Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Proteomics of tear fluid in thyroid-associated orbitopathy.

BACKGROUND Proteomics and mass spectrometry are useful tools for peptide screening in body fluids. In thyroid-associated orbitopathy (TAO), evidence for lacrimal gland involvement with altered composition of tears has been reported. Our objective was to detect and evaluate potential changes in the proteomic patterns of tear fluid in TAO. METHODS Tear fluid was collected from 45 patients with TAO and 15 healthy controls. Tear proteins were analyzed using surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry, and peptides were identified using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight technology. RESULTS Peptides with molecular weights 3808 Dalton (Da, p=0.004), 3734 Da (p=0.034), and 3837 Da (p=0.042), respectively, were downregulated in patients with TAO versus controls. They were identified as proline-rich protein 4 (PRP4) or as its variant nasopharyngeal carcinoma-associated PRP4. The peptide 3837 Da correlated positively with the basal secretory test (r=0.506, p<0.001) and negatively with the clinical activity score (r = -0.334, p<0.05) and age (r=-0.431, p<0.001). Also, a 12,003-Da peptide was downregulated (p=0.019) in patients and identified as ß2-microglobulin. This peptide decreased in tear fluid with increased clinical severity of TAO (p=0.027). In comparison, a 5815-Da peptide was upregulated (p=0.045) and identified as lysozyme C. When differentiating between treated and untreated patients with TAO, an 11,770-Da peptide (p=0.0072) that was also upregulated was identified as cystatin S. CONCLUSIONS Altered regulation of proinflammatory and protective proteins in tears of patients with TAO was demonstrated, reflecting an autoimmune- and/or inflammatory-induced dysfunction of the lacrimal gland.
Mental Representation of Spatial Movement Parameters in Dance

Abstract Via training, dance experts develop special experience-based embodied representations of body and movement. Professional dancers, amateurs and novices sorted central functional nodes of two dance movements according to their spatial equivalence. Results of a hierarchical cluster analysis and classification probabilities revealed movement-specific differences in mental representations related to skill-level. Cluster solutions of experts reflected functional structures, with adequate spatial parameters associated to the main movement phases. Amateurs achieved similar results only for the less complex movement, whereas novices showed nonfunctional results. The findings suggest that only dance experts' distinct embodied representations of dance movements include information about body-centered spatial parameters.
Growth, carcass composition and plasma melatonin in postpubertal beef heifers fed melatonin.

Two experiments were conducted to determine if feeding melatonin alters plasma concentrations of melatonin, growth and carcass composition of postpubertal beef heifers exposed to 16 h light (L):8 h dark (D). In Exp. 1, 16 heifers were blocked by initial body weight (318 +/- 5.6 kg). Four heifers were killed before starting the melatonin treatment to obtain initial carcass composition. Six heifers received vehicle (95% ethanol) and six were fed melatonin (4 mg/100 kg body weight) daily for 58 d at 1330 to coincide with the middle of the 16-h light period. On d 59 heifers were slaughtered. Melatonin feeding increased the percentage of fat in rib (P less than .05) and longissimus muscle (LD; P less than .10) and carcass fat accretion 28% (P less than .09) but reduced the percentage of protein 8% in rib (P less than .05) and carcass protein accretion 30% (P less than .09). Other measures in the carcass and body weight gain were not affected (P greater than .10) by feeding melatonin. Plasma concentrations of melatonin increased (P less than .01) from 10 to 140 pg/ml within 30 min of feeding melatonin. In Exp. 2, 24 heifers were blocked by initial body weight (348 +/- 13.7 kg). Eight heifers were killed initially, eight received vehicle and eight were fed melatonin for 63 d as described in Exp. 1. Melatonin did not influence (P greater than .10) body weight gain or any measure in the carcass; however, these heifers were fatter (40.1%) than those in Exp. 1 (30.9%) at the beginning of the experiment. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
FairRide: Near-Optimal, Fair Cache Sharing

Memory caches continue to be a critical component to many systems. In recent years, there has been larger amounts of data into main memory, especially in shared environments such as the cloud. The nature of such environments requires resource allocations to provide both performance isolation for multiple users/applications and high utilization for the systems. We study the problem of fair allocation of memory cache for multiple users with shared files. We find that, surprisingly, no memory allocation policy can provide all three desirable properties (isolation-guarantee, strategy-proofness and Pareto-efficiency) that are typically achievable by other types of resources, e.g., CPU or network. We also show that there exist policies that achieve any two of the three properties. We find that the only way to achieve both isolation-guarantee and strategy-proofness is through blocking, which we efficiently adapt in a new policy called FairRide. We implement FairRide in a popular memory-centric storage system using an efficient form of blocking, named as expected delaying, and demonstrate that FairRide can lead to better cache efficiency (2.6× over isolated caches) and fairness in many scenarios.
Acute kidney injury in the tropics

