Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In vitro characterization of a novel murine oligodendrocyte precursor cell line and its infection with Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus

Infection of susceptible mice with Theiler’s murine encephalomyelitis virus (TMEV) represents an important animal model to study the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis (MS). Similar to MS, the TMEV-induced demyelinating disease is initiated by immune-mediated processes; remyelination is rarely observed and usually incomplete. Moreover, proliferating oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) are increased in number in and outside the demyelinating plaques. OPCs are of particular relevance because they are the potential source of new myelin-forming oligodendrocytes in adult mammals. So far, it is not known, whether OPCs are targeted by TMEV, and if yes, how they respond to the infection. In the present study, a novel OPC cell line, termed BO-1, was created from SJL/J TMEV-susceptible mice by spontaneous immortalization. The aims of the study were (1) to characterize the antigenic phenotype and the differentiation capacity of BO-1 cells in vitro, (2) to investigate whether TMEV in vitro targets BO-1 cells displaying a specific antigenic phenotype, and (3) to determine the effects of TMEV infection on the differentiation capacity of BO-1 cells in vitro. BO-1 cells maintained in B104-conditioned medium displayed a bi- to multipolar morphology and expressed several typical antigenic markers for primary OPCs in vitro. Although BO-1 cells did not respond to thyroid hormone treatment, differentiation towards oligodendrocytes and type-2 astrocytes was promoted by retinoic acid and fetal calf serum, respectively. Moreover, co-culturing of BO-1 cells with primary astrocytes further increased the expression of oligodendrocytic markers, supporting the idea that the immortalized BO-1 cells retained several characteristics of primary OPCs. TMEV in vitro preferentially infected BO-1 cells expressing early OPC markers, such as A2B5 and NG2. Moreover, TMEV infection inhibited differentiation of BO-1 cells into oligodendrocytes. This observation may help to explain the limited remyelination observed in TMEV-IDD in vivo. Further studies focusing on the cellular and molecular aspects of TMEV infection of BO-1 cells are needed to gain a better understanding of virus mediated alterations of cellular differentiation.
Adults With Chronic Health Conditions Originating in Childhood: Inpatient Experience in Children's Hospitals

OBJECTIVE: To describe the rate of increase of the population of adults seeking care as inpatients in children's hospitals over time. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We analyzed data from January 1, 1999, to December 31, 2008, from patients hospitalized at 30 academic children's hospitals, including growth rates according to age group (pediatric: aged <18 years; transitional: aged 18–21 years; or adult: aged >21 years) and disease. RESULTS: There were 3 343 194 hospital discharges for 2 143 696 patients. Transitional patients represented 2.0%, and adults represented 0.8%, totaling 59 974 patients older than 18 years. The number of unique patients, admissions, patient-days, and charges increased in all age groups over the study period and are projected to continue to increase. Resource use was disproportionately higher in the older ages. The growth of transitional patients exceeded that of others, with 6.9% average annual increase in discharges, 7.6% in patient-days, and 15% in charges. Chronic conditions occurred in 87% of adults compared with 48% of pediatric patients. Compared with pediatric patients, the rates of increase of inpatient-days increased significantly for transitional age patients with cystic fibrosis, malignant neoplasms, and epilepsy, and for adults with cerebral palsy. Annual growth rates of charges increased for transitional and adult patients for all diagnoses except cystic fibrosis and sickle cell disease. CONCLUSIONS: The population of adults with diseases originating in childhood who are hospitalized at children's hospitals is increasing, with varying disease-specific changes over time. Our findings underscore the need for proactive identification of strategies to care for adult survivors of pediatric diseases.
Analysis of Significant Decrease in Platelet Count and Thrombocytopenia, Graded According to NCI-CTC, as Prognostic Risk Markers for Mortality and Morbidity

