Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1

Multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1 (MEN1) is characterized by the occurrence of parathyroid, pancreatic islet and anterior pituitary tumors. Some patients may also develop carcinoid tumors, adrenocortical tumors, facial angiofibromas, collagenomas, and lipomas. MEN1 is an autosomal-dominant disorder, due to mutations in the tumor suppressor gene MEN1, which encodes a 610 amino acid protein, menin. Thus, the finding of MEN1 in a patient has important implications for family members because first-degree relatives have a 50% risk of developing the disease and can often be identified by MEN1 mutational analysis. Patients with MEN1 have a decreased life-expectancy and the outcomes of current treatments, which are generally similar to that for the respective tumors occurring in non-MEN1 patients, are not as successful because of multiple tumors, which may be larger, more aggressive, and resistant to treatment, and the concurrence of metastases. The prognosis for MEN1 patients might be improved by pre-symptomatic tumor detection and undertaking treatment specific for MEN1-tumors. Thus, it is recommended that MEN1 patients and their families should be cared for by multi-disciplinary teams comprising relevant specialists with experience in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with endocrine tumors.
Capital structure , asymmetric information and risk

We argue that asymmetric information about both the value and risk of investments transforms the adverse selection logic underlying the pecking order into a theory of debt and equity issues. The hypothesis is that firms issue more equity and less debt in situations where risk is an important element of the adverse selection problem of outside financing. We find robust empirical support for the hypothesis and document a strong link between asset risk and the decision to issue debt and equity in a large unbalanced panel of publicly traded US firms from 1971 to 2001.
Particle Size Effect in Model Retaining Wall on Passive Mode with Granular Material

This paper presented a particle size effect on model retaining wall by comparing the experimental and finite element analysis. The experiments were conducted with air-dried Toyoura sand and Soma sand plane strain condition, both sand are standard sand in Japan. The wall was oved horizontally into sand. The hights of sand mass in these experiments were 5 cm, 10 cm, and 15 cm. The finite element analysis employed a constitutive model in which non-associated strain hardening-softening elasto-plastic materila was employed. This analysis introducted the effect of shear band thickness. The result obtained from the finite element analysis showed a good agrement with the results obtained from the experimental investigation. From both experimental and analytical results, there was evident of particle size effect due to shear banding.
Antioxidant and Metal Chelation-Based Therapies in the Treatment of Prion Disease

Many neurodegenerative disorders involve the accumulation of multimeric assemblies and amyloid derived from misfolded conformers of constitutively expressed proteins. In addition, the brains of patients and experimental animals afflicted with prion disease display evidence of heightened oxidative stress and damage, as well as disturbances to transition metal homeostasis. Utilising a variety of disease model paradigms, many laboratories have demonstrated that copper can act as a cofactor in the antioxidant activity displayed by the prion protein while manganese has been implicated in the generation and stabilisation of disease-associated conformers. This and other evidence has led several groups to test dietary and chelation therapy-based regimens to manipulate brain metal concentrations in attempts to influence the progression of prion disease in experimental mice. Results have been inconsistent. This review examines published data on transition metal dyshomeostasis, free radical generation and subsequent oxidative damage in the pathogenesis of prion disease. It also comments on the efficacy of trialed therapeutics chosen to combat such deleterious changes.
Visual Dependency and Dizziness after Vestibular Neuritis

