Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Concentrated Ambient Particles Alter Myocardial Blood Flow during Acute Ischemia in Conscious Canines

Background Experimental and observational studies have demonstrated that short-term exposure to ambient particulate matter (PM) exacerbates myocardial ischemia. Objectives We conducted this study to investigate the effects of concentrated ambient particles (CAPs) on myocardial blood flow during myocardial ischemia in chronically instrumented conscious canines. Methods Eleven canines were instrumented with a balloon occluder around the left anterior descending coronary artery and catheters for determination of myocardial blood flow using fluorescent microspheres. Telemetric electrocardiographic and blood pressure monitoring was available for four of these animals. After recovery, we exposed animals by inhalation to 5 hr of either filtered air or CAPs (mean concentration ± SD, 349.0 ± 282.6 μg/m3) in a crossover protocol. We determined myocardial blood flow during a 5-min coronary artery occlusion immediately after each exposure. Data were analyzed using mixed models for repeated measures. The primary analysis was based on four canines that completed the protocol. Results CAPs exposure decreased total myocardial blood flow during coronary artery occlusion by 0.12 mL/min/g (p < 0.001) and was accompanied by a 13% (p < 0.001) increase in coronary vascular resistance. Rate–pressure product, an index of myocardial oxygen demand, did not differ by exposure (p = 0.90). CAPs effects on myocardial blood flow were significantly more pronounced in myocardium within or near the ischemic zone versus more remote myocardium (p interaction < 0.001). Conclusions These results suggest that PM exacerbates myocardial ischemia by increased coronary vascular resistance and decreased myocardial perfusion. Further studies are needed to elucidate the mechanism of these effects.
Nurse Practitioners’ Behavior Regarding Teaching Testicular Self‐Examination

Purpose To test a model derived from the theory of reasoned action and to determine the behavior of nurse practitioners (NPs)regarding teaching testicular self‐examination (TSE). Data Sources A cross‐sectional, explanatory design was used to survey a random sample of 1,490 members of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. Conclusions NPs had positive attitudes toward teaching TSE and were engaged in such teaching. They perceived that other NPs, physicians, and patients also value TSE teaching. The theoretical was supported. Implications for Practice The results have implications for research, practice, and education. The theory was shown to be useful as a framework for the study of NP behavior. The results highlight the importance of including strategies to promote positive values as components of nurse preparation. For practice, patient adherence to illness detection activities may be fostered by positive attitude, perception that significant others also value these activities, and belief that failure to do so may result in personal loss.
Telomere shortening in leucocyte subsets of long‐term survivors of allogeneic bone marrow transplantation

Recent studies have demonstrated excessive telomeric shortening in peripheral blood leucocytes of bone marrow transplant (BMT) recipients. This finding has raised concerns about accelerated haemopoietic ageing that might predispose to clonal disorders and late graft failure. We studied the peripheral blood neutrophils and T cells of 14 fully engrafted long‐term survivors of BMT.
Measurement of Cerebrovascular Reactivity in Pediatric Patients With Cerebral Vasculopathy Using Blood Oxygen Level-Dependent MRI

