Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of the Williams Airway Intubator and Ovassapian Fibreoptic Intubating Airway for fibreoptic orotracheal intubation

A randomised study was carried out in 60 anaesthetised patients with no evidence of airway difficulties, to compare the Williams Airway Intubator and the Ovassapian Fibreoptic Intubating Airway for bronchoscopic view and ease of railroading a tracheal tube during fibreoptic orotracheal intubation. The Williams Airway Intubator provided a better view of the glottis (41 (68.3%) unobstructed views) than the Ovassapian Fibreoptic Intubating Airway (15 (25%) unobstructed views; p < 0.0001) and a shorter time was needed to complete bronchoscopy (median (95% CI) difference 4 s (1–7); p = 0.01). Four (6.7%) bronchoscopies failed using the Williams Airway Intubator compared with 26 (43.3%) using the Ovassapian Fibreoptic Intubating Airway (p < 0.0001). Both airways provided similar intubating conditions when the glottis was visible.
Creating high-performance statically type-safe network applications

A typical Internet server finds itself in the middle of a virtual battleground, under constant threat from worms, viruses and other malware seeking to subvert the original intentions of the programmer. In particular, critical Internet servers such as OpenSSH, BIND and Sendmail have had numerous security issues ranging from low-level buffer overflows to subtle protocol logic errors. These problems have cost billions of dollars as the growth of the Internet exposes increasing numbers of computers to electronic malware. Despite the decades of research on techniques such as model-checking, type-safety and other forms of formal analysis, the vast majority of server implementations continue to be written unsafely and informally in C/C++. In this dissertation we propose an architecture for constructing new implementations of standard Internet protocols which integrates mature formal methods not currently used in deployed servers: (i) static type systems from the ML family of functional languages; (ii) model checking to verify safety properties exhaustively about aspects of the servers; and (iii) generative meta-programming to express high-level constraints for the domain-specific tasks of packet parsing and constructing non-deterministic state machines. Our architecture—dubbed MELANGE—is based on Objective Caml and contributes two domain-specific languages: (i) the Meta Packet Language (MPL), a data description language used to describe the wire format of a protocol and output statically type-safe code to handle network traffic using high-level functional data structures; and (ii) the Statecall Policy Language (SPL) for constructing non-deterministic finite state automata which are embedded into applications and dynamically enforced, or translated into PROMELA and statically model-checked. Our research emphasises the importance of delivering efficient, portable code which is feasible to deploy across the Internet. We implemented two complex protocols—SSH and DNS—to verify our claims, and our evaluation shows that they perform faster than their standard counterparts OpenSSH and BIND, in addition to providing static guarantees against some classes of errors that are currently a major source of security problems.
Spatiotemporal Residual Networks for Video Action Recognition

Two-stream Convolutional Networks (ConvNets) have shown strong performance for human action recognition in videos. Recently, Residual Networks (ResNets) have arisen as a new technique to train extremely deep architectures. In this paper, we introduce spatiotemporal ResNets as a combination of these two approaches. Our novel architecture generalizes ResNets for the spatiotemporal domain by introducing residual connections in two ways. First, we inject residual connections between the appearance and motion pathways of a two-stream architecture to allow spatiotemporal interaction between the two streams. Second, we transform pretrained image ConvNets into spatiotemporal networks by equipping these with learnable convolutional filters that are initialized as temporal residual connections and operate on adjacent feature maps in time. This approach slowly increases the spatiotemporal receptive field as the depth of the model increases and naturally integrates image ConvNet design principles. The whole model is trained end-to-end to allow hierarchical learning of complex spatiotemporal features. We evaluate our novel spatiotemporal ResNet using two widely used action recognition benchmarks where it exceeds the previous state-of-the-art.
Heparin promotes the growth of human embryonic stem cells in a defined serum-free medium