Symptomatic recovery after acute vestibular neuritis (VN) is variable, with around 50% of patients reporting long term vestibular symptoms; hence, it is essential to identify factors related to poor clinical outcome. Here we investigated whether excessive reliance on visual input for spatial orientation (visual dependence) was associated with long term vestibular symptoms following acute VN. Twenty-eight patients with VN and 25 normal control subjects were included. Patients were enrolled at least 6 months after acute illness. Recovery status was not a criterion for study entry, allowing recruitment of patients with a full range of persistent symptoms. We measured visual dependence with a laptop-based Rod-and-Disk Test and severity of symptoms with the Dizziness Handicap Inventory (DHI). The third of patients showing the worst clinical outcomes (mean DHI score 36–80) had significantly greater visual dependence than normal subjects (6.35° error vs. 3.39° respectively, p = 0.03). Asymptomatic patients and those with minor residual symptoms did not differ from controls. Visual dependence was associated with high levels of persistent vestibular symptoms after acute VN. Over-reliance on visual information for spatial orientation is one characteristic of poorly recovered vestibular neuritis patients. The finding may be clinically useful given that visual dependence may be modified through rehabilitation desensitization techniques.
Cloning of a Novel Olf-1/EBF-like Gene, O/E-4, by Degenerate Oligo-based Direct Selection

The Olf-1/EBF (O/E) family of transcription factors plays important roles in neural development and B-cell maturation. We have utilized a variation of the direct selection scheme (Degenerate Oligo-based Direct Selection, or DODS) to identify a fourth member of the O/E family (O/E-4). We demonstrated that, similar to previously identified mouse O/E proteins, O/E-4 is expressed in the neuronal and basal cell layers of mouse olfactory epithelium. However, unlike other O/E members, O/E-4 expression is absent in the vomeronasal organ. O/E-4 can partner with the other O/Es to form heterodimers that are capable of binding an Olf-1 consensus site in vitro. In contrast to other O/E family members, the O/E-4 protein only weakly activates transcription in a reporter assay. In summary, we have identified O/E-4 utilizing a novel homology screening method. Our results suggest that O/E-4 may interact with other O/E family members to regulate gene expression in the olfactory sensory neurons.
Patients Covertly Recording Clinical Encounters: Threat or Opportunity? A Qualitative Analysis of Online Texts

Background The phenomenon of patients covertly recording clinical encounters has generated controversial media reports. This study aims to examine the phenomenon and analyze the underlying issues. Methods and Findings We conducted a qualitative analysis of online posts, articles, blogs, and forums (texts) discussing patients covertly recording clinical encounters. Using Google and Google Blog search engines, we identified and analyzed 62 eligible texts published in multiple countries between 2006 and 2013. Thematic analysis revealed four key themes: 1) a new behavior that elicits strong reactions, both positive and negative, 2) an erosion of trust, 3) shifting patient-clinician roles and relationships, and 4) the existence of confused and conflicting responses. When patients covertly record clinical encounters – a behavior made possible by various digital recording technologies – strong reactions are evoked among a range of stakeholders. The behavior represents one consequence of an erosion of trust between patients and clinicians, and when discovered, leads to further deterioration of trust. Confused and conflicting responses to the phenomenon by patients and clinicians highlight the need for policy guidance. Conclusions This study describes strong reactions, both positive and negative, to the phenomenon of patients covertly recording clinical encounters. The availability of smartphones capable of digital recording, and shifting attitudes to patient-clinician relationships, seems to have led to this behavior, mostly viewed as a threat by clinicians but as a welcome and helpful innovation by some patients, possibly indicating a perception of subordination and a lack of empowerment. Further examination of this tension and its implications is needed.
Prostaglandin-Induced Cystoid Macular Edema Following Routine Cataract Extraction

To our knowledge, we are reporting the first case of a 59-year-old man who developed recurrent CME with three separate trials of three different prostaglandin class drugs following uncomplicated phacoemulsification with intraocular lens implantation. Despite multiple reports of individual prostaglandin (PG) analogues being suggested as the cause of CME, there are no recommendations regarding withholding these medications in the perioperative period. Our patient first developed CME OD 4-months post uncomplicated cataract extraction. XALATAN (Latanoprost) had been restarted after surgery and discontinued at onset of CME. While off XALATAN (Latanoprost), the patient's CME resolved, but his IOP rose. The patient was started on LUMIGAN (Bimatoprost) to control the IOP, but within weeks his CME recurred. The patient's CME was again treated and his IOP remained acceptable, but then progressively increased. TRAVATAN (Travoprost) was attempted, but he presented with a third round of CME. Definitive conclusions about causal relationships cannot be made without well-designed, prospective clinical trials addressing this issue.
Blink patterns and lid-contact times in dry-eye and normal subjects