Background and Purpose— Cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) is an indicator of cerebral hemodynamics. In adults with cerebrovascular disease, impaired CVR has been shown to be associated with an increased risk of stroke. In children, however, CVR studies are not common. This may be due to the difficulties and risks associated with current CVR study methodologies. We have previously described the application of precise control of end-tidal carbon dioxide partial pressure for CVR studies in adults. Our aim is to report initial observations of CVR studies that were performed as part of a larger observational study regarding investigations in pediatric patients with cerebral vascular disease. Methods— Thirteen patients between the ages of 10 and 16 years (10 with a diagnosis of Moyamoya vasculopathy and 3 with confirmed, or suspected, intracranial vascular stenosis) underwent angiography, MRI, and functional blood oxygen level-dependent MRI mapping of CVR to hypercapnia. The results of the CVR study were then related to both the structural imaging and clinical status. Results— Sixteen blood oxygen level-dependent MRI CVR studies were performed successfully in 13 consecutive patients. Twelve of the 13 patients with angiographic abnormalities also had CVR deficits in the corresponding downstream vascular territories. CVR deficits were also seen in 8 of 9 symptomatic patients and 2 of the asymptomatic patients. Noteably, in patients with abnormalities on angiography, the reductions in CVR extended beyond the ischemic lesions identified with MR structural imaging into normal-appearing brain parenchyma. Conclusions— This is the first case series reporting blood oxygen level-dependent MRI CVR in children with cerebrovascular disease. CVR studies performed so far provide information regarding hemodynamic compromise, which complements traditional clinical assessment and structural imaging.
Progressive Motor Neuronopathy: A Critical Role of the Tubulin Chaperone TBCE in Axonal Tubulin Routing from the Golgi Apparatus

Axonal degeneration represents one of the earliest pathological features in motor neuron diseases. We here studied the underlying molecular mechanisms in progressive motor neuronopathy (pmn) mice mutated in the tubulin-specific chaperone TBCE. We demonstrate that TBCE is a peripheral membrane-associated protein that accumulates at the Golgi apparatus. In pmn mice, TBCE is destabilized and disappears from the Golgi apparatus of motor neurons, and microtubules are lost in distal axons. The axonal microtubule loss proceeds retrogradely in parallel with the axonal dying back process. These degenerative changes are inhibited in a dose-dependent manner by transgenic TBCE complementation that restores TBCE expression at the Golgi apparatus. In cultured motor neurons, the pmn mutation, interference RNA-mediated TBCE depletion, and brefeldin A-mediated Golgi disruption all compromise axonal tubulin routing. We conclude that motor axons critically depend on axonal tubulin routing from the Golgi apparatus, a process that involves TBCE and possibly other tubulin chaperones.
Efficient Lentiviral Transduction of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells That Preserves Proliferation and Differentiation Capabilities

Long‐term lentiviral transduction of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) greatly enhances the usefulness of these cells. However, such transduction currently requires the use of polybrene, which severely inhibits hMSC proliferation. In contrast, protamine sulfate at 100 μg/ml doubled transduction efficiencies without affecting proliferation or differentiation potential. Expression levels improved 2.2‐fold with the addition of a woodchuck hepatitis post‐transcriptional regulatory element. Further improvements in transduction efficiencies could be obtained by a modest increase in viral concentrations through increased viral titers or decreased transduction volumes without changing multiplicity of infection, by transducing over multiple days, or by culturing the cells in fibroblast growth factor‐2. Centrifugation improved expression but had no effect on efficiency. Transgene expression was stable over 6 weeks in vitro and in vivo. Donor‐to‐donor and intradonor variability were observed in primary passage through passage 2 cultures, but not at passage 3. These results provide a better optimized approach for expanded use of hMSCs through genetic manipulation.
Bulbo-pontine Paralysis with Deafness: the Vialetto-Van Laere Syndrome

ABSTRACT: A Caucasian girl developed slowly progressive sensory neural deafness and bulbar and spinal muscle weakness typical of the Vialetto-Van Laere syndrome. As the condition progressed the major disabilities became dysphagia, respiratory muscle weakness and postural hypotension. Treatment with gastrostomy feedings, oxygen and fludrocortisone acetate produced worthwhile functional improvement.
The role of arousal in the spontaneous regulation of emotions in healthy aging: a fMRI investigation

