Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of severe sepsis on platelet count and their indices.

BACKGROUND Sepsis is a major disease affecting almost all organs and systems. OBJECTIVES To examine platelet count and indices (mean platelet volume (MPV) and platelet distribution width (PDW)) in severe sepsis. METHODS Patients with criteria for sepsis at a first examination by an Infectious Diseases specialist were selected. Consecutive patients who were admitted to the out-patient clinic and who were not diagnosed with any infectious disease were selected as the control group. RESULTS A total of 145 patients with sepsis and 143 patients as a control group were included in the study. MPV and PDW were significantly differentbetween sepsis patients and control group (P<0.05). Platelet count in sepsis patients was lower than control group but the difference was not significant. PDW was the unique significantly different parameter between survivors and non-survivors (p=0.001). CONCLUSION Platelet indices are important laboratory findings in the diagnosis of sepsis and severe sepsis. Severe sepsis patients who have greater than 18 % PDW levels have a higher risk of death. Therefore, PDW, which is part of an inexpensive, easily accessible and routinely performed test for almost all patients admitted to health facilities may be used for predicting mortality.
Effects of Alternate Wetting and Drying on CBR of Coir Fibre Reinforced Black Cotton Soil

Stability of any structure depends on behavior of soil under it. In case of construction in soft soil, ground improvement by soil stabilization or soil reinforcement is usually adopted. Many organic natural fibers like rice husk, sisal, jute, bamboo, palm fibre and coir fibre etc. are used for stabilization purposes and different engineering properties are determined like liquid limit, plastic limit, specific gravity, OMC, MDD, UCS, CBR etc. The coir fibre being biodegradable material will decay under extreme environmental conditions such as polluted water, contact with leachate, cycles of wetting and drying, cycles of freezing and thawing and so on. In general, life of coir fibre in soil is expected to be 8-10 years. Therefore under different environmental conditions it may degrade fast. The gain in soil strength or decrease in swelling might be lost. This aspect is not studied so far. Hence in this work this is attempted.
Predicting Psychosocial Maladjustment in Emerging Adulthood From High School Experiences of Peer Victimization

The aim of the present study was to compare recollections of sexual, physical, verbal, social, and cyber peer victimization experienced in high school in terms of depressed affect, self-esteem, and loneliness experienced in university. In all, 247 university students (70 males and 177 females; M = 20.62, SD = 2.54) completed online measures assessing retrospective accounts of their experiences of different forms of peer victimization during high school (i.e., sexual, physical, verbal, social, and cyber) and their current psychosocial adjustment (i.e., self-esteem, depressed affect, and loneliness). Three separate hierarchical multiple regressions were conducted to determine whether different indices of negative psychosocial adjustment are more strongly predicted by experiencing sexual or nonsexual forms of peer victimization. Although many university students recalled experiencing sexual peer victimization in high school at least once at an even higher percentage than verbal and social forms of peer victimization, the results of the present study suggest that social peer victimization in high school predicts higher levels of depressed affect and loneliness in university students than sexual peer victimization experienced in high school. Surprisingly, the young adults reporting higher levels of cyber peer victimization in high school were less lonely in university. Although the hypothesized relationships between each form of peer victimization and specific indices of psychosocial functioning were not consistently supported, these findings suggest that the form of peer victimization matters and may be differentially associated with well-being in emerging adulthood. It is important that future research explores how individual characteristics may further predict varied experiences of peer victimization and the long-term impact of those experiences.
Ageing of ceramics in a Hall Effect Plasma thruster

Hall Effect Thrusters (HET) constitute very promising devices for space applications. The insulators erosion phenomena of the accelerating chamber by the xenon ions exhibit a great complexity, and not only strongly affect the performances of HET, but also are the main limiting cause of their lifetime. An actinometric method has been developed to measure the HET ceramic wall erosion from means of Optical Emission Spectroscopy using the relationship between XeI, XeII and BI lines. We observed an asymmetric behavior of the re-deposits on the ceramic and on the anode of the HET. To complete this in-situ approach, the behavior and the ageing of insulators in a SPT100-ML have been studied ex-situ. Ceramic (BN-SiO2) rings constituting the channel of the HET were manufactured with inserts periodically set all around the channel wall. Simultaneously, silicon substrates were set in the channel to try to de-correlate the effects of re-deposition of products from the ceramics erosion in the channel (visible on the silicon substrates) and anode, from the microstructural and chemical changes of the ceramics (visible on the inserts) during HET working. Substrates and inserts are then analyzed with an environmental SEM.
Identification of Lactobacillus plantarum Genes That Are Induced in the Gastrointestinal Tract of Mice