Background: In adult intensive care unit, both thrombocytopenia (TP) and ≥30% decrease in platelet count are associated with increased mortality, morbidity, and length of stay (LOS). The above mentioned observations have not been well reported in pediatric population. National Cancer Institute (NCI) common terminology criteria (CTC) is mainly used to report the adverse effects of cancer therapy, but not for grading TP. Method: Retrospective review of medical records was done for 204 patients. TP was graded according to the NCI-CTC. Each grade of TP and significant decrease (≥30%) in platelet count were studied for their association with LOS, mortality, and morbidity such as hospital-acquired pneumonia and positive blood culture. Four study groups were formed according to presence and/or absence of TP and significant decrease in platelet count. These groups were also studied for their association with mortality and LOS. Results: Both ≥30% decrease in platelets and TP (58.3% and 25% of patients, respectively) were associated with higher mortality and longer LOS (P<0.0001). Both have association also with infection. There was a trend of increased mortality with higher TP grade. Grade 4 TP was significantly associated with increased LOS (P=0.0001). When compared with neither group, groups with positive significant decrease were associated with higher mortality and LOS, even in the absence of TP. Conclusions: We can use the NCI-CTC for classification of TP, which would enable the standardization of TP grading system. A ≥30% decrease in platelet count, even without TP, is a prognostic risk marker for mortality, morbidity, and LOS
SearchQA: A New Q&A Dataset Augmented with Context from a Search Engine

We publicly release a new large-scale dataset, called SearchQA, for machine comprehension, or question-answering. Unlike recently released datasets, such as DeepMind CNN/DailyMail and SQuAD, the proposed SearchQA was constructed to reflect a full pipeline of general question-answering. That is, we start not from an existing article and generate a question-answer pair, but start from an existing question-answer pair, crawled from J! Archive, and augment it with text snippets retrieved by Google. Following this approach, we built SearchQA, which consists of more than 140k question-answer pairs with each pair having 49.6 snippets on average. Each question-answer-context tuple of the SearchQA comes with additional meta-data such as the snippet's URL, which we believe will be valuable resources for future research. We conduct human evaluation as well as test two baseline methods, one simple word selection and the other deep learning based, on the SearchQA. We show that there is a meaningful gap between the human and machine performances. This suggests that the proposed dataset could well serve as a benchmark for question-answering.
Polyadenylation and deadenylation of maternal mRNAS during oocyte growth and maturation in the mouse

We previously showed that, during mouse oocyte maturation, specific maternal mRNAs (actins) are deadenylated, while others (hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase:HPRT) are adenylated. As in other systems, these changes can be correlated with changes in transiational activities. Maturation‐specific polyadenylation in Xenopus depends on the presence of a U‐rich cytoplasmic polyadenylation element (CPE) close to the 3′ end of the RNA. RNAs that lack CPEs appear to be deadenylated by default when meiosis resumes. We show here that this default program also applies to maturing mouse oocytes. Microinjected β‐ and γ‐actin 3′ UTR (untranslated region) transcripts lacking CPEs but including polyA tails (100–200 N) behave as endogenous maternal actin mRNAs and are at deadenylated by maturing oocytes. “Nonsense” transcripts taht do not include CPEs, but that do contain polyA tails, are also deadenylated. β‐ and γ‐Actin 3′ UTRs with short polyA tails (50–80 N) are stable and exhibit no detectable change in adenylation when injected into growing, fullgrown, or maturing oocytes. In contrast, HPRT 3′ UTRs, which include the CPE UUUUAAAU and a short polyA tail (50 N), are polyadenylated during maturation. HPRT 3′ UTR transcripts with long polyA tails (100–200 N) are more extensively deadenylated by growing and full‐grown oocytes that retain germinal vesicles than by maturing oocytes. The presence of CPEs may be required for polyA tail shortening and translational inactivation of stable mRNAs during oocyte growth and subsequent selective readenylation and translation during meiotic maturation. We propose that the absence of CPEs on maternal mRNAs translationally active during oogenesis enables them to retain polyA tails of sufficient length for recruitment onto polysomes and later allows for their deadenylation by default and removal from polysomes after meiosis resumes. © 1994 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Fluctuation-dissipation relation for semiclassical cosmology.

