Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Use of the somatostatin analogue octreotide to localise and manage somatostatin-producing tumours

Background—Somatostatin receptor scintigraphy (SRS) and octreotide therapy have both changed the management of gastroenteropancreatic endocrine tumours, but very few data are available on the use of SRS and octreotide to visualise and treat somatostatinomas. Method—The results of SRS and octreotide treatment in three somatostatinoma patients were examined. Results—SRS was able to detect extensive hepatic involvement in patient 1, one hepatic and one pancreatic lesion in patient 2, and one hepatic lesion in patient 3. Octreotide therapy (0.5 mg/day subcutaneously) was effective in decreasing plasma levels of somatostatin in all three patients. Symptoms (diabetes and diarrhoea) were greatly improved in the two patients with “somatostatinoma syndrome”. Conclusion—The study shows that somatostatinoma, like most other gastroenteropancreatic endocrine tumours, possesses functioning somatostatin receptors.
Warfarin Use in Hemodialysis Patients With Atrial Fibrillation: A Systematic Review of Stroke and Bleeding Outcomes

Background: Given the lack of clear indications for the use of warfarin in the treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF) in patients on hemodialysis and the potential risks that accompany warfarin use in these patients, we systematically reviewed stroke and bleeding outcomes in hemodialysis patients treated with warfarin for AF. Objective: To systematically review the stroke and bleeding outcomes associated with warfarin use in the hemodialysis population to treat AF. Design: Systematic review. Setting: All adult hemodialysis patients. Patients: Patients on hemodialysis receiving warfarin for the management of AF. Measurements: Any type of stroke and/or bleeding outcomes. Methods: MEDLINE(R) In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations and MEDLINE(R) via OVID (1946 to January 11, 2017), and EMBASE via OVID (1974 to January 11, 2017) were searched for relevant literature. Inclusion criteria were randomized controlled trials, observational studies, and case series in English that examined stroke and bleeding outcomes in adult population of patients (over 18 years old) who are on hemodialysis and taking warfarin for AF. Studies with less than 10 subjects, case reports, review articles, and editorials were excluded. Quality of selected articles was assessed using Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS). Results: Of the 2340 titles and abstracts screened, 7 met the inclusion criteria. Two studies showed an association between warfarin use and an increased risk of stroke (Hazard Ratio: 1.93-3.36) but no association with an increased risk of bleed (HR: 0.85-1.04), while 4 studies showed no association between warfarin and stroke outcomes (HR: 0.12-1.17) but identified an association between warfarin and increased bleeding outcome (HR: 1.41-3.96). And 1 study reported neither beneficial nor harmful effects associated with warfarin use. Limitations: The major limitation to this review is that the 7 included studies were observational cohort studies, and thus the outcome measures were not specified and predetermined in a research protocol. Conclusion: Our systematic review demonstrated that for patients with AF who are on hemodialysis, warfarin was not associated with reduced outcomes of stroke but was rather associated with increased bleeding events.
Mutations in the α1 subunit of an L‐type voltage‐activated Ca2+ channel cause myotonia in Caenorhabditis elegans

The control of excitable cell action potentials is central to animal behavior. We show that the egl‐19 gene plays a pivotal role in regulating muscle excitation and contraction in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and encodes the αl subunit of a homologue of vertebrate L‐type voltage‐activated Ca2+ channels. Semi‐dominant, gain‐of‐function mutations in egl‐19 cause myotonia: mutant muscle action potentials are prolonged and the relaxation delayed. Partial loss‐of‐function mutations cause slow muscle depolarization and feeble contraction. The most severe loss‐of‐function mutants lack muscle contraction and die as embryos. We localized two myotonic mutations in the sixth membrane‐spanning domain of the first repeat (IS6) region, which has been shown to be responsible for voltage‐dependent inactivation. A third myotonic mutation implicates IIIS4, a region involved in sensing plasma‐membrane voltage change, in the inactivation process.
Physical workload, work intensification, and prevalence of pain in low wage workers: results from a participatory research project with hotel room cleaners in Las Vegas.

