Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intravenous iron replacement therapy in eugonadal males with iron-deficiency anemia: Effects on pituitary gonadal axis and sperm parameters; A pilot study

Aim of the study: To evaluate semen parameters and to assess serum FSH, LH, Testosterone (T) concentrations before and 12 weeks after intravenous iron therapy (800-1200 mg elemental iron therapy - IVI) in adults with iron-deficiency anemia (IDA). Materials and Methods: We studied 11 eugonadal adults with IDA, aged 40 ± 5 years, due to defective intake of iron. Anemia was diagnosed when hemoglobin (Hb) was equal or below 10 g/dl. Serum iron, total iron-binding capacity (TIBC) and ferritin concentrations confirmed the diagnosis of IDA. Basal serum concentrations of FSH, LH, and T were measured. Semen parameters were evaluated before and 6-7 weeks after IVI therapy. Results: After IVI therapy and correction of anemia, a significant increase of Hb from 8.1 ± 1.17 g/dL to 13.1 ± 0.7 g/dL was observed and was associated with an increase of T (from 12.22 ± 1.4 nmol/L to 15.9 ± 0.96 nmol/L; P < 0.001), FSH (from 2.82 ± 0.87 to 3.82 ± 1.08 IU/L; P = 0.007), and LH (from 2.27 ± 0.9 to 3.82 ± 1.5 IU/L; P = 0.0002). Total sperm count (TSC) increased significantly from 72 ± 17.5 million/ml to 158 ± 49 million/mL (P < 0.001), rapid progressive sperm motility (RPM) increased from 22 ± 9.4 to 69 ± 30 million/ml (P < 0.001), and sperms with normal morphology (NM) increased from 33 ± 5 to 56 ± 7 million/ml (P < 0.001). Increment in Hb concentration was correlated significantly with LH, FSH, and T concentrations after IVI (r = 0.69 and r = 0.44, r = 0.75, respectively; P < 0.01). The increment in serum T was correlated significantly with increments in the TSC and total sperm motility and RPM (r = 0.66, 0.43, and 0.55, respectively; P < 0.001) but not with gonadotrophin levels. Conclusion: Our study proved for the first time, to our knowledge, that correction of IDA with IVI is associated with significant enhancement of sperm parameters and increased concentrations of serum LH, FSH, and T. These effects on spermatogenesis are reached by an unknown mechanism and suggest a number of pathways that need further human and/or experimental studies.
The acquisition of the voicing contrast in English: a study of voice onset time in word-initial stop consonants

ABSTRACT This paper reports on a longitudinal study of the acquisition of the voicing contrast in American English word-initial stop consonants, as measured by voice onset time. Four monolingual children were recorded at two-week intervals, beginning when the children were about 1; 6. Data provide evidence for three general stages: (1) the child has no contrast; (2) the child has a contrast but one that falls within the adult perceptual boundaries of one (usually voiced) phoneme and thus is presumably not perceptible to adults; and (3) the child has a contrast that resembles the adult contrast. The rate and nature of the developmental process are discussed in relation to two competing models for phonological acquisition and two hypotheses regarding the skills being learned.
Autophagy in Vascular Disease

Autophagy is a reparative, life-sustaining process by which cytoplasmic components are sequestered in double-membrane vesicles and degraded on fusion with lysosomal compartments. Growing evidence reveals that basal autophagy is an essential in vivo process mediating proper vascular function. Moreover, autophagy is stimulated by many stress-related stimuli in the arterial wall to protect endothelial cells and smooth muscle cells against cell death and the initiation of vascular disease, in particular atherosclerosis. Basal autophagy is atheroprotective during early atherosclerosis but becomes dysfunctional in advanced atherosclerotic plaques. Little is known about autophagy in other vascular disorders, such as aneurysm formation, arterial aging, vascular stiffness, and chronic venous disease, even though autophagy is often impaired. This finding highlights the need for pharmacological interventions with compounds that stimulate the prosurvival effects of autophagy in the vasculature. A large number of animal studies and clinical trials have indicated that oral or stent-based delivery of the autophagy inducer rapamycin or derivatives thereof, collectively known as rapalogs, effectively inhibit the basic mechanisms that control growth and destabilization of atherosclerotic plaques. Other autophagy-inducing drugs, such as spermidine or add-on therapy with widely used antiatherogenic compounds, including statins and metformin, are potentially useful to prevent vascular disease with minimal adverse effects.
Standard cell placement for even on-chip thermal distribution