Using the concept of open systems where the classical geometry is treated as the system and the quantum matter field as the environment, we derive a fluctuation-dissipation theorem for semiclassical cosmology. This theorem, which exists under very general conditions for dissipations in the dynamics of the system, and the noise and fluctuations in the environment, can be traced to the formal mathematical relation between the dissipation and noise kernels of the influence functional depicting the open system, and is ultimately a consequence of the unitarity of the closed system. In particular, for semiclassical gravity, it embodies the back reaction effect of matter fields on the dynamics of spacetime. The back reaction equation derivable from the influence action is in the form of an Einstein-Langevin equation. It contains a dissipative term in the equation of motion for the dynamics of spacetime and a noise term related to the fluctuations of particle creation in the matter field. Using the well-studied model of a quantum scalar field in a Bianchi type-I universe we illustrate how this Langevin equation and the noise term are derived and show how the creation of particles and the dissipation of anisotropy during the expansion of the Universe can be understood as a manifestation of this fluctuation-dissipation relation.
Fast and Accurate Time Series Classification with WEASEL

Time series (TS) occur in many scientific and commercial applications, ranging from earth surveillance to industry automation to the smart grids. An important type of TS analysis is classification, which can, for instance, improve energy load forecasting in smart grids by detecting the types of electronic devices based on their energy consumption profiles recorded by automatic sensors. Such sensor-driven applications are very often characterized by (a) very long TS and (b) very large TS datasets needing classification. However, current methods to time series classification (TSC) cannot cope with such data volumes at acceptable accuracy; they are either scalable but offer only inferior classification quality, or they achieve state-of-the-art classification quality but cannot scale to large data volumes. In this paper, we present WEASEL (Word ExtrAction for time SEries cLassification), a novel TSC method which is both fast and accurate. Like other state-of-the-art TSC methods, WEASEL transforms time series into feature vectors, using a sliding-window approach, which are then analyzed through a machine learning classifier. The novelty of WEASEL lies in its specific method for deriving features, resulting in a much smaller yet much more discriminative feature set. On the popular UCR benchmark of 85 TS datasets, WEASEL is more accurate than the best current non-ensemble algorithms at orders-of-magnitude lower classification and training times, and it is almost as accurate as ensemble classifiers, whose computational complexity makes them inapplicable even for mid-size datasets. The outstanding robustness of WEASEL is also confirmed by experiments on two real smart grid datasets, where it out-of-the-box achieves almost the same accuracy as highly tuned, domain-specific methods.
Pediatric Data Sharing in Genomic Research: Attitudes and Preferences of Parents

OBJECTIVE: In the United States, data from federally funded genomics studies are stored in national databases, which may be accessible to anyone online (public release) or only to qualified researchers (restricted release). The availability of such data exposes participants to privacy risk and limits the ability to withdraw from research. This exposure is especially challenging for pediatric participants, who are enrolled in studies with parental permission. The current study examines genomic research participants’ attitudes to explore differences in data sharing (DS) preferences between parents of pediatric patients and adult patients. METHODS: A total of 113 parents of pediatric patients and 196 adult participants from 6 genomics studies were randomly assigned to 3 experimental consent forms. Participants were invited to a follow-up structured interview exploring DS preferences, study understanding, and attitudes. Descriptive analyses and regression models were built on responses. RESULTS: Most parents (73.5%) and adult participants (90.3%) ultimately consented to broad public release. However, parents were significantly more restrictive in their data release decisions, not because of understanding or perceived benefits of participation but rather autonomy and control. Parents want to be more involved in the decision about DS and are significantly more concerned than adult participants about unknown future risks. CONCLUSIONS: Parents have the same altruistic motivations and grasp of genomics studies as adult participants. However, they are more concerned about future risks to their child, which probably motivates them to choose more restrictive DS options, but only when such options are made available.
Sigma-Delta Quantization of Geometrically Uniform Finite Frames