BACKGROUND Occupational injury rates among hotel workers exceed the national service sector average. This study assesses the prevalence of back and neck pain, and its associations with physical workload, ergonomic problems, and increasing work demands. METHODS Nine hundred forty-one unionized hotel room cleaners completed a survey about health and working conditions. Associations between job demands and pain were determined by logistic regression models adjusting for individual characteristics, cumulative work demands, care-taking responsibilities at home, and psychosocial job factors. RESULTS The 1-month prevalence of severe bodily pain was 47% in general, 43% for neck, 59% for upper back, and 63% for low back pain. Workers in the highest exposure quartiles for physical workload and ergonomic problems were between 3.24 and 5.42 times more likely to report severe pain than workers in the lowest quartile. Adjusted odds ratios for work intensification ranged from 1.74 (upper back) to 2.33 (neck). CONCLUSIONS Most room cleaners experience severe back or neck pain. Severe pain showed strong associations with physical workload, work intensification, and ergonomic problems.
Is Elevated Mean Platelet Volume Associated With a Worse Outcome in Patients With Acute Ischemic Cerebrovascular Events?

Background and Purpose— Increased mean platelet volume (MPV), indicating higher platelet reactivity, is associated with an increased risk of myocardial infarction. Higher levels of MPV have been found in patients with acute ischemic stroke than in control subjects. Data from smaller studies regarding an association between MPV and stroke severity and outcome have been controversial. If such an association exists, MPV might help to identify patients at increased risk of a severe course of acute cerebrovascular disease. Methods— Within a multicenter, cross-sectional study nested in a cohort, we analyzed the relation between MPV and stroke severity as determined by the modified Rankin Scale after 1 week in 776 patients with acute ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack. By multivariate logistic regression modeling, we determined the influence of MPV on stroke severity, adjusting for potential confounding factors. Results— Patients within the highest quintile of MPV had a significantly higher risk of suffering a severe stroke, defined as modified Rankin Scale score of 3 to 6, compared with patients within the lowest quintile (odds ratio = 2.6; 95% confidence interval, 1.6 to 4.1; P <0.001). This association remained significant after adjustment for possible confounding factors (odds ratio = 2.2; 95% confidence interval, 1.2 to 4.0; P = 0.013). Conclusions— Our results indicate that an elevated MPV is associated with a worse outcome for acute ischemic cerebrovascular events independent of other clinical parameters.
Data Leakage/Loss Prevention Systems (DLP)

Sensitive and confidential data are a requisite for most companies, so protection for this data takes great attention by company's top management, administrators and IT managers. Data leakage causes negative impact on companies. The traditional security approaches, such as firewalls, can't protect data from leakage. Data leakage/loss prevention (DLP) systems are solutions that protect sensitive data from being in non-trusted hands. This paper is an attempt to survey and study DLP systems that will be conducted as well as a comparison with other security and data protection approaches.
Estrogen Attenuates Ischemic Oxidative Damage via an Estrogen Receptor α-Mediated Inhibition of NADPH Oxidase Activation

The goal of this study was to elucidate the mechanisms of 17β-estradiol (E2) antioxidant and neuroprotective actions in stroke. The results reveal a novel extranuclear receptor-mediated antioxidant mechanism for E2 during stroke, as well as a hypersensitivity of the CA3/CA4 region to ischemic injury after prolonged hypoestrogenicity. E2 neuroprotection was shown to involve a profound attenuation of NADPH oxidase activation and superoxide production in hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons after stroke, an effect mediated by extranuclear estrogen receptor α (ERα)-mediated nongenomic signaling, involving Akt activation and subsequent phosphorylation/inactivation of Rac1, a factor critical for activation of NOX2 NADPH oxidase. Intriguingly, E2 nongenomic signaling, antioxidant action, and neuroprotection in the CA1 region were lost after long-term E2 deprivation, and this loss was tissue specific because the uterus remained responsive to E2. Correspondingly, a remarkable loss of ERα, but not ERβ, was observed in the CA1 after long-term E2 deprivation, with no change observed in the uterus. As a whole, the study reveals a novel, membrane-mediated antioxidant mechanism in neurons by E2 provides support and mechanistic insights for a “critical period” of E2 replacement in the hippocampus and demonstrates a heretofore unknown hypersensitivity of the CA3/CA4 to ischemic injury after prolonged hypoestrogenicity.
Autophagy Is Associated with Pathogenesis of Haemophilus parasuis

