Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mycophenolate is effective in the treatment of pemphigus vulgaris.

BACKGROUND Pemphigus vulgaris is a potentially life-threatening autoimmune disease. Although combination therapies with prednisone and azathioprine are usually effective in controlling the disease, some patients either do not respond to this treatment or show early relapses. OBJECTIVE To find out whether mycophenolate mofetil would be an effective drug in controlling pemphigus vulgaris in patients who failed initial treatment with azathioprine and prednisone. RESULTS Twelve patients who were initially diagnosed as having pemphigus vulgaris and had relapsed while undergoing treatment with azathioprine (1.5-2 mg/kg of body weight) and prednisolone (2 mg/kg of body weight) subsequently received combination therapy with mycophenolate mofetil (2 x 1 g/d) and prednisolone (2 mg/kg of body weight per day). Eleven of the 12 patients responded to therapy and showed no relapse of their disease even after tapering of the steroid dose. One patient did not respond. Toxic effects were low with only mild gastrointestinal symptoms in 5 patients and mild lymphopenia (World Health Organization grade I) in 9 patients. During the 9- to 12-month follow-up, none of the 11 patients showed reappearance of pemphigus lesions. CONCLUSION Treatment of pemphigus vulgaris with mycophenolate is a safe and effective treatment.
Limb and tail lengths in relation to substrate usage in Tropidurus lizards

A close relationship between morphology and habitat is well documented for anoline lizards. To test the generality of this relationship in lizards, snout‐vent, tail, and limb lengths of 18 species of Tropidurus (Tropiduridae) were measured and comparisons made between body proportions and substrate usage. Phylogenetic analysis of covariance by computer simulation suggests that the three species inhabiting sandy soils have relatively longer feet than do other species. Phylogenetic ANCOVA also demonstrates that the three species inhabiting tree canopies and locomoting on small branches have short tails and hind limbs. These three species constitute a single subclade within the overall Tropidurus phylogeny and analyses with independent contrasts indicate that divergence in relative tail and hind limb length has been rapid since they split from their sister clade. Being restricted to a single subclade, the difference in body proportions could logically be interpreted as either an adaptation to the clade's lifestyle or simply a nonadaptive synapomorphy for this lineage. Nevertheless, previous comparative studies of another clade of lizards (Anolis) as well as experimental studies of Sceloporus lizards sprinting on rods of different diameters support the adaptive interpretation. J. Morphol. 248:151–164, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Status of Homeless Population in Urban Ethiopia : A Case Study of Amhara Region

Present work is an attempt to describe the socio-economic status of homeless people. It was conducted in Bahir Dar city of Amhara region with objectives to identify demographic characteristics and socio-economic status of the homeless population, and to describe problems faced by homeless people. On basis of random sampling four kebeles were selected where using purposive sampling 120 homeless households were sampled. The findings show that 80% homeless people arrived from hinterland of the city covering 60 km distance, who were mainly orthodox Christians and Muslims, nearly 80% were either illiterate or having only primary education. They performed economic activities as casual/daily labour, restaurant, hotel workers, housemaids, catching fish, selling agriitems and pity trades. They passed their live in rented houses, slums and along the roads where civic amenities were either absent or measurable.
Determinants of client outcomes in self-help agencies.

OBJECTIVE This study assessed the relationship between the outcomes of clients of client-run self-help agencies and attendance at the agency, satisfaction with the agency, psychological disability, and organizationally mediated empowerment, that is, the provision of opportunities for clients to meaningfully participate in decisions about their care and the care of others in the agency. The outcomes assessed were independent social functioning, assisted social functioning, and personal empowerment. METHODS A total of 255 long-term users of four self-help agencies were interviewed at baseline and six months later. Univariate descriptive analyses as well as t tests describing changes in outcomes were conducted. The relationship of each of the four determinants to the three outcomes, after controlling for baseline status on the given outcome and other covariates, was assessed with structural modeling using Amos software. RESULTS On average, personal empowerment among the clients of the self-help agencies increased, independent social functioning remained the same, and assisted social functioning decreased during the six-month follow-up period. Multivariate analyses showed a positive association between organizationally mediated empowerment and all three outcomes. CONCLUSIONS The significant ingredient promoting positive outcomes for clients of self-help agencies appears to be the provision of opportunities for clients to meaningfully participate in decisions about their care and the care of others in the organization.
Multiple structural types of gap junctions in mouse lens.