In this work we present a standard cell placement tool that aims at reducing hot spots while optimizing traditional design metrics such as area and wire length. By using the superposition principle and the concept of transfer thermal resistance, we rst convert the temperature differential constraint to its corresponding power distribution constraint. Dealing directly with power distribution avoids time-consuming temperature calculation during placement. The power distribution constraint is then gradually tightened during the placement process to produce improved temperature pro le. Our simulation results show noticeable improvement of thermal distribution over the traditional placement algorithm. The worst case increase in total wire length is less than 3%, and we observe no noticeable area increase.
EUROGIN 2008 roadmap on cervical cancer prevention

The EUROGIN 2008 Roadmap represents a continuing effort to provide updated information on primary and secondary prevention of cervical cancer. The report addresses several areas including the progress made toward global implementation of currently licensed human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines, the possibilities and value of future‐generation HPV vaccines, endpoints under consideration for evaluation of candidate HPV vaccines, and monitoring impact of HPV vaccination programmes that can be implemented within developed and less‐developed countries. For the sake of completeness, a short update on the evolution of HPV testing in primary screening programmes at present and after HPV vaccine introduction has also been included. The report is available on the EUROGIN website (www.eurogin.com). © 2009 UICC
The 2008 and 2012 Moosiyan Earthquake Sequences: Rare Insights into the Role of Strike Slip and Thrust Faulting within the Simply Folded Belt (Iran)

Abstract The Zagros mountain belt has an unusually large discrepancy between seismic and geodetic strain rates, implying very large aseismic release of strain. However, the spatial and depth relationship between seismic and aseismic deformation is poorly understood and controversial, with important implications both for understanding the role of aseismic deformation in regions of continental convergence and for characterizing seismic hazard for large urban populations in this region. Two recent earthquake sequences in 2008 and 2012 provide us with an ideal opportunity to use geodetic and seismological data to address this topic, not only for thrust faulting but also for rarer strike‐slip faulting in the Zagros. These aftershock sequences occurred on the southeast border between Iran and Iraq. We use Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) to obtain a mechanism for the 2008 mainshock and observe significant aseismic slip accompanying the earthquake. This aseismic slip occurred along strike from the seismic asperity and approximately doubled the seismic moment release, demonstrating that aseismic slip plays an important role for strike slip as well as thrust faulting in the Zagros. Depths are calculated by inverting surface‐wave amplitude spectra and depth phase observations, demonstrating that all events occur at depths less than 12 km, supporting the view that seismicity predominately occurs in the sedimentary cover in the Zagros. Using both the calculated depths and InSAR location, we relocate the aftershocks to reveal two distinct clusters, with the 2012 cluster occurring in the vicinity of the Zagros foredeep fault, challenging the traditional view that this region is aseismic. Electronic Supplement: Figures of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) data, model, and resolution.
Resistance to Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors in Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors

Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) are the most common type of sarcoma in the gastrointestinal tract. Surgery is the primary treatment modality, but many patients suffer disease recurrence or metastasis. Fortunately, the management of advanced GIST has been revolutionized by the use of small molecule kinase inhibitors that target the underlying pathogenetic mutant kinases found in the vast majority of cases. Approximately 85% of GISTs have oncogenic mutations in KIT, allowing for constitutive kinase activation that is responsible for cellular proliferation and survival. About 5 to 7% of GISTs have activating mutations of the homologous platelet-derived growth factor receptor alpha (PDGFRA) kinase. The progression-free and overall survival of patients with advanced disease is greatly improved by treatment with the kinase inhibitors imatinib and sunitinib. However, the emergence of drug-resistant tumor clones limits the long-term benefit of these drugs in most patients. Resistance to these kinase inhibitors is associated with distinctive clinical and molecular features, with the development of secondary mutations of the oncogenic kinase being the most common mechanism. We review the molecular basis of GIST response and/or resistance to TKIs, and discuss strategies to prevent and/or overcome drug resistance. These concepts are directly relevant to the development of targeted molecular therapy for other solid tumors. (Clin Cancer Res 2009;15(24):7510–8)
Does gender matter? Differences between students at an interprofessional training ward

Abstract Studies on graduates’ transitions from education into clinical work highlight inequalities concerning how women and men experience their professional learning and development. This study explores how female and male students from different programs within the health care education system (i.e. medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, and physiotherapy programmes) experience an interprofessional training ward (IPTW) as a part of their professional identity formation. Students from the medicine, nursing, physiotherapy, and occupational therapy programmes collaborate in teams during two weeks at one of three IPTWs at the medical school, Linköping University. They together take the responsibility for diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of the patients, albeit with professional supervisors as support. During 2010 to 2011, 454 (93%) of the 488 students who practiced at the IPTWs answered a questionnaire on their experiences of the IPTW. The students stated that the IPTW had positively influenced their professional development. The female and male medical students were significantly less positive than other female and male students, respectively, concerning the value of IPTW. The male students from all programmes were slightly, but significantly, less positive than all the female students. These findings show that students “do gender” as an integral part of the educational practice. It is important to scrutinise the IPTW as an educational practice, influencing students’ preparation for future work. Gender should be discussed not only during the IPTW rotation but also in general during the curriculum for all healthcare programmes.
Tryptophan in Alcoholism Treatment I: Kynurenine Metabolites Inhibit the Rat Liver Mitochondrial Low Km Aldehyde Dehydrogenase Activity, Elevate Blood Acetaldehyde Concentration and Induce Aversion to Alcohol

Aims: The aims were to provide proofs of mechanism and principle by establishing the ability of kynurenine metabolites to inhibit the liver mitochondrial low Km aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) activity after administration and in vivo, and to induce aversion to alcohol. Methods: Kynurenic acid (KA), 3-hydroxykynurenine (3-HK) and 3-hydroxyanthranilic acid (3-HAA) were administered to normal male Wistar rats and ALDH activity was determined both in vitro in liver homogenates and in vivo (by measuring blood acetaldehyde following ethanol administration). Alcohol consumption was studied in an aversion model in rats and in alcohol-preferring C57 mice. Results: ALDH activity was significantly inhibited by all three metabolites by doses as small as 1 mg/kg body wt. Blood acetaldehyde accumulation after ethanol administration was strongly elevated by KA and 3-HK and to a lesser extent by 3-HAA. All three metabolites induced aversion to alcohol in rats and decreased alcohol preference in mice. Conclusions: The above kynurenine metabolites of tryptophan induce aversion to alcohol by inhibiting ALDH activity. An intellectual property covering the use of 3-HK and 3-HAA and derivatives thereof in the treatment of alcoholism by aversion awaits further development.
The Association between the Pro12Ala Variant in the PPARγ2 Gene and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and Obesity in a Chinese Population