A major limitation in developing applications for the use of human embryonic stem cells (HESCs) is our lack of knowledge of their responses to specific cues that control self-renewal, differentiation, and lineage selection. HESCs are most commonly maintained on inactivated mouse embryonic fibroblast feeders in medium supplemented with FCS, or proprietary replacements such as knockout serum-replacement together with FGF-2. These undefined culture conditions hamper analysis of the mechanisms that control HESC behavior. We have now developed a defined serum-free medium, hESF9, for the culture of HESCs on a type I-collagen substrate without feeders. In contrast to other reported media for the culture of HESCs, this medium has a lower osmolarity (292 mosmol/liter), l-ascorbic acid-2-phosphate (0.1 μg/ml), and heparin. Insulin, transferrin, albumin conjugated with oleic acid, and FGF-2 (10 ng/ml) were the only protein components. Further, we found that HESCs would proliferate in the absence of exogenous FGF-2 if heparin was also present. However, their growth was enhanced by the addition of FGF-2 up to 10 ng/ml although higher concentrations were deleterious in the presence of heparin.
Longitudinal falls data in Parkinson’s disease: feasibility of fall diaries and effect of attrition

Abstract Background: Identifying causes of falls for people with Parkinson’s disease has met with limited success. Prospective falls measurement using the “gold standard” approach is challenging. This paper examines the process and outcomes associated with longitudinal falls reporting in this population. Methods: Participants were recruited from ICICLE-GAIT (a collaborative study with ICICLE-PD; an incident cohort study). Monthly falls diaries were examined over 48 months for accuracy of data and rate of attrition. To further inform analysis, characteristics of participants with 36-month completed diaries were compared with those who did not complete diaries. Results: One hundred and twenty-one participants were included at baseline. By 12 months, falls diary data had reduced to 107 participants; to 81 participants by 36 months; and to 59 participants by 48 months. Key reasons for diary attrition were withdrawal from ICICLE-gait (n = 16) (13.2%), and noncompliance (n = 11) (9.1%). The only significant difference between the completed and non-completed diary groups was age at 36 months, with older participants being more likely to send in diaries. Conclusions: Prospective falls data is feasible to collect over the long term. Attrition rates are high; however, participants retained in the study are overall representative of the total falls diary cohort. Implications for Rehabilitation Understanding falls evolution in Parkinson’s disease through consistent, personalized monitoring of falls events is critical to inform effective management. Our study shows that it is feasible to collect longitudinal falls data using “gold standard” methodology, although significant resources are required for implementation. We anticipate that our study methodology is broadly applicable to any at-risk falls cohort including older adults and diverse neurological conditions. Researchers and clinicians collating prospective falls data must ensure that participants understand what constitutes a fall, as per the World Health Organization definition. A second key point is to ensure prompt recording of any fall event.
Kinetic analysis of gene expression during mycelium to yeast transition and yeast to mycelium germination in Paracoccidioides brasiliensis.

INTRODUCTION Paracoccidioidomycosis is an endemic systemic mycosis caused by Paracoccidioides brasiliensis, a thermally dimorphic fungus that in tissues and cultures at 37°C grows as a yeast while at lower temperatures (less than 24°C) it becomes a mold; however the genes that rule these processes and their expression are poorly understood. OBJECTIVE This research focused on the kinetic expression of certain genes in P. brasiliensis throughout the dimorphic process, one that involves the transition from the mycelium to yeast forms and the germination from the yeast to mycelium form. MATERIALS AND METHODS A real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) was optimized to measure the expression of ten genes connected with diverse cellular functions including cell synthesis and wall structure, oxidative stress response, heat shock response, metabolism, proteins' processing, solute transport across the cell membrane and signal transduction pathways at different time points during the mycelia to yeast transition, as well as in the yeast to mycelia germination processes. RESULTS Genes involved in cell synthesis and wall structure, metabolism and signal transduction were differentially expressed and highly up-regulated during the yeast to mycelia germination process; on the other hand, genes involved in heat shock response, cell synthesis and wall structure were highly up-regulated during the mycelia to yeast transition process. The remaining genes were differentially regulated during both processes. CONCLUSION In this work the up-regulation of certain genes involved in the morphological changes occurring in P. brasiliensis yeast and mycelia forms were confirmed, indicating that these biological processes play an important role during the host-pathogen interactions, as well as in the fungus adaptation to environmental conditions.
Structural probing and mutagenic analysis of the stem-loop required for Escherichia coli dnaX ribosomal frameshifting: programmed efficiency of 50%1