ABSTRACT Lactobacillus plantarum is a flexible and versatile microorganism that inhabits a variety of environmental niches, including the human gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Moreover, this lactic acid bacterium can survive passage through the human or mouse stomach in an active form. To investigate the genetic background of this persistence, resolvase-based in vivo expression technology (R-IVET) was performed in L. plantarum WCFS1 by using the mouse GI tract as a model system. This approach identified 72 L. plantarum genes whose expression was induced during passage through the GI tract as compared to laboratory media. Nine of these genes encode sugar-related functions, including ribose, cellobiose, sucrose, and sorbitol transporter genes. Another nine genes encode functions involved in acquisition and synthesis of amino acids, nucleotides, cofactors, and vitamins, indicating their limited availability in the GI tract. Four genes involved in stress-related functions were identified, reflecting the harsh conditions that L. plantarum encounters in the GI tract. The four extracellular protein encoding genes identified could potentially be involved in interaction with host specific factors. The rest of the genes are part of several functionally unrelated pathways or encode (conserved) hypothetical proteins. Remarkably, a large number of the functions or pathways identified here have previously been identified in pathogens as being important in vivo during infection, strongly suggesting that survival rather than virulence is the explanation for the importance of these genes during host residence.
Current perspectives on the role of IL-17 in autoimmune disease

Until recently, autoimmune diseases had been categorized as either Th1- or Th2-mediated diseases. However, the discovery of a novel subset of helper T cells producing interleukin (IL)-17, ie, Th17 cells, changed this paradigm. Currently, IL-17 and Th17 cells are implicated in many autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis, and inflammatory bowel diseases. Such conclusions were initially drawn from observations in animal models of autoimmune diseases, and accumulating data from clinical research also support the involvement of IL-17 in human diseases as well. Reagents targeting Th17-related molecules have been under clinical investigation for some diseases but have not always been effective in controlling disease activity. Consistent with this, it has become evident that there are substantial differences in the development of Th17 cells and in the way they function in autoimmune diseases between humans and experimental animals. Thus, further investigation is needed before we can draw any conclusions about the importance of IL-17 and Th17 cells in human autoimmune diseases.
Coverage Performance in Multistream MIMO-ZFBF Heterogeneous Networks

We study the coverage performance of multiantenna [multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)] communications in heterogeneous networks (HetNets). Our main focus is on open-loop and multistream MIMO zero-forcing beamforming at the receiver. Network coverage is evaluated adopting tools from stochastic geometry. Besides fixed-rate transmission (FRT), we also consider adaptive-rate transmission (ART) while its coverage performance, despite its high relevance, has so far been overlooked. On the other hand, while the focus of the existing literature has solely been on the evaluation of coverage probability per stream, we target coverage probability per communication link—comprising multiple streams—which is shown to be a more conclusive performance metric in multistream MIMO systems. This, however, renders various analytical complexities rooted in statistical dependence among streams in each link. Using a rigorous analysis, we provide closed-form bounds on the coverage performance for FRT and ART. These bounds explicitly capture impacts of various system parameters including densities of BSs, SIR thresholds, and multiplexing gains. Our analytical results are further shown to cover popular closed-loop MIMO systems, such as eigen-beamforming and space-division multiple access. The accuracy of our analysis is confirmed by extensive simulations. The findings in this paper shed light on several important aspects of dense MIMO HetNets: first, increasing the multiplexing gains yields lower coverage performance; second, densifying network by installing an excessive number of low-power femto BSs allows the growth of the multiplexing gain of high-power, low-density macro-BSs without compromising the coverage performance; and third, for dense HetNets, the coverage probability does not increase with the increase of deployment densities.
A Study on Non-sparse Dictionary Learning for Pattern Classification

Dictionary learning (DL) approach has been successfully applied to many pattern classification problems. Sparse property has played an important role in the success of DL-based classification models. However, the sparsity constraints make the learning problem expensive. Recently, there has been an emerged trend in relaxing the sparsity constraints by using L2-norm constraint. The new approach has shown its advantages in both accuracy and classification time. However, the relationship between the quality of the data and the dictionary learning issues that affect the performance of the system has not been investigated. In this paper, we present a comparative study on non-sparse coding dictionary learning for pattern classification. We then propose a dictionary learning model with a non-sparsity constraint on representation coefficients using L2-norm. Our experimental results on three popular benchmark datasets for image classification show that our proposed model can outperform state-of-the-art models and be a promising approach for dictionary learning based classification.
Coverage problems in wireless sensor networks: designs and analysis

One fundamental problem in wireless sensor networks is the coverage problem, which reflects the quality of service that can be provided by a particular sensor network. The coverage problem is defined from several points of view due to a variety of sensor networks and a wide-range of their applications. Several different designs and formulations of the coverage problem have been proposed. They are subject to various topics such as types of interest regions (areas versus targets) and different network constraints, such as fault tolerance and bandwidth limitation. In this paper, we survey the state-of-the-art coverage formulations with an objective of maximising network lifetime. In particular, we present an overview and analysis of the solutions proposed in recent research literature.
Evaluation of Cerebrospinal Fluid Tau/Beta-Amyloid(42) Ratio as Diagnostic Markers for Alzheimer Disease