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is one of the most challenging problems faced by clinicians in the tropics owing to its fast-changing burden. AKI in the tropics is strikingly different from that in the developed world in terms of etiology and presentation. In addition, there is a stark contrast between well-developed and poor areas in the tropics. The true epidemiological picture of AKI in the tropics is not well understood due to the late presentation of patients to tertiary centers. Infections remain the major culprit in most cases of AKI, with high mortality rates in the tropics. Human immunodeficiency virus-related AKI, related to nephrotoxicity due to antiretroviral therapy, is on the rise. Acute tubular necrosis and thrombotic microangiopathy are the most common mechanisms of AKI. A notable problem in the tropics is the scarcity of resources in health centers to support patients who require critical care due to AKI. This article reviews the unique and contrasting nature of AKI in the tropics and describes its management in each situation.
Towards K-means-friendly Spaces: Simultaneous Deep Learning and Clustering

Most learning approaches treat dimensionality reduction (DR) and clustering separately (i.e., sequentially), but recent research has shown that optimizing the two tasks jointly can substantially improve the performance of both. The premise behind the latter genre is that the data samples are obtained via linear transformation of latent representations that are easy to cluster; but in practice, the transformation from the latent space to the data can be more complicated. In this work, we assume that this transformation is an unknown and possibly nonlinear function. To recover the 'clustering-friendly' latent representations and to better cluster the data, we propose a joint DR and K-means clustering approach in which DR is accomplished via learning a deep neural network (DNN). The motivation is to keep the advantages of jointly optimizing the two tasks, while exploiting the deep neural network's ability to approximate any nonlinear function. This way, the proposed approach can work well for a broad class of generative models. Towards this end, we carefully design the DNN structure and the associated joint optimization criterion, and propose an effective and scalable algorithm to handle the formulated optimization problem. Experiments using different real datasets are employed to showcase the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Plasma fibrinogen level and the risk of major cardiovascular diseases and nonvascular mortality: an individual participant meta-analysis.

CONTEXT Plasma fibrinogen levels may be associated with the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke. OBJECTIVE To assess the relationships of fibrinogen levels with risk of major vascular and with risk of nonvascular outcomes based on individual participant data. DATA SOURCES Relevant studies were identified by computer-assisted searches, hand searches of reference lists, and personal communication with relevant investigators. STUDY SELECTION All identified prospective studies were included with information available on baseline fibrinogen levels and details of subsequent major vascular morbidity and/or cause-specific mortality during at least 1 year of follow-up. Studies were excluded if they recruited participants on the basis of having had a previous history of cardiovascular disease; participants with known preexisting CHD or stroke were excluded. DATA EXTRACTION Individual records were provided on each of 154,211 participants in 31 prospective studies. During 1.38 million person-years of follow-up, there were 6944 first nonfatal myocardial infarctions or stroke events and 13,210 deaths. Cause-specific mortality was generally available. Analyses involved proportional hazards modeling with adjustment for confounding by known cardiovascular risk factors and for regression dilution bias. DATA SYNTHESIS Within each age group considered (40-59, 60-69, and > or =70 years), there was an approximately log-linear association with usual fibrinogen level for the risk of any CHD, any stroke, other vascular (eg, non-CHD, nonstroke) mortality, and nonvascular mortality. There was no evidence of a threshold within the range of usual fibrinogen level studied at any age. The age- and sex- adjusted hazard ratio per 1-g/L increase in usual fibrinogen level for CHD was 2.42 (95% confidence interval [CI], 2.24-2.60); stroke, 2.06 (95% CI, 1.83-2.33); other vascular mortality, 2.76 (95% CI, 2.28-3.35); and nonvascular mortality, 2.03 (95% CI, 1.90-2.18). The hazard ratios for CHD and stroke were reduced to about 1.8 after further adjustment for measured values of several established vascular risk factors. In a subset of 7011 participants with available C-reactive protein values, the findings for CHD were essentially unchanged following additional adjustment for C-reactive protein. The associations of fibrinogen level with CHD or stroke did not differ substantially according to sex, smoking, blood pressure, blood lipid levels, or several features of study design. CONCLUSIONS In this large individual participant meta-analysis, moderately strong associations were found between usual plasma fibrinogen level and the risks of CHD, stroke, other vascular mortality, and nonvascular mortality in a wide range of circumstances in healthy middle-aged adults. Assessment of any causal relevance of elevated fibrinogen levels to disease requires additional research.
Alterations in Gene Expression of Components of the Renin-Angiotensin System and Its Related Enzymes in Lung Cancer