Abstract Three elements are crucial for the programmed frameshifting in translation of dnaX mRNA: a Shine-Dalgarno (SD)-like sequence, a double-shift site, and a 3′ structure. The conformation of the mRNA containing these three elements was investigated using chemical and enzymatic probes. The probing data show that the structure is a specific stem-loop. The bottom half of the stem is more stable than the top half of the stem. The function of the stem-loop was further investigated by mutagenic analysis. Reducing the stability of the bottom half of the stem strongly effects frameshifting levels, whereas similar changes in the top half are not as effective. Stabilizing the top half of the stem gives increased frameshifting beyond the WT efficiency. The identity of the primary RNA sequence in the stem-loop is unimportant, provided that the overall structure is maintained. The calculated stabilities of the variant stem-loop structures correlate with frameshifting efficiency. The SD-interaction and the stem-loop element act independently to increase frameshifting in dnaX.
Kenaf Core Reinforced High-density Polyethylene/Soya Powder Composites: The Effects of Filler Loading and Compatibilizer

The effects of kenaf core loading and maleated polyethylene (MAPE) as a compatibilizer on processing torque, mechanical properties, and water absorption were studied. HDPE/soya powder/kenaf core composites were prepared by incorporation of kenaf core powder at different loadings into HDPE/soya powder matrix with an internal mixer (Haake PolyLab) at 180°C and 50 rpm rotor speed. A compatibilizer, i.e., MAPE, was used to improve the matrix-filler interaction and the mechanical properties of the composites. The results indicated that tensile strength and elongation at break decreased with increasing filler loading, whereas stabilization torque, tensile modulus, flexural strength, flexural modulus, and water absorption exhibited an increasing trend. The presence of MAPE also enhanced the tensile and flexural properties of the composites.
Effect of contextual tonal variation on speech recognition: Evidence from eye movements

While much is known about how lexical tones are perceived in isolation, little has been done on the perception of tones in connected speech. This study, via visual world paradigm, investigates effect of contextual tonal variation on speech recognition in Tianjin Mandarin, where three types of contextual tonal variation have been identified: Near-Merger Sandhi, No-Merger Sandhi, and No-Sandhi Coarticulation. Listeners were asked to identify the target amongst an array of four possibilities upon hearing a disyllabic collocation, while their eye movements were tracked. Results suggest that native listeners are sensitive to fine-grained phonetic details in contextual variation of lexical tones. NoSandhi Coarticulation was the easiest to recognize as participants fixated on the targets the earliest among three conditions. Near-Merger Sandhi was more difficult to process than No-Merger Sandhi, reflected in the overall less proportion of looks to target.
Pregnant Women's Attitudes to and Knowledge of Non-invasive Prenatal Testing in Down Syndrome Screening in Hong Kong

Objectives: To evaluate pregnant women’s attitudes to and knowledge of non-invasive prenatal testing in Down syndrome screening. Methods: From 1 November 2012 to 31 December 2012, all pregnant Chinese women who attended for Down syndrome screening were invited to complete a self-administered questionnaire, which enquired about their knowledge and attitudes regarding non-invasive prenatal testing. Those who subsequently screened positive for Down syndrome were given the same questionnaire again. Results: A total of 651 pregnant women were included, of whom 439 (67.4%) returned their questionnaires after Down syndrome screening (group 1). Among 29 patients who screened positive for Down syndrome, 16 (55.2%) completed the questionnaire for the second time (group 2). Most of the women in group 1 were aware of firsttrimester combined Down syndrome screening (78.1%), second-trimester biochemical screening (66.7%), and invasive tests (78.4%). However, only 96 (21.9%) were aware of non-invasive prenatal testing. The mean overall knowledge score on non-invasive prenatal testing in group 1 patients was 2.55 of 9, with a significantly higher score in women who were of higher education level, higher family income, undergoing antenatal care in both the public and private sectors, and those with positive Down syndrome screening (group 2). Overall, 328 (74.7%) would consider having non-invasive prenatal testing. However, about one-third would still proceed to diagnostic tests even when non-invasive prenatal testing was negative. Over 80% would like the public sector to provide non-invasive prenatal testing, of whom 52.8% considered that this should be free of charge. Conclusion: Non-invasive prenatal testing is relatively new. It is not surprising that this study showed an overall low level of knowledge. Although most pregnant women preferred the test to be provided free of charge by the public sector, adequate counselling and information should still be provided. Hong Kong J Gynaecol Obstet Midwifery 2014; 14(1):43-50
Insulin dose-dependent reductions in plasma amino acids in man.