Despite ample support for enhanced affective well-being and emotional stability in healthy aging, the role of potentially important dimensions, such as the emotional arousal, has not been systematically investigated in neuroimaging studies. In addition, the few behavioral studies that examined effects of arousal have produced inconsistent findings. The present study manipulated the arousal of pictorial stimuli to test the hypothesis that preserved emotional functioning in aging is modulated by the level of arousal, and to identify the associated neural correlates. Young and older healthy participants were presented with negative and neutral pictures, which they rated for emotional content, while fMRI data were recorded. There were three main novel findings regarding the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of negative pictures with different levels of arousal in young and older adults. First, the common engagement of the right amygdala in young and older adults was driven by high arousing negative stimuli. Second, complementing an age-related reduction in the subjective ratings for low arousing negative pictures, there were opposing patterns of activity in the rostral/ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the amygdala, which showed increased vs. decreased responses, respectively, to low arousing negative pictures. Third, increased spontaneous activity in the ventral ACC/ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in older adults was linked to reduced ratings for low arousing negative pictures. Overall, these findings advance our understanding of the neural correlates underlying processing of negative emotions with different levels of arousal in the context of enhanced emotional functioning in healthy aging. Notably, the results support the idea that older adults have emotion regulation networks chronically activated, in the absence of explicit induction of the goal to regulate emotions, and that this effect is specific to low arousing negative emotions.
Evaluating the Accuracy of Emergency Medicine Resident Interpretations of Abdominal CTs in Patients with Non-Traumatic Abdominal Pain

Abdominal computed tomography (CT) is widely used as a diagnostic tool in emergency medicine (EM) to accurately diagnose abdominal pain. EM residents must be able to offer preliminary interpretations of CT imaging. In this study, we evaluated the preliminary interpretation ability of a sample of emergency residents presented with adult abdominal CT images, and compared their results with those of radiology residents. We conducted a prospective observational study from November 16, 2008 to June 30, 2009. During this time, we gathered preliminary interpretations of consecutive abdominal CT made by emergency and radiology residents. We assessed the discrepancy rates of both samples by comparing their findings to the final reports from attending radiologists. A total of 884 cases were enrolled in the present study. The discrepancy rates of emergency and radiology residents were 16.7% and 12.2%, respectively. When female genital organs, peritoneum, adrenal glands, or the musculoskeletal system were abnormal, we found that emergency residents' preliminary interpretations of CT images were insufficient compared to those of radiology residents. Therefore more formal education is needed to emergency residents. If possible, the preliminary interpretations of radiology attending physicians are ideal until improving the ability of interpretations of emergency residents in abdomen CT.
Suppression of cancer relapse and metastasis by inhibiting cancer stemness

Significance Current cancer treatments ultimately fail owing to metastasis and relapse. The discovery of therapeutic approaches that counteract relapse and metastasis is, therefore, extremely important for advancing cancer medicine. Hypermalignant cancer cells, termed cancer stem cells or stemness-high cancer cells, have been isolated from patients with a variety of tumor types and found to be highly malignant, tumorigenic, and resistant to chemotherapies. Our data that BBI608, a cancer stemness inhibitor in clinical development, effectively blocks cancer relapse and metastasis in xenografted human cancers, suggest targeting cancer stemness as a novel approach to develop the next generation of cancer therapeutics to suppress cancer relapse and metastasis. Partial or even complete cancer regression can be achieved in some patients with current cancer treatments. However, such initial responses are almost always followed by relapse, with the recurrent cancer being resistant to further treatments. The discovery of therapeutic approaches that counteract relapse is, therefore, essential for advancing cancer medicine. Cancer cells are extremely heterogeneous, even in each individual patient, in terms of their malignant potential, drug sensitivity, and their potential to metastasize and cause relapse. Indeed, hypermalignant cancer cells, termed cancer stem cells or stemness-high cancer cells, that are highly tumorigenic and metastatic have been isolated from cancer patients with a variety of tumor types. Moreover, such stemness-high cancer cells are resistant to conventional chemotherapy and radiation. Here we show that BBI608, a small molecule identified by its ability to inhibit gene transcription driven by Stat3 and cancer stemness properties, can inhibit stemness gene expression and block spherogenesis of or kill stemness-high cancer cells isolated from a variety of cancer types. Moreover, cancer relapse and metastasis were effectively blocked by BBI608 in mice. These data demonstrate targeting cancer stemness as a novel approach to develop the next generation of cancer therapeutics to suppress cancer relapse and metastasis.
Neural Factorization Machines for Sparse Predictive Analytics

