performed by simple mixing of pDNA solution containing PEGylated lipids and dispersion of the cationic liposomes. Both syn- and pre-insertion of PEGylated lipids decreased the particle size of lipoplexes, whereas post-insertion did not. Moreover, syn-insertion of PEGylated lipids to galactosylated lipoplexes improved liver selectivity and the PC/non-parenchymal cell ratio of transgene expression after intravenous injection in mice. Hence, these data will be valuable for the design and preparation of PEGylated lipoplexes for gene targeting.
Feature identification algorithms for sharp-interface flows

The implicit representation of interfaces, e.g., by means of a volume fraction field or a Level Set function, renders the identification of non-local topological features such as droplets, ligaments, or sheets, tedious. This report introduces simple concepts and algorithms in the context of the Volume-of-Fluid method that address the underlying challenges in a systematic way. The algorithms and their computational costs are discussed, and applied to the computation of two-point interface statistics in the large-scale computation of a turbulent hydraulic jump.
The complete mitochondrial genome of Opisthotropis latouchii (Squamata: Colubridae)

Abstract Opisthotropis latouchii is an endemic species which inhabits flowing streams in China. In this study, the complete mitochondrial genome of O. latouchii was determined using high-throughput sequencing data. The mitogenome was 17,051 bp in length and contained 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA, 2 ribosomal RNA and 2 control regions. The total nucleotide composition was 34.09% A, 25.35% T, 27.39% C, and 13.16% T, respectively. The phylogenetic analysis showed that O. latouchii was closely related with Nerodia sipedon in Colubridae.
Focus Group IPM for brassica 16 Mini paper 4 Plant Protection in organic production of Brassica vegetables and oilseed rape Focus Group

Introduction Growers of organic Brassica vegetables and oilseed rape face the same potentially severe plant protection problems as their colleagues in conventional or integrated pest management systems. Management strategies in organic systems rely on preventive measures (crop rotation, crop isolation, soil management, host plant resistance, farm/field location; manipulate timing of planting or harvest; intercropping, mulching), use of functional agro-biodiversity (reduction of pest by enhancing natural enemies), release of biocontrol agents and a few approved pesticides of biological and mineral origin, as well as mating disruption or the use of anti-insect nets (Zehnder et al., 2007). The methods used in organic might also be applicable in IPM systems. However, several factors hamper wide implementation of these methods in IPM. Among the main reasons are (1) a lower efficacy compared to standard pesticide treatments, (2) higher costs, (3) lack of knowledge / information / advice on alternative methods, (4) inconvenience, and (5) the need for close collaboration between neighbouring famers to achieve good control. In the following paper, we describe the methods used in organic Brassica vegetable and oilseed rape production, and discuss their limitations.
Estimation of the most Appropriate Threshold for Lesion Delineation and Volumetric Quantification in 18F-FDG PET

Abstract Purpose Function formulation to estimate the most appropriate threshold for automatic lesion delineation in PET scan. Materials and Methods The phantom consists of two parts: A hollow cylinder with set of spheres. The sphere assembly contains 4 spheres of different volumes. The phantom was filled with water containing 18F-Fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) forming the sphere versus background activity concentration (μCi/ml) ratios 3:1, 5:1, 8:1, 10:1, 12:1, 14:1 and15:1. Graphs were plotted, of standardized uptake value threshold versus lesion-size at different sphere/background ratio. There was a logarithmic decrease in threshold with an increase in lesion size. The most appropriate SUV threshold for each lesion at different contrast ratio was estimated from the plotted graphs. Four tests were used to generate a 3D general function to estimate threshold using the contrast ratio and lesion volume as inputs and the other three tests were used for the function validation. The Normalized mean square error (NMSE) is used to measure the convergence between estimated and measured data set. Results The created logarithmic functions offer an easy and simple way to estimate the percentage value of SUVmax as a threshold using the lesion/background ratio and sphere volume(or Diameter) from CT images as inputs to be used for lesion delineation and volume determination in PET images that was verified and the NMSE=6.2 Conclusion: The created formula is a useful and easy to estimate the most appropriate SUV threshold for automatically definite lesion volume.
Killing Barred Owls to Help Spotted Owls I: A Global Perspective

Abstract Barred Owls (Strix varia) expanded their range to include western North America and have been competing with federally threatened Northern Spotted Owls (S. occidentalis caurina) for the past few decades. To help protect Spotted Owls, the US Fish and Wildlife Service is considering conducting a 3- to 10-y study in which as many as 2150 to 4650 Barred Owls would be killed and, possibly, conducting long-term management of Barred Owls. To help give these considerations a global perspective, I gathered information concerning instances of negative effects between native (non-introduced) birds worldwide (n = 194) and how managers address these effects. I found reports for 15 species of native birds of concern negatively affected by hybridization, 22 by brood parasitism, 58 by competition, and 99 by predation. Control commonly is used to address brood parasitism by cowbirds (Molothrus spp.), and predation by gulls (Larinae) and corvids (Corvidae), whereas control rarely is used to address competition and is never used to address hybridization. Globally, very few raptors are killed for any of these threats. If the precedent-setting removal study as described here is implemented, it would, during its 1st year, result in the death of 36 times more raptors than in all other conservation-based projects combined in the United States and its territories, and 84 times more raptors than in the largest ongoing effort worldwide. This study could cost $1 million annually; simplifying the cost to dollars per Barred Owl killed approximates $700 per Barred Owl for the 1st year and $2800 per Barred Owl for each subsequent year.
Classification of ground moving radar targets by using joint time-frequency analysis

In this report, two novel algorithms for ground moving target classification using additional information features related to the radial velocity variability are proposed and studied. These approaches are compared with feature extraction method based on linear prediction model and cepstrum coefficients. Results of computer simulations performed by exploiting real-life radar backscattering signal records with different decision making concepts demonstrate the benefits of suggested approach.
Fasting Plasma Glucose and Hemoglobin A1c in Identifying and Predicting Diabetes

OBJECTIVE To compare fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and HbA1c in identifying and predicting type 2 diabetes in a population with high rates of diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Diabetes was defined as an FPG level ≥126 mg/dL or an HbA1c level ≥6.5%. Data collected from the baseline and second exams (1989–1995) of the Strong Heart Study were used. RESULTS For cases of diabetes identified by FPG ≥126 mg/dL, using HbA1c ≥6.5% at the initial and 4-year follow-up diabetes screenings (or in identifying incident cases in 4 years) among undiagnosed participants left 46% and 59% of cases of diabetes undetected, respectively, whereas for cases identified by HbA1c ≥6.5%, using FPG ≥126 mg/dL left 11% and 59% unidentified, respectively. Age, waist circumference, urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio, and baseline FPG and HbA1c levels were common significant risk factors for incident diabetes defined by either FPG or HbA1c; triglyceride levels were significant for diabetes defined by HbA1c alone, and blood pressure and sibling history of diabetes were significant for diabetes defined by FPG alone. Using both the baseline FPG and HbA1c in diabetes prediction identified more people at risk than using either measure alone. CONCLUSIONS Among undiagnosed participants, using HbA1c alone in initial diabetes screening identifies fewer cases of diabetes than FPG, and using either FPG or HbA1c alone cannot effectively identify diabetes in a 4-year periodic successive diabetes screening or incident cases of diabetes in 4 years. Using both criteria may identify more people at risk. The proposed models using the commonly available clinical measures can be applied to assessing the risk of incident diabetes using either criterion.