Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Histopathologic Spectrum of Psoriasiform Skin Reactions Associated With Tumor Necrosis Factor-α Inhibitor Therapy. A Study of 16 Biopsies

Tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α inhibitors (anti-TNF-α biologic drugs), currently used to treat different autoimmune conditions, may be associated with cutaneous drug reactions. New onset or worsening of psoriasis and psoriasis-like reactions have been reported in these patients. However, not much is known about the different histopathologic patterns of such skin lesions. The aim of this study was to evaluate the pathologic spectrum of clinically papulosquamous to pustular “psoriasiform” lesions in this setting. Sixteen biopsies from 9 patients on anti-TNF-α therapy for rheumatoid arthritis (n = 7), Crohn disease (n = 1), and Behçet disease (n = 1) who developed a “psoriasiform” skin rash during treatment were included in this study. None of the patients had history of psoriasis. Five patients (10 biopsies) showed a psoriasis-like pattern that varied from that seen in guttate lesions (4 biopsies), to well-established plaques (3 biopsies) to pustular psoriasis (3 biopsies). Three patients (4 biopsies) showed an interface/lichenoid dermatitis mimicking lichen planus. Two patients (2 biopsies) showed features of pustular folliculitis. Eosinophils varied from none (2 biopsies) to scattered (7 biopsies) to numerous (7 biopsies). Plasma cells were present in most cases. All pustular lesions had negative cultures. In conclusion, anti-TNF drugs elicit a spectrum of cutaneous reactions that go beyond the classical eosinophilic-rich hypersensitivity reaction and may closely mimic primary dermatitis. In addition to psoriasis-like lesions, lichen planus-like dermatitis and sterile pustular folliculitis should be included in the list of anti-TNF-α-related drug reactions. Because the different histopathologic findings may be subtle, clinical correlation is crucial to make the diagnosis.
Who Borrows from the Lender of Last Resort

Understanding why banks borrow from the Lender of Last Resort (LOLR) during a nancial crisis is crucial to understanding the macroeconomic impact of such largescale interventions. We document a strong divergence among banks’ take-up of LOLR assistance during the nancial crisis in the euro area, as banks which borrowed heavily also used increasingly risky collateral. We propose four explanations for this divergence:
Maternal Education, Parental Investment and Non-Cognitive Skills in Rural China

The importance of non-cognitive skills in determining long-term human capital and labor market outcomes is widely acknowledged, but relatively little is known about how educational investments by parents may respond to non-cognitive skills early in life. This paper evaluates the parental response to variation in non-cognitive skills among their children in rural Gansu province, China, employing a household fixed effects specification; non-cognitive skills are defined as the inverse of both externalizing challenges (behavioral problems and aggression) and internalizing challenges (anxiety and withdrawal). The results suggest that on average, parents invest no more in terms of educational expenditure in children who have better non-cognitive skills relative to their siblings. However, there is significant heterogeneity with respect to maternal education; less educated mothers appear to reinforce differences in non-cognitive skills between their children, while more educated mothers compensate for these differences. Most importantly, there is evidence that these compensatory investments lead to catch-up in non-cognitive skills over time for children of more educated mothers.
Fingerprint Image Enhancement and Minutiae Extraction

Fingerprints are the oldest and most widely used form of biometric identification. Despite the widespread use of fingerprints, there is little statistical theory on the uniqueness of fingerprint minutiae. A critical step in studying the statistics of fingerprint minutiae is to reliably extract minutiae from the fingerprint images. However, fingerprint images are rarely of perfect quality. They may be degraded and corrupted due to variations in skin and impression conditions. Thus, image enhancement techniques are employed prior to minutiae extraction to obtain a more reliable estimation of minutiae locations. In this dissertation, I firstly provide discussion on the methodology and implementation of techniques for fingerprint image enhancement and minutiae extraction. Experiments using a mixture of both synthetic test images and real fingerprint images are then conducted to evaluate the performance of the implemented techniques. In combination with these techniques, preliminary results on the statistics of fingerprint images are then presented and discussed.
CBIR search engine for user designed query (UDQ)