Objectives The study assessed the existence and significance of associations between the expression of fifteen renin-angiotensin system component genes and lung adenocarcinoma. Materials and Methods NCBI's built-in statistical tool, GEO2R, was used to calculate Student's t-tests for the associations found in a DNA expression study of adenocarcinoma and matched healthy lung tissue samples. The raw data was processed with GeneSpring™ and then used to generate figures with and without Sidak's multiple comparison correction. Results Ten genes were found to be significantly associated with adenocarcinoma. Seven of these associations remained statistically significant after correction for multiple comparisons. Notably, AGTR2, which encodes the AT2 angiotensin II receptor subtype, was significantly underexpressed in adenocarcinoma tissue (p < 0.01). AGTR1, ACE, ENPEP, MME, and PRCP, which encode the AT1 angiotensin II receptor, angiotensin-converting enzyme, aminopeptidase N, neprilysin, and prolylcarboxypeptidase, respectively, were also underexpressed. AGT, which encodes angiotensinogen, the angiotensin peptide precursor, was overexpressed in adenocarcinoma tissue. Conclusion The results suggest an association between the expression of the genes for renin-angiotensin system-related proteins and adenocarcinoma. While further research is necessary to conclusively demonstrate a link between the renin-angiotensin system and lung cancers, the results suggest that the renin-angiotensin system plays a role in the pathology of adenocarcinoma.
More power via graph-structured tests for differential expression of gene networks

We consider multivariate two-sample tests of means, where the location shift between the two populations is expected to be related to a known graph structure. An important application of such tests is the detection of differentially expressed genes between two patient populations, as shifts in expression levels are expected to be coherent with the structure of graphs reflecting gene properties such as biological process, molecular function, regulation or metabolism. For a fixed graph of interest, we demonstrate that accounting for graph structure can yield more powerful tests under the assumption of smooth distribution shift on the graph. We also investigate the identification of nonhomogeneous subgraphs of a given large graph, which poses both computational and multiple hypothesis testing problems. The relevance and benefits of the proposed approach are illustrated on synthetic data and on breast and bladder cancer gene expression data analyzed in the context of KEGG and NCI pathways.
Photoabsorption Spectroscopy in the Vacuum Ultraviolet: Measurements and Modeling of CO and CO2

High-resolution vacuum ultraviolet photoabsorption cross sections of CO2are required for modeling airglow emissions from the Martian and Venusian atmospheres and for photochemical models of those and Earth’s atmospheres. We report cross section measurements between 91000 and 115000 cm−1 (87–108 nm) at spectral resolutions of 1.15 cm−1 (91000 to 102000 cm−1) and 0.58 cm−1 (102000 to 115000 cm−1). These are the first high-resolution cross sections reported in this region, and show significant deviations from the results of previous lower-resolution measurements, particularly in regions with sharp spectral structure.
Region‐specific constitutive gene expression in the adult porcine meniscus

The knee meniscus exhibits extensive spatial variations in native healing capacity, biochemical composition, and cell morphology that suggest the existence of distinct phenotypes for meniscus cells. Constitutive gene expression levels of appropriate extracellular matrix proteins may serve as useful molecular markers of cellular phenotypes; however, relatively little is known of variations in the gene expression for meniscus cells of different regions of the tissue. The objective of the present study was to evaluate constitutive differences between radial inner and outer regions in gene expression for extracellular matrix proteins relevant to the meniscus. A secondary objective was to determine if these region‐specific differences in gene expression are maintained after periods of monolayer culture. The innermost regions of the meniscus were found to constitutively express higher mRNA levels for proteins highly expressed in articular cartilage, including aggrecan, type II collagen, and NOS2. In contrast, the outer meniscus was found to contain higher gene expression for proteins associated with fibrous tissues including type I collagen, and the proteases MMP2 and MMP3. Isolated inner and outer meniscus cells maintained these region‐specific gene expression patterns for collagens and proteoglycans during short‐term monolayer culture. The results provide new information that suggests the utility of constitutive gene expression levels as molecular markers to distinguish tissue and cells of the inner and outer meniscus. © 2006 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 24:1562–1570, 2006
IgA and Neutralizing Antibodies to Influenza A Virus in Human Milk: A Randomized Trial of Antenatal Influenza Immunization

