Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CD14-Dependent Monocyte Isolation Enhances Phagocytosis of Listeria monocytogenes by Proinflammatory, GM-CSF-Derived Macrophages

Macrophages are an important line of defence against invading pathogens. Human macrophages derived by different methods were tested for their suitability as models to investigate Listeria monocytogenes (Lm) infection and compared to macrophage-like THP-1 cells. Human primary monocytes were isolated by either positive or negative immunomagnetic selection and differentiated in the presence of granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) or macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF) into pro- or anti-inflammatory macrophages, respectively. Regardless of the isolation method, GM-CSF-derived macrophages (GM-Mφ) stained positive for CD206 and M-CSF-derived macrophages (M-Mφ) for CD163. THP-1 cells did not express CD206 or CD163 following incubation with PMA, M- or GM-CSF alone or in combination. Upon infection with Lm, all primary macrophages showed good survival at high multiplicities of infection whereas viability of THP-1 was severely reduced even at lower bacterial numbers. M-Mφ generally showed high phagocytosis of Lm. Strikingly, phagocytosis of Lm by GM-Mφ was markedly influenced by the method used for isolation of monocytes. GM-Mφ derived from negatively isolated monocytes showed low phagocytosis of Lm whereas GM-Mφ generated from positively selected monocytes displayed high phagocytosis of Lm. Moreover, incubation with CD14 antibody was sufficient to enhance phagocytosis of Lm by GM-Mφ generated from negatively isolated monocytes. By contrast, non-specific phagocytosis of latex beads by GM-Mφ was not influenced by treatment with CD14 antibody. Furthermore, phagocytosis of Lactococcus lactis, Escherichia coli, human cytomegalovirus and the protozoan parasite Leishmania major by GM-Mφ was not enhanced upon treatment with CD14 antibody indicating that this effect is specific for Lm. Based on these observations, we propose macrophages derived by ex vivo differentiation of negatively selected human primary monocytes as the most suitable model to study Lm infection of macrophages.
An Outreach Intervention Increases Bone Densitometry Testing in Older Women

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the performance of a patient recall intervention that relies on an outreach coordinator with a bachelor's degree to prompt women by mail and telephone about their eligibility for bone densitometry (dual‐energy X‐ray absorptiometry (DXA)) screening and allow them to schedule an examination without a medical provider visit ahead of time.
Anal Cancer Screening in HIV-Infected Patients: Is It Time to Screen Them All?

BACKGROUND: Annual screening for anal cancer is recommended only for HIV patients at increased risk: men who have sex with men, individuals with a history of anogenital warts, and women with cervical dysplasia. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to examine the screening outcomes between HIV populations with and without these risk factors. METHODS: We reviewed the records of all HIV patients referred for anal cytology and high-resolution anoscopy from June 2009 to June 2010. Patients were stratified into an increased-risk group or a standard-risk group. MAIN OUTCOME: Of the 329 evaluable patients, 285 (89.8% men, 10.2% women, mean age 46 ± 10 years) were classified to the increased-risk group, whereas 44 (72.7% men, 27.3% women, mean age 52 ± 8 years) were included in the standard-risk group. Male sex, white race, sexual orientation, past and current receptive anal intercourse, noncompliance with condom use, and absence of a new sexual partner were significantly different in the increased-risk group in comparison with the standard-risk group. In the increased-risk group, 187 (66.5%) patients had biopsy-proven dysplasia of which 118 (42.0%) had high-grade disease. In the standard-risk group, 15 (34.9%) patients had biopsy-proven dysplasia of which 7 (16.3%) had high-grade disease. Cytology detected biopsy-confirmed high-grade dysplasia only in 23 of 118 (19.5%) patients in the increased-risk group and in 2 of 7 (28.6%) patients in the standard-risk group. Kappa agreement in detecting high-grade disease was low for both increased-risk and standard-risk groups: 0.16 (95% CI 0.07–0.23) and 0.40 (95% CI 0.02–0.40). LIMITATIONS: Our study is a chart-based retrospective review of data with a small female population. Histology reports came from 2 different laboratories. CONCLUSION: High-grade anal dysplasia was prevalent even among HIV patients who only have standard risk factors. Anal cytology and high-resolution anoscopy have poor agreement. We suggest considering annual screening by using high-resolution anoscopy in addition to cytology for all HIV patients regardless of risk factors.
Association Genetics of Wood Physical Traits in the Conifer White Spruce and Relationships With Gene Expression