Haemophilus parasuis (H. parasuis) is a common commensal Gram-negative extracellular bacterium in the upper respiratory tract of swine, which can cause Glässer's disease in stress conditions. Research on the pathogenicity of H. parasuis has mainly focused on immune evasion and bacterial virulence factors, while few studies have examined the interactions of H. parasuis and its host. Autophagy is associated with the replication and proliferation of many pathogenic bacteria, but whether it plays a role during infection by H. parasuis is unknown. In this study, an adenovirus construct expressing GFP, RFP, and LC3 was used to infect H. parasuis. Western blotting, laser confocal microscopy, and electron microscopy showed that Hps5 infection induced obvious autophagy in PK-15 cells. In cells infected with strains of H. parasuis differing in invasiveness, the levels of autophagy were positively correlated with the presence of alive bacteria in PK-15 cells. In addition, autophagy inhibited the invasion of Hps5 in PK-15 cells. Autophagy related genes Beclin, Atg5 and Atg7 were silenced with RNA interference, the results showed that autophagy induced by H. parasuis infection is a classical pathway. Our observations demonstrate that H. parasuis can induce autophagy and that the levels of autophagy are associated with the presence of alive bacteria in cells, which opened novel avenues to further our understanding of H. parasuis-host interplay and pathogenesis.
Genomic and Transcriptomic Insights into Calcium Carbonate Biomineralization by Marine Actinobacterium Brevibacterium linens BS258

Calcium carbonate (CaCO3) biomineralization has been investigated due to its wide range of scientific and technological implications, however, the molecular mechanisms of this important geomicrobiological process are largely unknown. Here, a urease-positive marine actinobacterium Brevibacterium linens BS258 was demonstrated to effectively form CaCO3 precipitates. Surprisingly, this bacterium could also dissolve the formed CaCO3 with the increase of the Ca2+ concentration. To disclose the mechanisms of biomineralization, the genome of B. linens BS258 was further completely sequenced. Interestingly, the expression of three carbonic anhydrases was significantly up-regulated along with the increase of Ca2+ concentration and the extent of calcite dissolution. Moreover, transcriptome analyses revealed that increasing concentration of Ca2+ induced KEGG pathways including quorum sensing (QS) in B. linens BS258. Notably, most up-regulated genes related to QS were found to encode peptide/nickel ABC transporters, which suggested that nickel uptake and its associated urease stimulation were essential to boost CaCO3 biomineralization. Within the genome of B. linens BS258, there are both cadmium and lead resistance gene clusters. Therefore, the sequestration abilities of Cd2+ and Pb2+ by B. linens BS258 were checked. Consistently, Pb2+ and Cd2+ could be effectively sequestered with the precipitation of calcite by B. linens BS258. To our knowledge, this is the first study investigating the microbial CaCO3 biomineralization from both genomic and transcriptomic insights, which paves the way to disclose the relationships among bacterial metabolisms and the biomineralization.
Prototype to Practice: Developing and Testing a Clinical Decision Support System for Secondary Stroke Prevention in a Veterans Healthcare Facility