At present, most Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) systems use query by example (QBE), but its drawback is the fact that the user first has to find an image which he wants to use as a query. In some situations the most difficult task is to find this one proper image which the user keeps in mind to feed it to the system as a query by example. For our CBIR, we prepared the dedicated GUI to construct a user designed query (UDQ). We describe the new search engine which matches images using both local and global image features for a query composed by the user. In our case, the spatial object location is the global feature. Our matching results take into account the kind and number of objects, their spatial layout and object feature vectors. Finally, we compare our matching result with those obtained by other search engines.
Estimating Effects of Nursing Intervention via Propensity Score Analysis

Background: Lack of randomization of nursing intervention in outcome effectiveness studies may lead to imbalanced covariates. Consequently, estimation of nursing intervention effect can be biased as in other observational studies. Propensity score analysis is an effective statistical method to reduce such bias and further derive causal effects in observational studies. Objectives: The objective of this study was to illustrate the use of propensity score analysis in quantitative nursing research through an example of pain management effect on length of hospital stay. Methods: Propensity scores are generated through a regression model treating the nursing intervention as the dependent variable and all confounding covariates as predictor variables. Then, propensity scores are used to adjust for this nonrandomized assignment of nursing intervention through three approaches: regression covariance adjustment, stratification, and matching in the predictive outcome model for nursing intervention. Results: Propensity score analysis reduces the confounding covariates into a single variable of propensity score. After stratification and matching on propensity scores, observed covariates between nursing intervention groups are more balanced within each stratum or in the matched samples. The likelihood of receiving pain management is accounted for in the outcome model through the propensity scores. Both regression covariance adjustment and matching methods report a significant pain management effect on length of hospital stay in this example. The pain management effect can be regarded as causal when the strongly ignorable treatment assignment assumption holds. Discussion: Propensity score analysis provides an alternative statistical approach to the classical multivariate regression, stratification, and matching techniques for examining the effects of nursing intervention with a large number of confounding covariates in the background. It can be used to derive causal effects of nursing intervention in observational studies under certain circumstances.
Safety and effectiveness of low dose oral vitamin K1 administration in asymptomatic out-patients on warfarin or acenocoumarol with excessive anticoagulation.

The management of asymptomatic overanticoagulation with low dose vitamin K1 is recommended in patients taking oral anticoagulants, independently of the type of coumarin being administered. To evaluate the safety and effectiveness of this practice we observed 127 patients on warfarin and 14 on acenocoumarol, who received 2 mg oral vitamin K1 on at least one occasion. At the first measurement, international normalized ratio (INR) mean values were significantly lower in patients on acenocoumarol than in patients on warfarin (p=0.0001) and all patients on acenocoumarol showed INR values below the therapeutic range. Vitamin K1 should be used cautiously in patients being anticoagulated with acenocoumarol.
Toll-like receptor 2 plays a pivotal role in host defense and inflammatory response to Borrelia burgdorferi.