Marker-assisted selection holds promise for highly influencing tree breeding, especially for wood traits, by considerably reducing breeding cycles and increasing selection accuracy. In this study, we used a candidate gene approach to test for associations between 944 single-nucleotide polymorphism markers from 549 candidate genes and 25 wood quality traits in white spruce. A mixed-linear model approach, including a weak but nonsignificant population structure, was implemented for each marker–trait combination. Relatedness among individuals was controlled using a kinship matrix estimated either from the known half-sib structure or from the markers. Both additive and dominance effect models were tested. Between 8 and 21 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were found to be significantly associated (P ≤ 0.01) with each of earlywood, latewood, or total wood traits. After controlling for multiple testing (Q ≤ 0.10), 13 SNPs were still significant across as many genes belonging to different families, each accounting for between 3 and 5% of the phenotypic variance in 10 wood characters. Transcript accumulation was determined for genes containing SNPs associated with these traits. Significantly different transcript levels (P ≤ 0.05) were found among the SNP genotypes of a 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate oxidase, a β-tonoplast intrinsic protein, and a long-chain acyl-CoA synthetase 9. These results should contribute toward the development of efficient marker-assisted selection in an economically important tree species.
Outage performance of cooperative wireless networks with varying number of relays

This paper investigates the outage performance of an amplify-and-forward (AF) relay network with varying number of relays (RN-VR). In the previous works for the analysis of multi-relay networks, the number of available relays is always assumed to be fixed. Thus, the performance and diversity of the relay network is determined by the assumed number of available relays. However, under some practical cooperative system where many users in neighboring region share a restricted number of relays, the number of available relays may change due to the preoccupied relays by other users. Therefore, the performance and diversity of the relay networks cannot be represented as the previous analysis and, thus, a different investigation of this model is needed in this case. To investigate the suggested cooperative system, occupancy of each relay is modeled as a continuous time Markov on-off process to represent the varying number of relays and provide analytical insight. Based on this theoretical approach, we explore the outage performance of an AF relay network which is called RN-VR in a practical manner.
ECCENTRIC UTILIZATION RATIO: EFFECT OF SPORT AND PHASE OF TRAINING

The eccentric utilization ratio (EUR), which is the ratio of countermovement jump (CMJ) to static jump (SJ) performance, has been suggested as a useful indicator of power performance in athletes. The purpose of the study was to compare the EUR of athletes from a variety of different sports and during different phases of training. A total of 142 athletes from rugby union, Australian Rules Football, soccer, softball, and field hockey were tested. Subjects performed both CMJ and SJ on a force plate integrated with a position transducer. The EUR was measured as the ratio of CMJ to SJ for jump height and peak power. The rugby union, Australian Rules Football, and hockey athletes were tested during off-season and preseason to provide EUR data during different phases of training. For men, EUR for soccer, Australian Rules Football, and rugby was greater than softball (effect size range, 0.83–0.92). For women, EUR for soccer was greater than field hockey and softball (0.86–1.0). There was a significant difference between the jump height and peak power method for the Australian Rules Football, rugby, and field hockey tests conducted preseason (p < 0.05). For field hockey, there was a significant increase in EUR from offseason to preseason. Athletes in sports such as soccer, rugby union, and Australian Rules Football appear to have higher EUR values, which reflects the greater reliance on stretch shortening activities in these sports. It does appear that EUR can be used to track changes in training with the values significantly increasing from off-season to preseason. The EUR provides the practitioner with information about the performance of athletes and appears to be sensitive to changes in the type of training being undertaken.
Quantum neural networks (QNNs): inherently fuzzy feedforward neural networks

This paper introduces quantum neural networks (QNNs), a class of feedforward neural networks which are inherently capable of estimating the structure of a feature space in the form of fuzzy membership information. The hidden units of these networks develop quantized representations of the crisp sample information provided by the training set in various graded levels of certainty. Experimental results show that QNNs have an inherent ability for recognizing structures in the feature space that conventional feedforward neural networks with sigmoidal hidden units lack.
Machine Recognition of Human Activities: A Survey

The past decade has witnessed a rapid proliferation of video cameras in all walks of life and has resulted in a tremendous explosion of video content. Several applications such as content-based video annotation and retrieval, highlight extraction and video summarization require recognition of the activities occurring in the video. The analysis of human activities in videos is an area with increasingly important consequences from security and surveillance to entertainment and personal archiving. Several challenges at various levels of processing-robustness against errors in low-level processing, view and rate-invariant representations at midlevel processing and semantic representation of human activities at higher level processing-make this problem hard to solve. In this review paper, we present a comprehensive survey of efforts in the past couple of decades to address the problems of representation, recognition, and learning of human activities from video and related applications. We discuss the problem at two major levels of complexity: 1) "actions" and 2) "activities. " "Actions" are characterized by simple motion patterns typically executed by a single human. "Activities" are more complex and involve coordinated actions among a small number of humans. We will discuss several approaches and classify them according to their ability to handle varying degrees of complexity as interpreted above. We begin with a discussion of approaches to model the simplest of action classes known as atomic or primitive actions that do not require sophisticated dynamical modeling. Then, methods to model actions with more complex dynamics are discussed. The discussion then leads naturally to methods for higher level representation of complex activities.
Boltzmann Samplers for the Random Generation of Combinatorial Structures