A clinical decision support system that guides nurse practitioners and other healthcare providers in secondary stroke prevention was developed by a multidisciplinary team with funding received from the Veterans Health Administration Office of Nursing Services. This article presents alpha-testing results obtained while using an integrated model for clinical decision support system development that emphasizes end-user perspectives throughout the development process. Before-after and descriptive methods were utilized to evaluate functionality and usability of the prototype among a sample of multidisciplinary clinicians. The predominant functionality feature of the tool is automated prompting and documentation of secondary stroke prevention guidelines in the electronic medical record. Documentation of guidelines was compared among multidisciplinary providers (N = 15) using test case scenarios and two documentation systems, standard versus the prototype. Usability was evaluated with an investigator-developed questionnaire and one open-ended question. The prototype prompted a significant increase (P < .05) in provider documentation for six of 11 guidelines as compared with baseline documentation while using the standard system. Of a possible 56 points, usability was scored high (mean, 48.9 [SD, 6.8]). These results support that guideline prompting has been successfully engineered to produce a usable and useful clinical decision support system for secondary stroke prevention.
Quantitative histology of Wallerian degeneration: I. Nuclear population in rabbit sciatic nerve.

The histology of Wallerian degeneration of peripheral nerves has been thoroughly studied in its qualitative aspects (see,for instance, Cajal, 1928; Nageotte, 1932; Weddell & Glees, 1941; Holmes & Young, 1942). In this and subsequent papers our purpose is to provide that more detailed and exact analysis of the process which can only come from quantitative study. We consider this worth attempting not only because Wallerian degeneration is intrinsically an important pathological process. It is also a proliferative phenomenon similar in many respects to the reaction of tissues to local injury. It provides particularly favourable material for experimental analysis of a proliferative process, since it takes place fairly evenly throughout a long stretch of well-demarcated tissue, the peripheral stump of a severed nerve; and the intensity of the reaction is independent of intensity of trauma. Our results may therefore be useful for a comparative survey of proliferation in a variety of tissues. In this paper we survey the changes in number of nuclei of nerves, excluding the perineurium and epineurium, during Wallerian degeneration, as seen in histological sections. The nuclei of different kinds of cells have, as far as practicable, been analysed separately. We have distinguished between nuclei within the Schwann tubes and nuclei in the endo-w neurium. The tubal nuclei have been separated into three groups according to size of tube, and the endoneurial nuclei into connective tissue 'nuclei (fibrocytes and macrophages) and blood vessel nuclei (endothelial and smooth muscle nuclei). The difficult and complicated history of the migratory macrophages cannot be adequately followed in our material. Evidence as to their multiplication and movement can, however, be got from vitally stained animals, and we shall consider this in a subsequent paper. For the present, macrophage and fibrocyte nuclei are not distinguished in the endoneurium, nor macrophage and Schwann nuclei in the Schwann tubes. MATERIAL AND METHlOD
Dynamic berth and quay crane allocation for multiple berth positions and quay cranes

We study in this paper a dynamic berth and quay cranes allocation strategy in general seaport container terminals. We develop a dynamical model that describes the operation of berthing process with multiple discrete berthing positions and multiple quay cranes. Based on the proposed model, we develop a dynamic allocation strategy using the model predictive control (MPC) paradigm. The proposed strategy is evaluated using real data from a container terminal in Indonesia. The simulation results show that the MPC-based allocation strategy can improve the efficiency of the process where the total handling and waiting cost is reduced by approximately 20% in comparison to the commonly adapted method of first-come first-served (FCFS) (for the berthing process) combined with the density-based quay cranes allocation strategy.
Comparison of ICD-10 Diagnostic Guidelines and Research Criteria for Enduring Personality Change after Catastrophic Experience