The quantitative relationship between insulin and plasma amino acid (AA) levels were characterized in five healthy young men during euglycemic insulin infusions (6, 10, 30, and 400 mU . m-2 . min-1). The endogenous production and disposal of glucose were determined for the 6 mU . m-2 . min-1 insulin infusion using 6,6-dideuteroglucose. While 8 of 10 AA decreased in a dose-responsive pattern to increasing levels of insulin, alanine and glycine concentrations remained unaffected. For isoleucine and proline, the insulin levels required for a half-maximal response were less than for glucose disposal (P less than 0.05), but, for all other insulin-influenced AA, the levels required were similar to those for glucose disposal. These studies indicate that insulin sensitivity of AA is similar to that of glucose disposal and that AA responses to insulin exhibit a physiologically relevant, dose-response relationship.
Nucleic Acids Research

Pyrimidine) -(purine) DNAs of repeating sequences form a distinctive complex on lowering the pH below 6. Previously this complex was thought to be tetra-stranded. The present work is inconsistent with this view, and four lines of evidence show that the complex consists of a triplex together with a poly d(purine) possessing secondary structure. pH5 ~~~~+ e.g. 2d(TC) n.d(GA) pH d(TC)n d(GA) nd(CT)n + d(GA)n (a) S nuclease digestion leads to degradation of 50% of the poly d(purine) conteni of the pH 5-induced complex. (b) Buoyant density studies demonstrate that there is no interaction between the triplex and added free poly d(purine) and also that the complex formed from duplex DNA contained poly d(purine) which is free to form a triplex on addition of an appropriate poly d(pyrimidine) in the correct stoichiometry. (c) The hyperchromic shifts of the triplex and poly d(purine), upon melting, are mutually independent. (d) The circular dichroism spectrum of the complex is simply the weighted average of a triplex together with a free poly d(purine). The triplexes have tmS approximately 200 higher than the corresponding duplexes under comparable conditions and they are extremely resistant to various deoxyribonucleases; properties which may prove useful for their isolation from natural sources. INTRODUCTION Asymmetric DNA sequences which contain long stretches of pyrimidines in one strand and the complementary purines in the other stranid (pyr-pur DNA) occur comnonly in both procaryotes and eucaryotes (1,2,3,4,5). However it is not at all clear in what roles these pyr*pur DNAs might be important. The possibility of a structural role was previously suggested by the high specificity with which pyr.pur DNAs can form triplexes with RNA (6,7). For example, d(TC) n.d(GA)n interacts only with r(UC) to form the triplex d(TC) *d(GA) *r(CU) ; the two pyrimidine strands are antiparallel and the RNA strand winds down the major groove of the DNA with Hoogsteen base-pairing. This necessitates a protonated cytosine and, thereC) Information Retrieval Limited 1 Falconberg Court London Wl V 5FG England Volume 6 Number 9 1979
Prevalence of acid reflux in functional dyspepsia and its association with symptom profile