275 BORRELIA BURGDORFERI infection of humans is a multisystem illness characterized by persistent bacterial infection and invasion of numerous tissues (Steere 2001). Arthritis can result from spirochete invasion of joint tissue, and is characterized by joint swelling, inflammatory infiltrate, and tendonitis. In most individuals, arthritis is treatable with antibiotics, with symptoms resolving after clearance of bacteria (Steere et al. 1987). Mice of certain inbred strains, including C3H, develop a subacute arthritis that models the arthritis in humans (Barthold et al. 1990). The subacute, infection-associated arthritis has been studied extensively in mice, and provides an excellent opportunity to understand the pathologic processes involved in arthritis development. Importantly, the subacute arthritis develops in mice lacking B and T lymphocytes and is therefore not autoimmune-mediated, nor does it require immune complexes (Barthold et al. 1992). The subacute arthritis of mice and humans is clearly different in mechanism from the treatmentresistant arthritis that develops in a small percentage of patients possessing particular MHC alleles that may be autoimmune-mediated (Steere et al. 1990). B. burgdorferi possess potent pro-inflammatory properties, which have been attributed to abundantly expressed outer surface lipoproteins (Radolf et al. 1991, Wooten and Weis 2001). These lipoproteins possess a tripalmitoyl-cysteinyl moiety on the amino terminus, characteristic of lipoproteins made by many bacterial species (Bessler et al. 1985). The identification of toll-like receptor (TLR) 2 as the signal transducing receptor for the lipoproteins helped to explain the inflammatory response associated with B. burgdorferi infection (Aliprantis et al. 1999, Brightbill et al. 1999, Hirschfeld et al. 1999). TLR2 is a member of an evolutionarily conserved family of pattern recognition molecules, first identified by homology with Drosophila toll (Medzhitov et al. 1997). Signaling through TLRs results in activation of a conserved signaling pathway that ultimately results in translocation of the transcription factor NF-kB to the nucleus and transcriptional activation of numerous genes including those encoding inflammatory cytokines, chemokines, and adhesion molecules (Medzhitov et al. 1997, Akira et al. 2001). Expression of these gene products is consistent with the localized inflammation characterized in tissues of animals
A long-term follow-up of crossover youth: Young adult outcomes for maltreated youth in the juvenile justice system

A LONG-TERM FOLLOW-UP OF CROSSOVER YOUTH: YOUNG ADULT OUTCOMES FOR MALTREATED YOUTH IN THE JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM By Carly Baetz Adviser: Cathy Spatz Widom, Ph.D., John Jay College Crossover youth, those with histories of childhood maltreatment and delinquency, may be at high risk for negative outcomes compared to other youth. However, very little is known about the long-term outcomes for this population. This dissertation compared four groups: youth with histories of child maltreatment and juvenile arrest (n = 180), youth with a history of maltreatment only (n = 428), youth with a history of juvenile arrest only (n = 91), and youth with no history of maltreatment or juvenile arrest (n = 496), on a range of outcomes, including mental health, education, employment, and criminal behavior. Data from a prospective cohort design study was used in which children with documented histories of physical and sexual abuse and neglect between the ages of 0 and 11, as well as matched controls, were subsequently interviewed at a mean age of 29 (N=1196). Analyses compared the four groups and examined potential differences by gender and race/ethnicity. Results indicated that crossover youth were at a significant disadvantage in likelihood for educational attainment, employment, and adult arrest when compared to other groups of youth, but were not necessarily at higher risk for lifetime psychiatric disorders. Overall, the impact of having both adversities was most salient for males and Black and Hispanic youth. Unexpectedly, crossover youth and arrested youth also had similar characteristics across many long-term outcomes. Furthermore, the similarities between crossover and arrested youth after accounting for self-reported delinquency, particularly when
To “Feel” and to “Understand” Political Struggle

While communication scholars who have invoked the Gramscian concept of hegemony have approached it primarily as a designation for cultural stability and domination, there have been fewer calls for its closer consideration in relation to human agency in the process of social change. Receptive of these calls, in this article, I develop an alternative to the dominant reading of the concept to show its productiveness in the analysis of a political group’s rhetorical situation. I claim that such a conceptualization advances the discussion toward a dimension of rhetorical intervention that passes from an oppressive to an emancipatory understanding of hegemony. I take as my case study the national-popular rhetoric of Podemos, a recently formed political party in Spain, which, in the context of the recent economic crisis, is building hegemony by successfully synthesizing public sentiments and intellectual involvement against austerity policies.
Ordinal equivalence of values and Pigou-Dalton transfers in TU-games

The paper studies the ordinal equivalence of Linear, Efficient and Symmetry (LES) values in TU-games. It demonstrates that most of the results obtained by Carreras F, Freixas J (2008) in the case of semivalues and simple games are transposable on LES values and the whole TU-games set. In particular, linear and weakly linear games are analyzed. We characterize both values which are ordinal equivalent in all TU-games. Pigou-Dalton transfers are introduced for social comparison of values and to shed light on the way payoffs are redistributed from a value to another.
Transition of patients with sickle cell disease from pediatric to adult care: Assessing patient readiness

Transfer of care from pediatric to adult‐oriented providers is challenging for adolescents with sickle cell disease (SCD). The need for transition programs is known, however many SCD patients leave pediatric care without adequate preparation. This study has two aims: to assess adolescent SCD patients' preparation for transition and to identify variables that predict patient readiness.
Human laminin-332 degradation by Candida proteinases.