Many predictive tasks of web applications need to model categorical variables, such as user IDs and demographics like genders and occupations. To apply standard machine learning techniques, these categorical predictors are always converted to a set of binary features via one-hot encoding, making the resultant feature vector highly sparse. To learn from such sparse data effectively, it is crucial to account for the interactions between features. Factorization Machines (FMs) are a popular solution for efficiently using the second-order feature interactions. However, FM models feature interactions in a linear way, which can be insufficient for capturing the non-linear and complex inherent structure of real-world data. While deep neural networks have recently been applied to learn non-linear feature interactions in industry, such as the Wide&Deep by Google and DeepCross by Microsoft, the deep structure meanwhile makes them difficult to train. In this paper, we propose a novel model Neural Factorization Machine (NFM) for prediction under sparse settings. NFM seamlessly combines the linearity of FM in modelling second-order feature interactions and the non-linearity of neural network in modelling higher-order feature interactions. Conceptually, NFM is more expressive than FM since FM can be seen as a special case of NFM without hidden layers. Empirical results on two regression tasks show that with one hidden layer only, NFM significantly outperforms FM with a 7.3% relative improvement. Compared to the recent deep learning methods Wide&Deep and DeepCross, our NFM uses a shallower structure but offers better performance, being much easier to train and tune in practice.
Colorectal neoplasia in acromegaly

Since its original description by Pierre Marie in 1886, acromegaly has been known to be associated with an increased morbidity and mortality.1 Early epidemiological reviews showed this was due largely to diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory disease.1-4 In two early studies,3 4 the mean age of death was 57 years with 26% and 64%, respectively, of patients in one of these studies dying before the ages of 50 and 60 years.3 Recent reviews have suggested that these patients are also at increased risk of developing neoplasia, particularly colorectal cancer and tubulovillous adenomas,5-22 with one small prospective study reporting carcinomas in three of 12 patients (table 1). 23 This is probably because more effective and aggressive treatment of both the underlying acromegaly and its metabolic and vascular complications has meant that patients are now surviving long enough to develop malignant complications of the disease. View this table: Table 1 Reports of patients with acromegaly and colonic lesions We have recently confirmed that acromegaly predisposes to colonic neoplasia by performing a prospective colonoscopic evaluation of 155 patients.24 Colorectal carcinomas were present in 5% (eight patients) and at least one tubular adenoma in 25% (39 patients). Interestingly, only one patient with a carcinoma had gastrointestinal symptoms. Furthermore, three of the cancers occurred at the caecum, an unusual site for sporadic cancers in the non-acromegalic population. Two cancers were Dukes’ A, three Dukes’ B, two Dukes’ C, and one Dukes’ D. Although a number of factors were compared between those patients with neoplasia and those without, the only significant difference was that the former group were older than the unaffected patients (62 v 54 years) with the age of those with a carcinoma ranging from 58 to 74 years (median 64). Although there are no perfect control groups of age …
Factors that influence the position of the peri-implant soft tissues: a review.