We consider sigma-delta quantization of cyclic geometrically uniform (CGU) finite frames, family of frames containing finite harmonic frames (both in CM and RM). For first- and second-order sigma-delta quantizers, we establish that the reconstruction minimum squares error (MSE) behaves as 1/r2 where r denotes the frame redundancy. This result is shown to be true both under the quantization model used in J.J. Benedetto et al. (2004) as well as under the widely used additive white quantization noise assumption. For the widely used L-th order noise shaping filter G(z) = (1 - z-1)L, we show that the MSE behaves as 1/r2 irrespectively of the filter order L. More importantly, we prove also that in the case of tight and normalized CGU frame, when the frame length is too large compared to the filter order, the reconstruction MSE can decay as faster as O(1/r2L+1).
Nanostructured kesterite (Cu2ZnSnS4) for applications in thermoelectric devices

Kesterite (Cu2ZnSnS4, CZTS) powders were produced by reactive high-energy milling, starting from stoichiometric mixtures of the elemental components. CZTS forms fine crystals with a cubic structure, which evolves to the stable tetragonal form after thermal treatment. Tablets were produced by cold pressing of the ball milled powder, and sintered up to 660 °C. Seebeck coefficient, electrical resistivity, and thermal diffusivity were measured on the sintered tablets, pointing out the positive effect of CZTS nanostructure and of the rather large fraction of porosity: thermal conductivity is rather low (from ~0.8 W/(m K) at 20 °C to ~0.42 W/(m K) at 500 °C), while electrical conduction is not seriously hindered (electrical resistivity from ~8500 µΩ m at 40 °C to ~2000 µΩ m at 400 °C). Preliminary results of thermoelectric behavior are promising.
Simple tests of ventilatory capacity in children with cystic fibrosis. I. Clinical and radiological findings in 85 patients. II. Three-year follow-up on 50 patients.

Reports of simple pulmonary function tests in cystic fibrosis first appeared in 1954, when West, Levin, and Di Sant' Agnese showed a characteristic finding in 6 patients, aged 12-16 years, of difficulty in moving air rapidly in or out of the lungs. Cook et al. (1957) studied the lung volume in 53 patients, aged 1-31 years, and found that 810% of those diagnosed as having cystic fibrosis were found to have significant alteration in one or more of the measurements made. A further study (Cook et al., 1959) of 64 patients, aged 6-25 years, over a period of three years related clinical evaluation with results of pulmonary function studies. The vital capacity was found to be below normal in all but 10 patients and the residual volumes increased in 28. Their findings showed no obvious trend, and the authors considered that the duration of the study might have been too short. In 1963, Polgar, Chernick, and Toft reported a longitudinal study over a period of 6 months of pulmonary function in 14 children with cystic fibrosis. They concluded that extreme variability was the limiting factor in evaluating patients with cystic fibrosis by pulmonary function tests. A recent study of 20 children by Beier et al. (1966) showed a pattern of obstructive pulmonary disease, with evidence of increasing airway obstruction paralleling the increase in clinical severity. Correlation between clinical severity and individual pulmonary function tests was also found. The prognosis in cystic fibrosis depends almost entirely on the course of the pulmonary lesion. Clinical and radiological assessment of children with cystic fibrosis attending the Queen Elizabeth Hospital shows that a proportion of those treated intensively for lower respiratory infections from an early age is free or almost free from chronic pulmon-
Molecular theory of hydrophobic mismatch between lipids and peptides

Effects of the mismatch between the hydrophobic length d, of transmembrane alpha helices of integral proteins and the hydrophobic thickness, Dh, of the membranes they span are studied theoretically utilizing a microscopic model of lipids. In particular, we examine the dependence of the period of a lamellar phase on the hydrophobic length and volume fraction of a rigid, integral, peptide. We find that the period decreases when a short peptide, such that d Dh, is inserted. The effect is due to the replacement of extensible lipid tails by rigid peptide. As the peptide length is increased, the lamellar period continues to increase, but at a slower rate, and can eventually decrease. The amount of peptide which fails to incorporate and span the membrane increases with the magnitude of the hydrophobic mismatch |d−Dh|. We explicate these behaviors which are all in accord with experiment. Predictions are made for t.
Occupational contact dermatitis among rubber workers