BACKGROUND Human laminin-332 (Lm-332) degradation by 12 Candida strains and effects of synthetic proteinase inhibitors [Ilomastat (ILM), EDTA, chemically modified tetracycline-3(CMT-3), CMT-308, synthetic peptide CTT-2, and Pefabloc] were studied. MATERIALS AND METHODS Laminin-332 was incubated with sonicated cell fractions and 10 times concentrated cell-free fractions of reference and clinical strains of C. albicans, C. dubliniensis, C. guilliermondii, C. glabrata, C. krusei, and C. tropicalis. Proteolysis, pH effects, and inhibitors were analyzed by fluorography and zymography. RESULTS Cell fractions of all species except C. guilliermondii and cell-free fractions of C. albicans, and C. dubliniensis showed 20-70 kDa gelatinases at pH 5.0 and 6.0. At pH 7.6, C. glabrata, C. krusei, and C. tropicalis cell fractions and C. tropicalis cell-free fractions showed 55-70 kDa gelatinases. CMT-3, CMT-308, and CTT-2 inhibited Candida gelatinases slightly better than Pefabloc, ILM, and EDTA. No Candida fractions degraded Lm-332 at pH 7.6, but at pH 5.0, 100 kDa bands were generated by cell fractions of C. dubliniensis and C. tropicalis; C. albicans and C. glabrata clinical strains; and C. guilliermondii reference strain. C. krusei reference strain yielded three 100-130 kDa bands. C. albicans, C. dubliniensis, and C. tropicalis reference and clinical strain's cell-free fractions generated 100 kDa band. CONCLUSIONS Laminin-332 degradation is pH-dependent and differences exist between studied Candida strains. Lm-332 degradation can exert functional disturbances on basement membrane integrity, possibly aiding Candida cell invasion into tissues. Certain synthetic matrix metalloproteinase inhibitors (CMTs, CTT) can inhibit Candida proteinases and may be therapeutically useful in future.
Theory Reenement on Bayesian Networks

Theory reenement is the task of updating a domain theory in the light of new cases, to be done automatically or with some expert assistance. The problem of theory reenement under uncertainty is reviewed here in the context of Bayesian statistics, a theory of belief revision. The problem is reduced to an incre-mental learning task as follows: the learning system is initially primed with a partial theory supplied by a domain expert, and thereafter maintains its own internal representation of alternative theories which is able to be interrogated by the domain expert and able to be incrementally reened from data. Algorithms for reenement of Bayesian networks are presented to illustrate what is meant by \partial theory", \alternative theory repre-sentation", etc. The algorithms are an incre-mental variant of batch learning algorithms from the literature so can work well in batch and incremental mode.
The Relationships between Workaholism and Symptoms of Psychiatric Disorders: A Large-Scale Cross-Sectional Study