Background: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia. Currently, no definitive diagnostic test for AD exists. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) concentrations of amyloid β (Aβ1-42) peptides and total tau proteins (T-tau) may serve as biomarkers for AD. Aim: The objective of this study was to investigate the usefulness of CSF Aβ1-42 and T-tau analyses in the diagnosis of AD with Tunisians. Methods: We focused on three groups originating from Central Tunisian that matched in age (range 48–85): healthy controls (n = 53), AD patients (n = 93) and non-Alzheimer (nAD) dementia (n = 35) patients. Aβ1-42 and T-tau levels were measured in CSF by sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Results: The ratio of T-tau/Aβ1-42 at baseline yielded a sensitivity of 85.3% for detection of AD and the specificity was 84.8% to differentiate controls and nAD dementia. Conclusion: Our findings confirm the use of T-tau/Aβ1-42 ratio in the discrimination of AD patients from all other patients.
The impact of wiring constraints on hierarchical network performance

A unified approach, incorporating architectural and packaging issues, is necessary in the design of high performance computer networks. Clustering enables the authors to exploit the physical hierarchy imposed by packaging. Previously the authors examined the clustering of hypercube networks within the context of wiring constraints (see 1991 Int. Conf. on Parallel Processing, Aug. 1991). The authors extend their earlier work to compare the performance of hypercubes and meshes. They consider two cost constraints, bisection width and package pinout, and examine flat and clustered meshes and hypercubes. They find that the relative performance of networks depends on the chosen wiring constraint, as well as system configuration and message granularity. <<ETX>>
Smallpox during Pregnancy and Maternal Outcomes

A historical study evaluated maternal outcomes in pregnancy complicated by smallpox. The overall case fatality was estimated to be 34.3% (95% confidence interval [CI] 31.4–37.1), and the proportion of miscarriage or premature birth was estimated to be 39.9% (95% CI 36.5–43.2). Vaccination before pregnancy reduced the risk for death.
Esterase Inhibition Attribute of Grapefruit Juice Leading to a New Drug Interaction

This report describes a newly identified potential of grapefruit juice (GFJ) in mediating pharmacokinetic drug interactions due to its capability to inhibit esterase. The study demonstrates that GFJ inhibits purified porcine esterase activity toward p-nitrophenyl acetate and the prodrugs lovastatin and enalapril. In rat and human hepatic or gut S9 fractions and rat gut lumen, GFJ inhibited the hydrolysis of enalapril and lovastatin, which are known to be metabolized principally by esterases, lovastatin being metabolized also by CYP3A. In Caco-2 cells, with minimal CYP3A activity, permeability of these prodrugs was increased in the presence of GFJ. In rats, oral coadministration of GFJ or an esterase inhibitor, bis-(p-nitrophenylphosphate), with the prodrugs led to respective increases in plasma area under the curve by 70% or 57% for enalaprilat and 279% or 141% for lovastatin acid. In addition, portal vein-cannulated rats pretreated with GFJ at –15 and –2 h before lovastatin administration (10 mg/kg p.o.) as a solution, 1) in water and 2) in GFJ, showed, respectively, a 49% increase (CYP3A-inhibited) and a 116% increase (both CYP3A and gut esterase-inhibited) in the portal plasma exposure to the active acid, compared with a non-GFJ pretreatment group. Overall, along with the CYP3A inactivation by GFJ, the decreased esterase activity also played a significant role in increasing the metabolic stability and permeability of esters leading to enhancement of exposure to the active drugs in rats. These new esterase inhibition findings indicate that the potential of drug interaction between ester prodrugs and GFJ should also be considered in the clinic.
Neurotoxic Basolateral Amygdala Lesions Impair Learning and Memory But Not the Performance of Conditional Fear in Rats

We examined the influence of extensive overtraining (75 trials) on the impact of neurotoxic basolateral amygdala (BLA) lesions on Pavlovian fear conditioning in rats. As we have shown previously, pretraining BLA lesions yielded severe deficits in the acquisition of conditional freezing in rats trained with either 1 or 25 conditioning trials. However, extensive overtraining (50 or 75 trials) mitigated deficits in conditional freezing. Under these conditions the rats with BLA lesions expressed normal and robust freezing behavior, although they required at least 10 times as much training as control rats to reach this level of performance. The ability of rats with BLA lesions to acquire and express conditional freezing after extensive overtraining was modality-specific; conditional freezing in individual rats was acquired to contextual, but not acoustic, conditional stimuli. These results suggest that neural circuitry outside of the amygdala can mediate contextual fear conditioning under some conditions. In contrast to pretraining lesions, post-training BLA lesions eradicated the memory for Pavlovian fear in rats trained with either 1 or 75 trials; this deficit was not modality-specific. Together, these results reveal that impairments in the acquisition and expression of conditional fear in rats with BLA lesions are not attributable to deficits in the performance of the freezing response but are attributable to disruptions in the learning and memory of Pavlovian fear conditioning.
Expression of nma, a novel gene, inversely correlates with the metastatic potential of human melanoma cell lines and xenografts