The occurrence of occupational contact dermatitis among workers in a rubber factory from 1976 to 1980 was studied. Insurance compensation was paid to 50 workers with dermatitis. 21 of the cases were allergic and 27 toxic contact dermatitis, giving a contact dermatitis frequency of 5.6/1000 workers. Paraphenylenediamine compounds were the main cause of allergic contact dermatitis and solvents the main cause of toxic contact dermatitis.
Effects of caregiver burden on quality of life and coping strategies utilized by caregivers of adult patients with inflammatory bowel disease

Background While previous studies have evaluated caregivers’ quality of life (QOL), burnout, and stress amongst across a variety of chronic illnesses, few such studies have been related to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Methods Caregivers accompanying adult patients with IBD at 6 tertiary centers were enrolled. They completed self-administered surveys related to QOL and burden, including the QOL scale, Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI), and Brief COPE. Results Of the 200 consecutive caregivers asked to participate, 162 (81.0%) enrolled and completed the survey. A total of 43.8% caregivers reported having a high level of burden as measured by the ZBI. Factors predictive of a high burden included female gender, younger age of caregiver, household income <$30,000, having more than one dependent in the household, caring for a patient with active disease and higher disease severity, and a personal history of psychiatric illness. Over one third of the caregivers reported a maladaptive coping pattern. The caregiver factors predictive of maladaptive coping skills included male gender, lack of involvement in a support group, a personal history of psychiatric illness, and living in a different household from the patient. Conclusions A large proportion of caregivers of IBD patients experience a high level of caregiver burden and reduced QOL. Participation in religious/spiritual activities and support groups appeared to reduce perceived caregiver burden and improve QOL. This study suggests there is an unmet need to address the caregiver burden of adult IBD patients.
1H-MR spectroscopy differentiates mild cognitive impairment from normal brain aging

This study aimed to characterize the white matter biochemical profile of healthy elderly subjects, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) subjects, and early Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. We used proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) to measure myo-inositol, creatine, N-acetylaspartate (NAA) and choline levels from a volume of interest located in the paratrigonal white matter bilaterally. A significantly higher myo-inositol/creatine ratio was found in MCI subjects and AD patients than in controls. The NAA/creatine ratio was reduced in AD patients in the left hemisphere compared to control subjects. The choline/creatine ratio was not significantly different among the three groups. These data suggest that MCI is different from normal brain aging, having a white matter biochemical pattern similar to AD.
Morbidity and mortality patterns of admissions into the Special Care Baby Unit of University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, Gwagwalada, Nigeria.

OBJECTIVE To determine the morbidity and mortality patterns of patients admitted into the Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) of the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital (UATH), Gwagwalada, Nigeria. METHOD A retrospective analysis of records of patients admitted into the SCBU of the UATH over an 18 month period ofJanuary 2005 to June 2006 was carried out. RESULT A total of 654 patients were admitted into SCBU of UATH during the review period, there were 351 (53.7%) males, and 303 (46.3%) females given a male to female ratio of 1.2:1. The four leading causes of admissions were low birth weight (LBW) 32.7%, neonatal sepsis (NNS) 19.1%, severe birth asphyxia (SBA) 12.7%, and neonatal jaundice (NNJ) 8.7%. Eighty one (37.9%) of the LBW were term and small for gestational (SGA), while 133 (62.1%) were preterm. Of the 87 (13.3%) deaths recorded during the review period, SBA (21.7%), LBW (20.1%), neonatal meningitis (15.4%),and NNS (11.2%) were the four leading causes of preventable deaths, while congenital abnormalities (20.0%) was the commonest cause of non-preventable conditions. 71.2% of all deaths occurred within the first 72 hours of admission, while 57.7% of such deaths were babies of mothers from low socio-economic background. CONCLUSION Patterns of admissions and mortality into SCBU of UATH were comparable to studies elsewhere, and points to preventable conditions as the leading causes of such admissions and deaths. Efforts to reduce LBW, SBA, NNS and NNJ through enhancement of good antenatal and delivery services, as well as improvement in the facilities in the unit will assist in death reduction. Health education and economic empowerment especially of women will be an added advantage.