Purpose To classify blinks in dry eye and normal subjects into six subtypes, and to define the blink rate and duration within each type of blink, as well as the total lid-contact time/minute. Materials and methods This was a single-centered, prospective, double-blind study of eleven dry-eye and ten normal subjects. Predefined subjects watched a video while blinks were recorded for 10 minutes. Partial blinks were classified by percentage closure of maximal palpebral fissure opening: 25%, 50%, 75%. Complete blinks were characterized as full (>0 seconds), extended (>0.1 seconds), or superextended (>0.5 seconds). The mean duration of each type of blink was determined and standardized per minute as total lid-contact time. Results Total blinks observed were 4,990 (1,414 normal, 3,756 dry eye): 1,809 (50.59%) partial and 1,767 (49.41%) complete blinks among dry-eye subjects versus 741 (52.90%) partial and 673 (47.60%) complete blinks among normal subjects. Only superextended blinks of ≥0.5-second duration were significantly more frequent in dry-eye subjects than normals (2.3% versus 0.2%, respectively; P=0.023). Total contact time was seven times higher in dry-eye subjects than normals (0.565 versus 0.080 seconds, respectively; P<0.001). Isolating only extended blinks (>0.1 second), the average contact time (seconds) was four times longer in dry-eye versus normal subjects (2.459 in dry eye, 0.575 in normals; P=0.003). Isolating only superextended blinks (>0.5 seconds), average contact time was also significantly different (7.134 in dry eye, 1.589 in normals; P<0.001). The contact rate for all full closures was 6.4 times longer in dry-eye (0.045 versus 0.007, P<0.001) than normal subjects. Conclusion Dry-eye subjects spent 4.5% of a minute with their eyes closed, while normal subjects spent 0.7% of a minute with their eyes closed. Contact time might play a role in the visual function decay associated with increased blink rates.
Bmc Complementary and Alternative Medicine Studies on the Antidiarrhoeal Activity of Aegle Marmelos Unripe Fruit: Validating Its Traditional Usage

Background: Aegle marmelos (L.) Correa has been widely used in indigenous systems of Indian medicine due to its various medicinal properties. However, despite its traditional usage as an anti-diarrhoeal there is limited information regarding its mode of action in infectious forms of diarrhoea. Hence, we evaluated the hot aqueous extract (decoction) of dried unripe fruit pulp of A. marmelos for its antimicrobial activity and effect on various aspects of pathogenicity of infectious diarrhoea.
Integrative Priming of Compositional and Locative Relations

Integrative priming refers to the facilitated recognition of a target word (bench) as a real word following a prime (park). Prior integrative priming studies have used a wide variety of integrative relations including temporal (summer rain), topical (travel book), locative (forest river), and compositional (peach pie) relations. Yet differences in the types of integrative relations may yield differences in the underlying explanatory processes of integrative priming. In this study, we compared the magnitude, time course, and three theoretically based correlates of integrative priming for compositional (stone table) and locative (patio table) pairs in a lexical decision task across four stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs; 50, 300, 800, and 1,600 ms). Based on the Complementary Role Activation theory, integrative ratings (the extent to which the prime and target can be combined into a meaningful phrase) were predicted to facilitate target RTs. Based on the Embodied Conceptual Combination (ECCo) theory, the local co-occurrence of the prime and target, and the ability to perceptually simulate (visually experience) the prime-target pair were tested as predictors. In comparison to unrelated pairs (nose table), target RTs were faster for the compositional and locative pairs, though did not differ between these relations. In support of the Complementary Role Activation theory, integrative ratings predicted target RTs above and beyond our control variables. In support of the ECCo theory, co-occurrence emerged as an early predictor of target RTs, and visual experience ratings was a reliable predictor at the 300 ms SOA, though only for the compositional relations.
Examination of a new SiGe/Si heterostructure TFET concept based on vertical tunneling