Gap junctions in the epithelium and superficial fiber cells from young mice were examined in lenses prepared by rapid-freezing, and processed for freeze-substitution and freeze-fracture electron microscopy. There appeared to be three structural types of gap junction: one type between epithelial cells and two types between fiber cells. Epithelial gap junctions seen by freeze-substitution were approximately 20 nm thick and consistently associated with layers of dense material lying along both cytoplasmic surfaces. Fiber gap junctions, in contrast, were 15-16 nm (type 1) or 17-18 nm thick (type 2), and had little associated cytoplasmic material. Type 1 fiber gap junctions were extensive in flat expanses of cell membrane and had a thin, discontinuous central lamina, whereas type 2 fiber gap junctions were associated with the ball-and-socket domains and exhibited a dense, continuous central lamina. Both types of fiber gap junction had a diffuse arrangement of junctional intramembrane particles, whereas particles and pits of epithelial gap junctions were in a tight, hexagonal configuration. The type 2 fiber gap junctions, however, had a larger particle size (approximately 9 nm) than the type 1 (approximately 7.5 nm). In addition, a large number of junctional particles typified the E-faces of both fiber types but not the epithelial type of gap junction. Gap junctions between fiber and epithelial cells had structural features of type 1 fiber gap junctions. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Do Word Clues Suffice in Detecting Spam and Phishing?

– Some commercial antispam and anti-phishing products prohibit email from “blacklisted” sites that they claim send spam and phishing email, while allowing email claiming to be from “whitelisted” sites they claim are known not to send it. This approach tends to unfairly discriminate against smaller and less-known sites, and would seem to be anti-competitive. An open question is whether other clues to spam and phishing would suffice to identify it. We report on experiments we have conducted to compare different clues for automated detection tools. Results show that word clues were by far the best clues for spam and phishing, although a little bit better performance could be obtained by supplementing word clues with a few others like the time of day the email was sent and inconsistency in headers. We also compared different approaches to combining clues to spam such as Bayesian reasoning, case-based reasoning, and neural networks; Bayesian reasoning performed the best. Our conclusion is that Bayesian reasoning on word clues is sufficient for antispam software and that blacklists and whitelists are unnecessary.
Establishment and characterization of an Ostrinia nubilalis cell line, and its response to ecdysone agonists

SummaryA cell line derived from embryonic tissues of the European corn borer, Ostrinia nubilalis (UMC-OnE), was established in EX-CELL 401 medium containing 10% fetal bovine serum. The cells grew in suspension, and were mainly spherical in shape. The cell doubling times at the 17th and 79th passages were 56 and 36 h, respectively. DNA amplification fingerprinting showed that the DNA profile of the OnE cell line was different from that of the southwestern corn borer, Diatraea grandiosella (UMC-DgE), and that of the cotton bollworm, Helicoverpa zea (BCIRL-HZ-AM1). The OnE cell line was responsive to treatments of 20-hydroxyecdysone and the ecdysone agonists, methoxyfenozide (RH-2485) and tebufenozide (RH-5992). These compounds caused similar effects on the cells, which included cell clumping and decreased cell proliferation. The clumps were observed on the third day of incubation, and became larger after 7 d of incubation. After 168 h of incubation, methoxyfenozide and tebufenozide were 35 and 11 times more effective, respectively, in inhibiting proliferation of the OnE cells than was 20-hydroxyecdysone.
DUALITY FOR NONLINEAR FRACTIONAL PROGRAMMING INVOLVING GENERALIZED ρ-SEMILOCALLY b-PREINVEX FUNCTIONS