This article proposes a surprisingly simple framework for the random generation of combinatorial configurations based on what we call Boltzmann models. The idea is to perform random generation of possibly complex structured objects by placing an appropriate measure spread over the whole of a combinatorial class – an object receives a probability essentially proportional to an exponential of its size. As demonstrated here, the resulting algorithms based on real-arithmetic operations often operate in linear time. They can be implemented easily, be analysed mathematically with great precision, and, when suitably tuned, tend to be very efficient in practice.
Usage and Distribution for Commercial Purposes Requires Written Permission. 27-gauge Vitrectomy for Symptomatic Vitreous Floaters with Topical Anesthesia Lin Et Al.: 27-gauge Vitrectomy for Symptomatic Vitreous Floaters with Topical Anesthesia

Purpose: Traditionally acceptable methods of anesthesia for vitrectomy surgery are quite varied. However, each of these methods has its own potential for complications that can range from minor to severe. The surgery procedure of vitrectomy for symptomatic vitreous floaters is much simpler, mainly reflecting in the nonuse of sclera indentation, photocoagula-tion, and the apparently short surgery duration. The use of 27-gauge cannulae makes the puncture of the sclera minimally invasive. Hence, retrobulbar anesthesia, due to its rare but severe complications, seemed excessive for this kind of surgery. Method: Three cases of 27-gauge, sutureless pars plana vitrectomy for symptomatic vitreous floaters with topical anesthesia are reported. Results: The vitrectomy surgeries were successfully performed with topical anesthesia (proparacaine, 0.5%) without operative or postoperative complications. Furthermore , none of the patients experienced apparent pain during or after the surgery. Con-36 clusion: Topical anesthesia can be considered for 27-guage vitrectomy in patients with symptomatic vitreous floaters.
Efficacy of hearing-aid based telephone strategies for listeners with moderate-to-severe hearing loss.

BACKGROUND Understanding speech over the telephone when listening in noisy environments may present a significant challenge for listeners with moderate-to-severe hearing loss. PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to compare speech recognition and subjective ratings across several hearing aid-based telephone listening strategies for individuals with moderate-to-severe sensorineural hearing loss. RESEARCH DESIGN Speech recognition and subjective ratings were evaluated for a simulated telephone signal. The strategies evaluated included acoustic telephone, unilateral telecoil, unilateral wireless streaming, and bilateral wireless streaming. Participants were seated in a noisy room for all evaluations. STUDY SAMPLE Eighteen adults, aged 49-88 yr, with moderate-to-severe sensorineural hearing loss participated. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS Speech recognition scores on the Connected Speech Test were converted to rationalized arcsine units and analyzed using analysis of variance testing and Tukey post hoc analyses. Subjective ratings of ease and comfort were also analyzed in this manner. RESULTS Speech recognition performance was poorest with acoustic coupling to the telephone and best with bilateral wireless routing. Telecoil coupling resulted in better speech recognition performance than acoustic coupling, but was significantly poorer than bilateral wireless routing. Furthermore, unilateral wireless routing and telecoil coupling generally led to similar speech recognition performance, except in lower-level background noise conditions, for which unilateral routing resulted in better performance than the telecoil. CONCLUSIONS For people with moderate-to-severe sensorineural hearing loss, acoustic telephone listening with a hearing aid may not lead to acceptable performance in noise. Although unilateral routing options (telecoil and wireless streaming) improved performance, speech recognition performance and subjective ratings of ease and comfort were best when bilateral wireless routing was used. These results suggest that wireless routing is a potentially beneficial telephone listening strategy for listeners with moderate-to-severe hearing loss who are fitted with limited venting if the telephone signal is routed to both ears. Unilateral wireless routing may provide similar benefits to traditional unilateral telecoil. However, the newer wireless systems may have the advantage for some listeners in that they do not include some of the positioning constraints associated with telecoil use.
Frequent Atrial Premature Beats Predict Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation in Stroke Patients: An Opportunity for a New Diagnostic Strategy