This paper presents a Tunneling Field Effect Transistor concept with a vertical SiGe/Si hetero tunneling junction utilizing a design which promotes line tunneling in a source-gate overlap region. By contrast, the influence of parasitic point tunneling is marginal in the structure, resulting in a sharp turn-on. We show that the growth of a suitable layer stack and manufacturing a device is perfectly feasible and provide first electrical measurements serving as a proof of concept. The route to enhancing the performance by scaling device dimensions and adjusting the channel doping is examined by means of TCAD simulations.
A human laterality disorder associated with recessive CCDC11 mutation

Background Significant advancements in understanding the molecular pathophysiology of laterality determination were recently made. However, there are large gaps in our knowledge of the initial processes that lead to laterality defects, such as heterotaxy syndrome (HS, also known as situs ambiguous) and situs inversus totalis (SIT). The former refers to abnormal distribution of visceral organs, and the latter refers to a complete laterality inversion of both abdominal and thoracic viscera. Methods In order to identify a mutated gene in SIT and HS patients, the authors performed homozygosity mapping in a consanguineous family with laterality disorders identified in two siblings. Results A homozygous deleterious mutation in the CCDC11 gene was identified in the patients. The mutation resulted in an abnormally smaller protein in the patient's skin fibroblasts. The parents and five healthy siblings were heterozygous for the mutation, which was not present in 112 anonymous controls. Conclusions Few genes have been associated with both SIT and HS, usually accompanied by other abnormalities. The authors suggest that CCDC11 is associated with autosomal recessive laterality defects of diverse phenotype resulting in SIT in one individual family member who is otherwise healthy, and in complex laterality anomalies (HS) in another member. This report underscores the importance of CCDC11 in laterality determination.
Involvement of Aberrant Glycosylation in Thyroid Cancer

Glycosylation is one of the most common posttranslational modification reactions and nearly half of all known proteins in eukaryotes are glycosylated. In fact, changes in oligosaccharides structures are associated with many physiological and pathological events, including cell growth, migration and differentiation, and tumor invasion. Therefore, functional glycomics, which is a comprehensive study of the structures and functions of glycans, is attracting the increasing attention of scientists in various fields of life science. In cases of thyroid cancer, the biological characters and prognosis are completely different in each type of histopathology, and their oligosaccharide structures as well as the expression of glycosyltransferases are also different. In this review, we summarized our previous papers on oligosaccharides and thyroid cancers and discussed a possible function of oligosaccharides in the carcinogenesis in thyroid cancer.
Current and future prospects for CRISPR‐based tools in bacteria

CRISPR‐Cas systems have rapidly transitioned from intriguing prokaryotic defense systems to powerful and versatile biomolecular tools. This article reviews how these systems have been translated into technologies to manipulate bacterial genetics, physiology, and communities. Recent applications in bacteria have centered on multiplexed genome editing, programmable gene regulation, and sequence‐specific antimicrobials, while future applications can build on advances in eukaryotes, the rich natural diversity of CRISPR‐Cas systems, and the untapped potential of CRISPR‐based DNA acquisition. Overall, these systems have formed the basis of an ever‐expanding genetic toolbox and hold tremendous potential for our future understanding and engineering of the bacterial world. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2016;113: 930–943. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
SkyDiver: a framework for skyline diversification