We consider a nonlinear fractional programming problem with inequality constraints, where the functions involved are ρ-semilocally b-preinvex, ρ-semilocally explicitly b-preinvex, ρ-semilocally quasi b-preinvex, ρ-semilocally pseudo bpreinvex and ρ-semi-locally strongly pseudo b-preinvex functions. Necessary optimality conditions are obtained in terms of the right derivative of a function along one direction. Wolfe and Mond-Weir type duals are associated, and weak, direct and strict converse duality are established. Our results generalize those obtained by Lyall, Suneja and Aggarwal [7], Patel [9], Stancu-Minasian [14], [16] and Stancu-Minasian and Andreea Mădălina Stancu [17], [18].
Molecular phylogenetic studies of Brassica, rorippa, arabidopsis and allied genera based on the internal transcribed spacer region of 18S-25S rDNA.

The phylogenetic relationships of nine genera in four tribes of the family Brassicaceae were estimated from the sequences of the internal transcribed spacer region (ITS) of the 18S-25S nuclear ribosomal DNA. The entire ITS region of 16 accessions belonging to 10 species of seven genera was sequenced. Eight published sequences of Brassicaceae were also used. A total of 27 sequences were included in this study; four of them were found to be pseudogenes. Both the neighbor-joining and the parsimony trees suggest that the nine genera can be divided into three groups: (1) Arabidopsis, Cardaminopsis, Capsella, and Lepidium; (2) Rorippa and Cardamine; and (3) Brassica, Sinapis, and Raphanus. In contradiction to the proposal that Cardaminopsis and Arabidopsis be put into an expanded tribe Arabideae, our data show that these two genera are more closely related to Capsella and Lepidium (tribe Lepidieae) than to Rorippa and Cardamine (tribe Arabideae). Further, our data show that within the tribe Brassiceae, Raphanus is more closely related to B. nigra than to the B. oleracea/B. rapa clade. This result is in agreement with the nuclear data obtained in several studies, but is in conflict with the RFLP data of mitochondrial and chloroplast DNA. As pointed out by previous authors, it is possible that Raphanus is a hybrid between the B. nigra and B. oleracea/B. rapa lineages with the latter as the maternal parent.
Electromagnetic Wave Scattering from Rough Penetrable Layers

We consider scattering of time-harmonic electromagnetic waves from an unbounded penetrable dielectric layer mounted on a perfectly conducting infinite plate. This model describes for instance propagation of monochromatic light through dielectric photonic assemblies mounted on a metal plate. We give a variational formulation for the electromagnetic scattering problem in a suitable Sobolev space of functions defined in an unbounded domain containing the dielectric structure. Further, we derive a Rellich identity for a solution to the variational formulation. For simple material configurations and under suitable non-trapping and smoothness conditions, this integral identity allows to prove an a-priori estimate for such a solution. A-priori estimates for solutions to more complicated material configurations are then shown using a perturbation approach. While the estimates derived from the Rellich identity show that the electromagnetic rough surface scattering problem has at most one solution, a limiting absorption argument finally implies existence of a solution to the problem.
Cancers of the young population in Brunei Darussalam.

BACKGROUND Globally, the overall incidence of cancer is increasing as a result of ageing populations and changing lifestyles. Cancer is one of the leading causes of death, especially in the developed nations. Cancers affecting the young population are generally considered uncommon. This study assessed the demography and trends of cancers of the young in Brunei Darussalam, a small and developing Southeast Asia nation. MATERIALS AND METHODS All patients diagnosed with cancers between 2000 and 2012 were identified from the cancer registry maintained by the State Histopathology Laboratory. Cancers of the young was defined as any cancers diagnosed under the age of 40 years. Demographic data and the type of cancers were collected and analysed using SPSS Statistics 17.0. RESULTS Among the 6,460 patients diagnosed with cancer over the study period, 18.7% (n=1,205) were categorized as young with an overall decline in the proportion from 26.6% in 2000 to 18.8% in 2012 (p<0.001 for trend). Among all cancers of the young, the most common systems affected were gynecological (24.1%), hematological/lymphatic (15.8%), subcutaneous/dermatological/ musculoskeletal (10.5%), breast (10.5%) and gastrointestinal (9.9%). Overall, among the different systems, neurological (54.9%) had the highest proportion of cancers of the young followed by gynecological/reproductive (30.6%), hematological/ lymphatic (39.9%), endocrine (38.7%), subcutaneous/dermatological/ musculoskeletal (22.3%) and the head and neck region (20.1%). There was a female predominance (66.9%) and the incidence was significantly higher among the Malays (20.1%) and expatriates (25.1%) groups compared to the Chinese (10.7%) and indigenous (16.8%) groups (p<0.001 for trend). CONCLUSIONS Cancers of the young (<40 years) accounted for almost a fifth of all cancers in Brunei Darussalam with certain organ systems more strongly affected. There was a female preponderance in all racial groups. Over the years, there has been a decline in the overall proportion of cancers of the young. Selective screening programs should nevertheless be considered.
Discounting and VBM