Aim: A subset of functional dyspepsia patients respond to acid suppressive therapy, but the prevalence of non-erosive reflux disease in functional dyspepsia and its relevance to symptoms have never been established. The aim of the present study was to study 24 hour pH monitoring in consecutive functional dyspepsia patients. Methods: A total of 247 patients with dyspeptic symptoms (166 women, mean age 44 (SEM 1) year), with a negative upper gastrointestinal endoscopy and without dominant symptoms of heartburn participated in the study. In all patients, the severity of dyspeptic symptoms and the presence of heartburn was assessed by a questionnaire and a 24 hour oesophageal pH monitoring study was performed. All patients underwent a gastric emptying breath test and in 113 a gastric barostat study was performed. Results: Abnormal pH monitoring (acid exposure >5% of time) was found in 58 patients (23%). Of 21 patients with a positive heartburn questionnaire, 76% had pathological pH monitoring, while this was the case in only 18.5% of patients with a negative heartburn questionnaire. Demographic characteristics and the prevalence of other pathophysiological mechanisms did not differ between heartburn negative patients with normal or abnormal acid exposure. Pathological acid exposure in heartburn negative patients was associated with the presence of epigastric pain (65 v 84%, p<0.005) and of moderate or severe pain (48 v 69%, p = 0.005). Conclusion: Pathological oesophageal acid exposure is only present in a subset of heartburn negative functional dyspepsia patients, which are characterised by a higher prevalence of epigastric pain.
Joint Decoding with Multiple Translation Models

Current SMT systems usually decode with single translation models and cannot benefit from the strengths of other models in decoding phase. We instead propose joint decoding, a method that combines multiple translation models in one decoder. Our joint decoder draws connections among multiple models by integrating the translation hypergraphs they produce individually. Therefore, one model can share translations and even derivations with other models. Comparable to the state-of-the-art system combination technique, joint decoding achieves an absolute improvement of 1.5 BLEU points over individual decoding.
Social presence in the 21st century: An adjustment to the Community of Inquiry framework

The Community of Inquiry framework, originally proposed by Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000) identifies teaching, social and cognitive presences as central to a successful online educational experience. This article presents the findings of a study conducted in Uruguay between 2007 and 2010. The research aimed to establish the role of cognitive, social and teaching presences in the professional development of 40 English language teachers on Continuous Professional Development (CPD) programmes delivered in blended learning settings. The findings suggest that teaching presence and cognitive presence have themselves 'become social'. The research points to social presence as a major lever for engagement, sense-making and peer support. Based on the patterns identified in the study, this article puts forward an adjustment to the Community of Inquiry framework, which shows social presence as more prominent within the teaching and cognitive constructs than the original version of the framework suggests.
TSC–mTOR maintains quiescence and function of hematopoietic stem cells by repressing mitochondrial biogenesis and reactive oxygen species

The tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC)–mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway is a key regulator of cellular metabolism. We used conditional deletion of Tsc1 to address how quiescence is associated with the function of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). We demonstrate that Tsc1 deletion in the HSCs drives them from quiescence into rapid cycling, with increased mitochondrial biogenesis and elevated levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Importantly, this deletion dramatically reduced both hematopoiesis and self-renewal of HSCs, as revealed by serial and competitive bone marrow transplantation. In vivo treatment with an ROS antagonist restored HSC numbers and functions. These data demonstrated that the TSC–mTOR pathway maintains the quiescence and function of HSCs by repressing ROS production. The detrimental effect of up-regulated ROS in metabolically active HSCs may explain the well-documented association between quiescence and the “stemness” of HSCs.
Type Ia supernova spectral features in the context of their host galaxy properties

We analyse spectroscopic measurements of 122 Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) with z 3 x 10(9) M-circle dot. We also find some evidence that these highest velocity SNe Ia explode in the inner regions of their host galaxies, similar to the study of Wang et al., although the trend is not as significant in our data. We show that these trends are consistent with some SN Ia spectral models, if the host galaxy stellar mass is interpreted as a proxy for host galaxy metallicity. We study the strength of the high-velocity component of the Ca II near-IR absorption, and show that SNe Ia with stronger high-velocity components relative to photospheric components are hosted by galaxies with low M-stellar, blue colour, and a high sSFR. Such SNe are therefore likely to arise from the youngest progenitor systems. This argues against a pure orientation effect being responsible for high-velocity features in SN Ia spectra and, when combined with other studies, is consistent with a scenario where high-velocity features are related to an interaction between the SN ejecta and circumstellar medium local to the SN.