Skyline queries have attracted considerable attention by the database community during the last decade, due to their applicability in a series of domains. However, most existing works tackle the problem from an efficiency standpoint, i.e., returning the skyline as quickly as possible. The user is then presented with the entire skyline set, which may be in several cases overwhelming, therefore requiring manual inspection to come up with the most informative data points. To overcome this shortcoming, we propose a novel approach in selecting the k most diverse skyline points, i.e., the ones that best capture the different aspects of both the skyline and the dataset they belong to. We present a novel formulation of diversification which, in contrast to previous proposals, is intuitive, because it is based solely on the domination relationships among points. Consequently, additional artificial distance measures (e.g., Lp norms) among skyline points are not required. We present efficient approaches in solving this problem and demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of our approach through an extensive experimental evaluation with both real-life and synthetic data sets.
Respiratory rate influence in the resulting magnitude of pulse photoplethysmogram derived respiration signals

Parameters derived from the pulse photoplethysmographic (PPG) signal, such as pulse rate, amplitude, and width variability (PRV, PAV and PWV) have been previously proposed for deriving respiratory rate, obtaining less accurate estimates for higher respiratory rates (0.5-0.6 Hz). In this work we analyze the power of respiration related oscillations in PRV, PAV and PWV as a function of respiratory rate in controlled respiration experiments. PPG signals from 14 subjects breathing at constant rates from 0.2 to 0.6 Hz (with an increment of 0.1 Hz) during 2 minutes were analyzed. In addition, smartphone-camera-acquired-PPG signals from 10 subjects using three different devices (iPhone 4S, iPod 5 and Samsung Galaxy S3), during the same kind of experiments were also analyzed. Powers of PRV, PAV and PWV respiration-related oscillations were estimated by integrating their Welch periodograms at the respiratory band. When analyzing PRV and PWV, clear tendencies of power decrease as respiratory rate increases were observed, while less evident tendencies were observed when analyzing PAV.
Mental Stress: Neurophysiology and Its Regulation by Sudarshan Kriya Yoga

Aim: The present study focuses on analyzing the effects of Sudarshan Kriya yoga (SKY) on EEG as well as ECG signals for stress regulation. To envision the regulation of stress Determination Test (DT) has been used. We have chosen a control group for contriving a cogent comparison that could be corroborated using statistical tests. Subjects and Methods: A total of 20 subjects were taken in the study, of which 10 were allotted to a control group. Electroencephalograph was taken during a DT task, before and after SKY the sky session with 30 days of SKY session given to the experimental group. No SKY was given to the control group. Results: We quantified mental stress using EEG, ECG and DT synergistically and used SKY to regulate it. We observed that alpha band power decreases in the frontal lobe of the brain with increasing mental stress while frontal brain asymmetry decreases with increasing stress tolerance. Conclusions: These EEG, ECG and DT shows a significant decrement in mental stress and improvement in cognitive performance after SKY, indicating SKY as a good alternative of medication for stress management.
HIGH-RESOLUTION MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION AND MICRO-MINERALS COMPOSITION OF CORN SILK (Zea mays -Maydis stigma)

The soft textured corn silk (Zea mays-Maydis stigma) is a well-organized collection of stigmas of the corn maize that is widely used in traditional medicinal system. In modern medicine, it has been used as a mild diuretic, urinary demulcent and for the management of bladder irritation due to uric acid and phosphatic gravel. The goal of this study is to characterize the external morphology and identify trace minerals present by using VPSEM and EDX simultaneously with the aim of getting more accurate information for the development of future products. Innovative products source of trace element and effective anti-diabetic powder of this Maydis stigma can be further explored. Corn silk xylem vessels, which carry water through the plant, viewed in longitudinal section show different patterns of thickening of the outer wall of the vessel. The soft tiny protuberances’ (100-120 μm long) were seen on the surface of flat longitudinal hairs. Each one of them emanate from a single surface cell – thus increase the area through which water can be absorbed into the plant. The elemental study performed by this technique showed the presence of C, O, K, Ca, Mg, Fe, Al and Si in oven dried cornsilk. However, C, O, Na and Cl were detected by EDX in cornsilk treated with NaOH and NaHClO, respectively. It is believed that with further investigations, it can be developed into effective antigout product and prevention of urinary stones.