Adolescence is a period of significant development in cognition, behavior, and the brain. Neural development during human adolescence involves highly coordinated and sequenced events, characterized by both progressive and regressive processes. In this study we were interested in the emergence of self-control as indexed by impulsivity, and the malleability to change their own preferences, a trait linked to pro-social behavior. We used a computationally derived measure of impulsivity based on an inter-temporal choice task, to examine how its trajectory over adolescence related to maturational morphological brain changes estimated by voxel based morphometry (VBM). We observed a global decrease in grey matter volume over the course of adolescence. Over and above these changes greater impulsivity as indexed in a higher self-discounting parameter was linked to greater grey matter volume within right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC). Likewise we observed that greater choice stochasticity, indexed by a higher decision-variability parameter (reflecting more “noisy” and “exploratory” choices) was linked to greater grey matter volume within bilateral dorsal striatum. We interpret these findings as suggestive that delay in cortical maturation within impulsivity-related brain areas, possibly linked to sluggish neuronal pruning, is a key mediator of impulsivity. Finally, the ability to shift towards other’s behavior was positively correlated to grey matter volume within right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). This result seems to contradict previous findings but does not; DLPFC undergoes a normal pruning across adolescence, however the more grey matter participants had at the onset of the puberty, the more malleable were in shifting towards other’s behaviour. This finding supports the idea that pro-social traits are developed in childhood.
Chern-Simons Terms on Noncommutative Branes

We write down couplings of the fields on a single BPS Dp-brane with noncommutative world-volume coordinates to the RR-forms in type II theories, in a manifestly background independent way. This generalises the usual Chern-Simons action for a commutative Dp-brane. We show that the noncommutative Chern-Simons terms can be mapped to Myers terms on a collection of infinitely many D-instantons. We also propose Chern-Simons couplings for unstable non-BPS branes, and show that condensation of noncommutative tachyons on these branes leads to the correct Myers terms on the decay products.
Noninvasive Measurement of Cerebral Blood Flow in Adults Using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy and Indocyanine Green: A Pilot Study

This pilot study was designed to determine the feasibility of measuring cerebral blood flow noninvasively after an intravenous bolus of indocyanine green using near-infrared spectroscopy and pulse dye–densitometry. Feasibility aside, this study did not attempt to validate the measured values of cerebral blood flow against an established method of measurement. Twelve healthy volunteers were investigated after peripheral intravenous injection of indocyanine green. Arterial and cerebral changes in indocyanine green concentration were measured using pulse dye–densitometry and near-infrared spectroscopy, respectively. Two methods of calculating cerebral blood flow were used, and a blood flow index was also estimated. Absolute cerebral blood flow was calculated using a modification of the Fick principle and a deconvolution algorithm to derive the impulse residue function. Mean (range) estimated cerebral blood flow for the Fick method was 8.2 mL/100 g/min (4.2–16.2 mL/100 g/min) and 8.3 mL/100 g/min (4.7–15.3 mL/100 g/min) for the impulse residue function method. The impulse residue function method provided a more precise intrasubject estimation of cerebral blood flow compared with the modified Fick principle, with a coefficient of variation of 10.1% versus 25.5%. The blood flow index was 8.6 mg/sec (range: 5.6–17.3 mg/sec) with an intrasubject coefficient of variation of 12.0%. Estimation of cerebral blood flow using near-infrared spectroscopy and pulse dye–densitometry can be made at the bedside after intravenous injection of indocyanine green, and the precision can be improved using a deconvolution algorithm. Notwithstanding the low values obtained for absolute cerebral blood flow, further investigation and validation of this bedside technique is warranted.
Variability in Chemical Composition and Abundance of the Rare Tertiary Relict Pinus heldreichii in Serbia