Background and Purpose— For patients having suffered ischemic stroke, the current diagnostic strategies often fail to detect atrial fibrillation as a potential cause of embolic events. The aim of the study was to identify paroxysmal atrial fibrillation in stroke patients. We hypothesized that patients with frequent atrial premature beats (APBs) recorded in 24-hour ECG will show more often atrial fibrillation when followed by repeated long-term ECG recordings than patients without or infrequent APBs. Methods— 127 patients with acute ischemic stroke and without known AF were enrolled in a prospective study to detect paroxysmal AF. Patients were stratified according to the number of APBs recorded in a 24-hour ECG (≥70 APBs versus <70 APBs). Subsequently, they all underwent serial 7-day event-recorder monitoring at 0, 3, and 6 months. Results— Serial extended ECG monitoring identified AF in 26% of patients with frequent APBs but only in 6.5% when APBs were infrequent (P=0.0021). A multivariate analysis showed that the presence of frequent APBs in the initial 24-hour ECG was the only independent predictor of paroxysmal AF during follow-up (odds ratio 6.6, 95% confidence intervals 1.6 to 28.2, P=0.01). Conclusions— In patients with acute ischemic stroke, frequent APBs (≥70/24 hours) are a marker for individuals who are at greater risk to develop or have paroxysmal AF. For such patients, we propose a diagnostic workup with repeated prolonged ECG monitoring to diagnose paroxysmal AF.
Host Cell Penetration of Toxoplasma gondii

The host cell penetration of Toxoplasma gondii was studied with reference to synthesis of a penetration-enhancing factor and the penetrative capacity of the parasites during the various phases of the infectious cycle. HeLa cells as suspension or monolayer cultures were infected with Toxoplasma. After a lag phase shorter than 1 hr, there was a synthesis of penetration-enhancing factor demonstrable in the parasites. Exposure of the factor to host cells resulted in disappearance of its penetration-enhancing activity. The findings were in accord with the hypothesis that Toxoplasma gondii is capable of synthesizing an enzyme-like factor, reacting with the host cell surface, and, thereby, facilitating the penetration of the parasites. This hypothesis was further supported by the observations that the penetrative capacity of extracellular parasites gradually was reduced in presence of host cells and that intracellular parasites released artificially from host cells shortly after penetration were found to have a reduced penetrative capacity. Parasites allowed to remain for 4 hr or more intracellularly could restore and markedly improve their penetrative capacity.
Long-Term Contracting in a Changing World

I study the properties of optimal long-term contracts in an environment in which the agents type evolves stochastically over time. The model stylizes a buyer-seller relationship but the results apply quite naturally to many contractual situations including regulation and optimal income-taxation. I rst show, through a simple example, that distortions need not vanish over time and need not be monotonic in the shock to the buyers valuation. These results are in contrast to those obtained in the literature that assumes a Markov process with a binary state space e.g. Battaglini, 2005. I then show that when the sets of possible types in any two adja- cent periods satisfy a certain overlapping condition (which is always satis ed with a continuum of types), then the dynamics of the optimal mechanism can be signi cantly simpli ed by as- suming the shocks are independent over time. Under certain regularity conditions, the optimal mechanism is then the same irrespective of whether the shocks are the buyers private informa- tion or are observed also by the seller. These conditions are satis ed, for example, in the case of an AR(1) process, a Brownian motion, but also when shocks have a multiplicative e¤ect as it is often the case in nancial applications. Furthermore, the distortions in the optimal quantities are independent of the distributions of the shocks and, when the buyers valuation is additively separable, they are also independent of whether the shocks are transitory or permanent. Finally, I show that assuming the shocks are independent not only greatly simpli es the analysis but is actually without loss of generality with a continuum of types.
Recovery characteristics following maintenance of anaesthesia with sevoflurane or isoflurane in dogs premedicated with acepromazine

A standard anaesthetic protocol was used to anaesthetise 40 dogs for intravenous urography and a retrograde urethrogram or vaginourethrogram. The dogs were allocated by blocked randomisation to receive either isoflurane or sevoflurane for maintenance of anaesthesia after they had been premedicated with acepromazine and pethidine, and anaesthesia induced with propofol. An observer who was unaware of which agent had been used assessed ataxia 30 and 60 minutes after discontinuation of administration of the anaesthetic and assigned an overall recovery score. No complications occurred during anaesthesia of either group of dogs. The scores for ataxia were significantly lower after 60 minutes than after 30 minutes, but there was no significant difference between the groups. The quality of recovery was significantly better in the dogs that received sevoflurane than in those that received isoflurane, but the recovery times were similar.
Template-Based Active Contours

We develop a generalized active contour formalism for image segmentation based on shape templates. The shape template is subjected to a restricted affine transformation (RAT) in order to segment the object of interest. RAT allows for translation, rotation, and scaling, which give a total of five degrees of freedom. The proposed active contour comprises an inner and outer contour pair, which are closed and concentric. The active contour energy is a contrast function defined based on the intensities of pixels that lie inside the inner contour and those that lie in the annulus between the inner and outer contours. We show that the contrast energy functional is optimal under certain conditions. The optimal RAT parameters are computed by maximizing the contrast function using a gradient descent optimizer. We show that the calculations are made efficient through use of Green's theorem. The proposed formalism is capable of handling a variety of shapes because for a chosen template, optimization is carried with respect to the RAT parameters only. The proposed formalism is validated on multiple images to show robustness to Gaussian and Poisson noise, to initialization, and to partial loss of structure in the object to be segmented.