Enduring personality change after catastrophic experience (EPCACE) is a diagnostic category included in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th revision (ICD-10), as one of the adult personality disorders. Preliminary investigation suggests there is considerable endorsement in principle for this new category amongst experts in the field of intentional human trauma, yet many aspects of the diagnosis remain contentious. EPCACE is described in 2 sets of ICD-10 criteria: the Diagnostic Criteria for Research (DCR) and the Clinical Description and Diagnostic Guidelines (CDDG). Studies have found that the use of the DCR and CDDG for some disorders has created issues related to lack of compatibility and agreement between these 2 versions. This article examines the similarities and differences between the DCR and CDDG for EPCACE. Using background literature to inform our analysis, this article highlights issues related to the stressor criterion, symptom criteria, impairment criterion, criterion related to exclusion of personal vulnerability and early psychiatric history, symptom duration and relationship of post-traumatic-stress disorder with EPCACE. The similarities and differences between the research criteria and diagnostic guidelines of EPCACE are consistent with concerns already identified in the literature for other disorders. This presents a challenge to the way in which diagnostic criteria are conceptualized and stated.
Multiple instance fFeature for robust part-based object detection

Feature misalignment in object detection refers to the phenomenon that features which fire up in some positive detection windows do not fire up in other positive detection windows. Most often it is caused by pose variation and local part deformation. Previous work either totally ignores this issue, or naively performs a local exhaustive search to better position each feature. We propose a learning framework to mitigate this problem, where a boosting algorithm is performed to seed the position of the object part, and a multiple instance boosting algorithm further pursues an aggregated feature for this part, namely multiple instance feature. Unlike most previous boosting based object detectors, where each feature value produces a single classification result, the value of the proposed multiple instance feature is the Noisy-OR integration of a bag of classification results. Our approach is applied to the task of human detection and is tested on two popular benchmarks. The proposed approach brings significant improvement in performance, i.e., smaller number of features used in the cascade and better detection accuracy.
Impact of Participation in Home-Delivered Meals on Nutrient Intake, Dietary Patterns, and Food Insecurity of Older Persons in New York State

The aim of this study was to determine if (1) participation in Home-Delivered Meals (HDM) results in improved dietary patterns and nutrient intake, lower food insecurity, and reduced loss of weight; (2) subgroups of older persons are more likely to benefit; and (3) nutritional indicators of impact other than nutrient intake may be useful. The design used was quasi-experimental, with longitudinal assessment of individuals on HDM at baseline (before receipt of services), 6, and 12 months, and comparison to non-randomized group receiving other services. Outcomes included measured weight and height, 24-hour dietary recall, and food insecurity. Paired t test, multiple linear regression, and selection models using multiple logistic regression were performed. All older persons in three New York State counties referred for aging services over a 5-month period were asked to participate (n = 456), and 212 agreed (171 on HDM). At 6 months, the sample size was 101 (34 discharged, 42 hospital/died/moved, 26 chose not to continue), and at 12 months it was 68 (similar reasons). After receiving meals for 6 and 12 months, participants showed greater improvement in most dietary intake variables than either a non-HDM comparison group or HDM participants who ate no HDM meal on the day of assessment. Compared to initial values, participants improved significantly in some variables for dietary patterns, nutrient intake, and nutrient density, and were less likely to be food insecure. Furthermore, HDM was more likely to impact those living alone and those with poorer initial status. This study provides strong evidence that HDM has a positive impact on the nutritional well-being of older persons. Food insecurity and dietary patterns are useful nutritional indicators of impact.
A Study of the Human Decomposition Sequence in Central Texas *

Abstract: Decomposition studies utilizing nonhuman subjects as human analogues are well established, but fewer studies utilizing intact human remains exist. This study provides data from a controlled decomposition study involving human remains in Central Texas. A 63.5‐kg unmodified cadaver was placed in an open‐air site and observed over a 10‐week period from April 11 through June 19, 2008. A wire enclosure restricted scavenger access. State of decomposition and environmental conditions were recorded daily for the first 36 days and then every 2 weeks thereafter. Results indicated a high degree of correlation with other decomposition studies originating in the southwestern United States, although slight deviations for the average duration of early events were noted. The data were also utilized to test a quantitative method for estimating the postmortem interval. Results indicated preliminary support for a quantitative approach. Additional research is encouraged to further establish the human decomposition data set for Central Texas.