The particular significance of the whitebark pine (Pinus heldreichii Christ.) stems from the fact that it is a tertiary relict and Balkanic subendemite covering a very narrow and intermittent area in Serbia. A representative pool of 48 adult trees originating from three populations, one recently discovered natural (Population I) and two planted populations (Populations II and III) was investigated in order to evaluate the intra‐ and interpopulation variability of the essential oil of the complete fund of P. heldreichii in Serbia. In the pine‐needle‐terpene profile, 104 compounds were detected, 84 of which could be identified. Among the essential‐oil constituents, monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes dominated, comprising ca. 90% of the essential oil. The terpenic profile of Population I was characterized by a predominance of monoterpenes (e.g., limonene (1), α‐pinene, and Δ3‐carene (4)), while sesquiterpenes (e.g., germacrene D (2) and β‐caryophyllene (3)) obviously preponderated in the profile of Populations II and III. This study also demonstrated that the abundance of whitebark pines in Serbia had significantly changed over the last few decades. The number of individuals in the natural population had increased, while the number of individuals in the planted populations had decreased. Today, the whitebark pine fund in Serbia comprises less than 250 trees.
EPHB4 tyrosine‐kinase receptor expression and biological significance in soft tissue sarcoma

Soft tissue sarcomas (STS) are heterogeneous malignant tumors of mesenchymal origin. Due to low incidence and high number of different histological subtypes, their pathogenesis and thus potential targets for their therapy remain barely investigated. Several studies revealed significant higher EPHB4 expression in malignancies such as prostate and colorectal cancer showing survival advantages for these tumor cells. Therefore we studied the expression of EPHB4 in a total of 46 clinical human specimens of different STS and human fibroblasts. EPHB4 mRNA and protein expression were significantly increased in synovial sarcoma. After targeting EPHB4 in fibrosarcoma, synovial sarcoma, liposarcoma and MFH sarcoma cell lines by siRNA or by inhibition of autophosphorylation using the specific EPHB4 kinase inhibitor NVP‐BHG712 a decreased proliferation rate/vitality of synovial‐ and fibrosarcoma cells was observed. Silencing of EPHB4 significantly reduced the transmigration of synovial sarcoma cells towards fibroblasts and endothelial cells. In addition, we assessed the anti‐metastatic effect of EPHB4 inhibition in vivo by intraperitoneal administration of the EPHB4 inhibitor in an appropriate sarcoma lung metastasis xenograft model. As result 43% of NVP‐BHG712 treated mice (n = 3/7) developed pulmonary metastases whereas all control mice (n = 5) revealed lung metastases. The residual 57% of mice (n = 4/7) showed only small local tumor cell spots. Size measurements of the Vimentin positive area explained significant decrease in lung metastasis formation (p < 0.05) after EPHB4 kinase inhibition. In summary, these data provide first evidence of the importance of EPHB4 in the tumorigenesis of synovial sarcoma and present EPHB4 as a potential target in the therapy of this malignancy.
Deep Neural Networks for Syntactic Parsing of Morphologically Rich Languages

Morphologically rich languages (MRL) are languages in which much of the structural information is contained at the wordlevel, leading to high level word-form variation. Historically, syntactic parsing has been mainly tackled using generative models. These models assume input features to be conditionally independent, making difficult to incorporate arbitrary features. In this paper, we investigate the greedy discriminative parser described in (Legrand and Collobert, 2015), which relies on word embeddings, in the context of MRL. We propose to learn morphological embeddings and propagate morphological information through the tree using a recursive composition procedure. Experiments show that such embeddings can dramatically improve the average performance on different languages. Moreover, it yields state-of-the art performance for a majority of languages.