Despite the many number of studies examining workaholism, large-scale studies have been lacking. The present study utilized an open web-based cross-sectional survey assessing symptoms of psychiatric disorders and workaholism among 16,426 workers (Mage = 37.3 years, SD = 11.4, range = 16–75 years). Participants were administered the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale, the Obsession-Compulsive Inventory-Revised, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and the Bergen Work Addiction Scale, along with additional questions examining demographic and work-related variables. Correlations between workaholism and all psychiatric disorder symptoms were positive and significant. Workaholism comprised the dependent variable in a three-step linear multiple hierarchical regression analysis. Basic demographics (age, gender, relationship status, and education) explained 1.2% of the variance in workaholism, whereas work demographics (work status, position, sector, and annual income) explained an additional 5.4% of the variance. Age (inversely) and managerial positions (positively) were of most importance. The psychiatric symptoms (ADHD, OCD, anxiety, and depression) explained 17.0% of the variance. ADHD and anxiety contributed considerably. The prevalence rate of workaholism status was 7.8% of the present sample. In an adjusted logistic regression analysis, all psychiatric symptoms were positively associated with being a workaholic. The independent variables explained between 6.1% and 14.4% in total of the variance in workaholism cases. Although most effect sizes were relatively small, the study’s findings expand our understanding of possible psychiatric predictors of workaholism, and particularly shed new insight into the reality of adult ADHD in work life. The study’s implications, strengths, and shortcomings are also discussed.
Methylene blue‐mediated photodynamic therapy induces mitochondria‐dependent apoptosis in HeLa Cell

Methylene blue (MB), a widely studied reagent, is investigated in this work for its usage in photodynamic therapy (PDT). PDT has been proved to be highly effective in the treatment of different types of cancers. Previous studies showed MB has both high affinity for mitochondria and high photodynamic efficiency. To elucidate the effects of MB in PDT, we analyzed PDT‐induced apoptosis in HeLa cells by introducing different doses of MB into the culture media. Our data showed that MB‐mediated PDT triggered intense apoptotic cell death through a series of steps, beginning with photochemical generation of reactive oxygen species. The release of cytochrome c and activation of caspase‐3 indicated that MB‐PDT‐mediated apoptosis in HeLa cells was executed by the mitochondria‐dependent apoptotic pathway. Importantly, proteomic studies confirmed that expression levels of several mitochondrial proteins were altered in MB‐PDT‐induced apoptosis, including TRAP1, mitochondrial elongation factor Tu and peroxiredoxin 3 isoform b. Western blot data showed that phosphorylation of ERK1/2 and PKA were reduced in MB‐PDT treated cells, indicating several signal molecules participating in this apoptotic cascade. Moreover, MB‐PDT induced an increase in the strength of interaction between Bcl‐xL and dephosphorylated Bad. This led to loss of the pro‐survival function of Bcl‐xL and resulted in mitochondria‐mediated apoptosis. This study provides solid evidence of a strong induction by MB‐PDT of a mitochondria‐dependent apoptosis cascade in HeLa cells. J. Cell. Biochem. 105: 1451–1460, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
In Silico and Intuitive Predictions of CYP46A1 Inhibition by Marketed Drugs with Subsequent Enzyme Crystallization in Complex with Fluvoxamine

Cytochrome P450 46A1 (cholesterol 24-hydroxylase) is an important brain enzyme that may be inhibited by structurally distinct pharmaceutical agents both in vitro and in vivo. To identify additional inhibitors of CYP46A1 among U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved therapeutic agents, we used in silico and intuitive predictions and evaluated some of the predicted binders in the enzyme and spectral binding assays. We tested a total of 298 marketed drugs for the inhibition of CYP46A1-mediated cholesterol hydroxylation in vitro and found that 13 of them reduce CYP46A1 activity by >50%. Of these 13 inhibitors, 7 elicited a spectral response in CYP46A1 with apparent spectral Kd values in a low micromolar range. One of the identified tight binders, the widely used antidepressant fluvoxamine, was cocrystallized with CYP46A1. The structure of this complex was determined at a 2.5 Å resolution and revealed the details of drug binding to the CYP46A1 active site. The NH2-containing arm of the Y-shaped fluvoxamine coordinates the CYP46A1 heme iron, whereas the methoxy-containing arm points away from the heme group and has multiple hydrophobic interactions with aliphatic amino acid residues. The CF3-phenyl ring faces the entrance to the substrate access channel and has contacts with the aromatic side chains. The crystal structure suggests that only certain drug conformers can enter the P450 substrate access channel and reach the active site. Once inside the active site, the conformer probably further adjusts its configuration and elicits the movement of the protein side chains.