Background Antenatal immunization of mothers with influenza vaccine increases serum antibodies and reduces the rates of influenza illness in mothers and their infants. We report the effect of antenatal immunization on the levels of specific anti-influenza IgA levels in human breast milk. (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT00142389; http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00142389). Methods and Findings The Mother's Gift study was a prospective, blinded, randomized controlled trial that assigned 340 pregnant Bangladeshi mothers to receive either trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine, or 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine during the third trimester. We evaluated breast milk at birth, 6 weeks, 6 months, and 12 months, and serum at 10 weeks and 12 months. Milk and serum specimens from 57 subjects were assayed for specific IgA antibody to influenza A/New Caledonia (H1N1) using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and a virus neutralization assay, and for total IgA using ELISA. Influenza-specific IgA levels in breast milk were significantly higher in influenza vaccinees than in pneumococcal controls for at least 6 months postpartum (p = 0.04). Geometric mean concentrations ranged from 8.0 to 91.1 ELISA units/ml in vaccinees, versus 2.3 to 13.7 ELISA units/mL in controls. Virus neutralization titers in milk were 1.2 to 3 fold greater in vaccinees, and correlated with influenza-specific IgA levels (r = 0.86). Greater exclusivity of breastfeeding in the first 6 months of life significantly decreased the expected number of respiratory illness with fever episodes in infants of influenza-vaccinated mothers (p = 0.0042) but not in infants of pneumococcal-vaccinated mothers (p = 0.4154). Conclusions The sustained high levels of actively produced anti-influenza IgA in breast milk and the decreased infant episodes of respiratory illness with fever suggest that breastfeeding may provide local mucosal protection for the infant for at least 6 months. Studies are needed to determine the cellular and immunologic mechanisms of breast milk-mediated protection after antepartum immunization. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00142389
Supervision of Basic and Advanced Skills in Play Therapy

Abstract Effective play therapy supervision requires teaching, modeling, and encouragement of basic and advanced responsive skills. This article presents a detailed description of non-verbal and verbal basic skills, as well as advanced skills, in play therapy. In addition, the author provides information to supervisors on how to help supervisees implement these skills in play therapy. The article offers the Play Therapy Skills Checklist (PTSC) as a tool for supervisors to use when working with play therapists in training.
Treatment of Regional Metastatic Melanoma of Unknown Primary Origin

(1) Background: The purpose of this retrospective study was to evaluate the recurrence and survival rates of metastatic melanoma of unknown primary origin (MUP), in order to further refine current recommendations for the surgical treatment; (2) Methods: Medical data of all MUP patients registered between 2000 and 2011, were analyzed. Seventy-eight patients were categorized in either lymph node (axilla, groin, head-and neck) or subcutaneous MUP. Axillary node MUPs were generally treated with dissections of levels I-III, inguinal node MUPs with combined superficial and deep groin dissections, and head-and-neck node MUPs with neck dissections to various extents, based on lymph drainage patterns. Subcutaneous lesions were excised with 1–2 cm margins. The primary outcome was treatment outcomes in terms of (loco)regional recurrence and survival rates; (3) Results: Lymph node MUP recurred regionally in 11% of patients, with an overall recurrence rate of 45%. In contrast, subcutaneous MUP recurred locally in 65% of patients with an overall recurrence rate of 78%. This latter group had a significantly shorter disease-free interval than patients with lymph node MUP (p = 0.000). In the entire study population, 5-year and 10-year overall survival rates were 56% and 47% respectively, with no differences observed between the various subgroups; (4) Conclusion: The relatively low regional recurrence rate after regional lymph node dissection (11%) supports its current status as standard surgical treatment for lymph node MUP. Subcutaneous MUP, on the contrary, appears to recur both locally (65%) and overall (78%) at a significantly higher rate, suggesting a different biological behavior. However, wide local excision remains the best available option for this specific group.
[Arterial infusion chemotherapy combined with concurrent radiotherapy for local advanced pancreatic cancer].

OBJECTIVE To analyze the treatment results of un-resectable local pancreatic cancer by arterial infusion chemotherapy plus concurrent radiotherapy or radiotherapy alone. METHODS A total of 50 patients with local advanced pancreatic cancer from January 1992 through October 1995 were treated either by arterial infusion chemotherapy (C) plus concurrent radiotherapy (R) (22 cases) or by radiotherapy alone (28 cases). Radiation given was the same in the two groups of patients (50-60 Gy in 5 to 6 weeks, 1.8-2 Gy/Fx, 5 Fx/wk). Infusion chemotherapy was performed once every 4 weeks, consisting of 5-fluorouracil 1.0 g, mitomycin C 10 mg, cisplatin 60 mg. An average of 2.3 cycles was given to each patient. RESULTS Although the remission rate of jaundice and pain did not show significant difference between the two groups, patients in C + R treatment group had longer period of symptomatic remission (P < 0.05). The response rate (CR + PR) was 68.2% in C + R treatment group and 35.7% in R treatment group, respectively. The 1-, 2-, and 3-year survival rate was 75.3%, 36.8%, 25.4% in C + R treatment group, and 51.3%, 22.6%, 8.7% in R treatment group, respectively. CONCLUSION Arterial infusion chemotherapy combined with concurrent radiotherapy is a treatment of choice for patients with local unresectable cancer of the pancreas.