nma, a novel gene, was isolated by using a subtractive hybridization technique in which the gene expression was compared in a panel of human melanoma cell lines with different metastatic potential. nma mRNA expression (1.5 kb) is high in poorly metastatic human melanoma cell lines and xenografts and completely absent in highly metastatic human melanoma cell lines. Fluorescence in situ hybridization combined with the analysis of a panel of human‐rodent somatic cell hybrids indicated that the nma gene is located on human chromosome 10, in the region p11.2–p12.3. Sequence analysis of nma showed no homologies with other known genes or proteins, except for several partially sequenced cDNAs. The predicted amino acid sequence suggests that the protein encoded by nma contains a transmembrane domain. Expression of nma is high in human kidney medulla, placenta and spleen, low in kidney cortex, liver, prostate and gut and absent in lung and muscle. Whereas nma is not expressed in normal skin tissue, expression is high in melanocytes and in 3 out of 11 melanoma metastases tested. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
An LMI approach to exponential stabilization of uncertain time-delay systems

This paper presents a new, sufficient condition for exponential stabilization of uncertain systems with state-delays. By using a new Lyapunov function, the condition is obtained to be delay-dependent and represented in terms of linear matrix inequalities. Unlike some existing results on exponential stability and stabilization problems of time-delay systems, our condition involves information on the degree of exponential decay rates and therefore can suggest an achievable degree of speed of stabilization. Numerical examples are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Pharmacological Evaluation and Preliminary Pharmacokinetics Studies of a New Diclofenac Prodrug without Gastric Ulceration Effect

Long-term nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) therapy has been associated with several adverse effects such as gastric ulceration and cardiovascular events. Among the molecular modifications strategies, the prodrug approach is a useful tool to discover new safe NSAIDs. The 1-(2,6-dichlorophenyl)indolin-2-one is a diclofenac prodrug which demonstrated relevant anti-inflammatory properties without gastro ulceration effect. In addition, the prodrug decreases PGE2 levels, COX-2 expression and cellular influx into peritoneal cavity induced by carrageenan treatment. Preliminary pharmacokinetic studies have shown in vivo bioconversion of prodrug to diclofenac. This prodrug is a new nonulcerogenic NSAID useful to treat inflammatory events by long-term therapy.
Truncated isoforms inhibit [ 3 H ] prazosin binding and cellular trafficking of native human α 1 A-adrenoceptors

Truncated isoforms inhibit [3H]prazosin binding and cellular trafficking of native human α1A-adrenoceptors Francis COGE! , Sophie-Pe! ne! lope GUENIN, Anne RENOUARD-TRY, Herve! RIQUE, Christine OUVRY, Nelly FABRY, Philippe BEAUVERGER, Jean-Paul NICOLAS, Jean-Pierre GALIZZI, Jean A. BOUTIN and Emmanuel CANET Institut de Recherches Servier, Division de Pharmacologie Mole! culaire et Cellulaire, 125 chemin de Ronde, 78 290 Croissy sur Seine, France
Relation between Overweight/Obesity and Self-Rated Health Among Adolescents in Germany. Do Socio-Economic Status and Type of School Have an Impact on That Relation?

This study investigates the relation between overweight/obesity and self-rated health (SRH), and whether this relation varies by social factors. Data was taken from the German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents (KiGGS, baseline 2003‒2006). For the definition of overweight and obesity, body mass index was calculated based on standardized height and weight measurements. SRH of adolescents (n = 6813, 11‒17 years) was raised with the question: “How would you describe your health in general? ” The response categories were “very good”, “good”, “fair”, “poor”, and “very poor”. We dichotomized these responses into: “very good/good” vs. “fair/poor/very poor”. Socio-economic status (SES) in the family of origin and adolescents’ school type were analyzed as modifying factors. Prevalence and age-adjusted odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals were calculated by binary logistic regression models. We found that overweight and obese boys and obese girls reported fair to very poor SRH more often than their normal weight peers, and that these differences were more apparent in early than late adolescence. In addition, the relation between obesity and SRH was similarly strong in all sub-groups, but there was seldom a relation between overweight and SRH. In summary, the results show that obesity is linked to poor SRH regardless of SES and school type, while the relation between overweight and SRH varies by social factors among adolescents.