INTRODUCTION The implantological rehabilitation of the anterior sector is one of the most demanding and complex treatments due to the necessity of obtaining an optimum esthetic result. At the level of the soft tissues, it involves obtaining the complete formation of the papilla and creating a harmonic contour of the gingival margin. OBJECTIVE A bibliographical review has been carried out on the factors that influence the final position of the soft tissues. MATERIAL AND METHODS A search has been carried out in the Pubmed database of articles written in English and Spanish. Articles that presented a clinical series of less than five patients and a monitoring of less than one year were excluded. RESULTS At the level of the papilla, there are two decisive factors that play an influential role: the formation of the biological width and the distance between the alveolar crest and the contact point. The position of the gingival margin depends mainly of the height and width of the facial bone, as well as on the biotype. The surgical technique, as well as certain prosthodontics aspects related to the implant, can influence the final position of the soft tissues. CONCLUSIONS Although, today we know much more about the factors that influence the position of the soft tissues, there are still certain aspects that should be studied more in-depth, for example the influence of the micro and macro-structure of the implant in the position of the soft tissues.
Awareness, Treatment, and Control of LDL Cholesterol Are Lower Among U.S. Adults With Undiagnosed Diabetes Versus Diagnosed Diabetes

OBJECTIVE Diabetes is often undiagnosed, resulting in incorrect risk stratification for lipid-lowering therapy. We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2005–2010 to determine the prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control of elevated LDL cholesterol (LDL-C) among U.S. adults with undiagnosed diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Fasting NHANES participants 20 years of age or older who had 10-year Framingham coronary heart disease (CHD) risk scores <20% and were free of CHD or other CHD risk equivalents (n = 5,528) were categorized as having normal glucose, impaired fasting glucose, undiagnosed diabetes, or diagnosed diabetes. High LDL-C was defined by the 2004 Adult Treatment Panel (ATP) III guidelines. RESULTS The prevalence of diagnosed and of undiagnosed diabetes was 8 and 4%, respectively. Mean LDL-C was 102 ± 2 mg/dL among those with diagnosed diabetes and 117 ± 3 mg/dL for those with undiagnosed diabetes (P < 0.001). The prevalence of high LDL-C was similar among individuals with undiagnosed (81%) and diagnosed (77%) diabetes. Among individuals with undiagnosed diabetes and high LDL-C, 38% were aware, 27% were treated, and 16% met the ATP III LDL-C goal for diabetes. In contrast, among individuals with diagnosed diabetes and high LDL-C, 70% were aware, 61% were treated, and 36% met the ATP III goal. Subjects with undiagnosed diabetes remained less likely to have controlled LDL-C after multivariable adjustment (prevalence ratio, 0.42; 95% CI, 0.23–0.80). CONCLUSIONS Improved screening for diabetes and reducing the prevalence of undiagnosed diabetes may identify individuals requiring more intensive LDL-C reduction.
A Speed-Optimized Systolic Array Processor Architecture for Spatio-Temporal 2-D IIR Broadband Beam Filters

For high-speed plane-wave filtering applications, real-time 2-D spatio-temporal linear-array broadband beam filters are required, operating at temporal frame rates in excess of hundreds of megahertz. The corresponding application specific VLSI circuits must have low critical-path latencies. A novel high-speed systolic array architecture for a first-order 2-D broadband frequency-planar spatio-temporal beam filter is proposed for this purpose and employs a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) circuit where the critical path latency is minimized by timing optimization of inter- and intra-parallel processor pipelines, together with 3-D look-ahead techniques. The method facilitates single-chip VLSI circuit implementations operating at real-time frame rates of several hundred megahertz.
Possible effect of gestational age on the detection of fetal nucleated erythrocytes in maternal blood

Maternal venous blood samples, obtained from six pregnant women, were used as a source of fetal nucleated erythrocytes (NRBC). Fetal cell enrichment was potentiated by flow sorting with the monoclonal antibodies Tf R, Leu‐4, and Leu‐M3. Single copy Y chromosomal DNA sequences were detected in samples obtained from two women at 11 and 12 weeks' gestation. Y DNA sequences were absent in a subsequent sample from one of these women at 19 weeks and in two other women at 16 and 20 weeks. All four women delivered males. Y DNA sequences were not detected in two women who delivered females. By combining these results with prior data on the detection of Y chromosomal DNA sequences in maternal blood from male‐bearing pregnancies, a relationship between gestational age and feta‐maternal transfer of NRBC is suggested.