Background Conflicting results have been reported on the association of the Pro12Ala polymorphism of the PPARγ2 gene with the risk of type 2 diabetes or obesity. Methods and Findings A total of 3146 subjects with 1145 cases of type 2 diabetes and 2001 healthy controls were included in the study. Genomic DNA was obtained from blood samples and the screening for the gene polymorphisms was done using an allelic discrimination assay-by-design TaqMan method. Overall, the Ala allele frequency was 5.6% in control subjects and 3.9% in diabetes subjects (P = 0.023). We found a statistically significant association of carriers of the Ala allele with greater homoeostasis model assessment of beta cell function index in all subjects (P = 0.046). After controlling for confounders, carriers of the Ala allele had a decreased risk of diabetes compared with noncarriers [odds ratio (OR) 0.64, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.49–0.83; P = 0.001]. A beneficial effect of the Ala allele was also observed for obesity (OR 0.64, 95% CI 0.42–0.96; P = 0.030). Conclusion Our results suggested that the presence of the Ala allele may contribute to improved insulin secretory capacity and may confer protection from type 2 diabetes and obesity in the Chinese population.
Modeling of Nonlinear Propagation in Space-Division Multiplexed Fiber-Optic Transmission

In recent years, space-division multiplexed (SDM) transmission in multimode and multicore fiber structures has been attracting growing interest as a mean of scaling the capacity of the optical transport network. As in the case of standard systems based on the single-mode fibers, the ultimate limit to the achievable transmission rate is set by the nonlinearity of the fiber, and hence, the accurate modeling of nonlinear propagation in SDM fibers is a critical task. A key feature of long multimode fiber structures that are relevant for communications is the existence of random coupling between modes. This coupling has a major effect on the properties of nonlinear propagation, and in its presence, the coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations, which are characterized by a very large number of propagation constants, reduce to the much simpler form of the coupled generalized Manakov equations. These equations shed light on the relevant aspects of signal propagation dynamics, and facilitate the establishment of an intuitive physical picture. Another key feature of SDM fibers is the existence of modal dispersion that introduces frequency dependence into the mode mixing process and modifies the effects of nonlinear propagation. In this paper, we review all of the above mentioned phenomena, and in addition, we assess the way in which the information capacity of SDM fibers is expected to scale with the number of propagation modes. Finally, we extend the Manakov formalism so as to account for the noninstantaneous Raman contribution to the nonlinear response of silica.
Prognostic value of preoperative inflammatory markers in Chinese patients with breast cancer

Cancer-associated inflammation is a key determinant of disease progression and survival in most cancers. The aim of our study was to assess the predictive value of preoperative inflammatory markers, such as the neutrophil–lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet–lymphocyte ratio, red cell distribution width (RDW), and mean platelet volume, for survival in breast cancer patients. In total, 608 breast cancer patients operated on between January 2009 and December 2011 were included in this observational study. The association between preoperative inflammatory markers and survival outcomes was analyzed. Patients with high NLR (>2.57) or high RDW (>13.45%) showed a significantly lower overall survival rate than those with lower NLR (≤2.57) or lower RDW (≤13.45%). NLR and RDW, along with node stage and molecular subtypes, were independent prognostic factors. There was a significant survival difference according to NLR in the luminal A and triple-negative subtypes (93.3% versus 99.3%, P=0.001; 68.8% versus 95.1%, P=0.000, respectively). The triple-negative subtype was the only subtype in which higher RDW patients showed significantly poor prognosis (81.3% versus 95.5%, P=0.025). Pre-operation NLR and RDW is a convenient, easily measured prognostic indicator for patients with breast cancer, especially in patients with the triple-negative subtype.
Maximizing Stochastic Monotone Submodular Functions

We study the problem of maximizing a stochastic monotone submodular function with respect to a matroid constraint. Because of the presence of diminishing marginal values in real-world problems, our model can capture the effect of stochasticity in a wide range of applications. We show that the adaptivity gap—the ratio between the values of optimal adaptive and optimal nonadaptive policies—is bounded and is equal to e /( e − 1). We propose a polynomial-time nonadaptive policy that achieves this bound. We also present an adaptive myopic policy that obtains at least half of the optimal value. Furthermore, when the matroid is uniform, the myopic policy achieves the optimal approximation ratio of 1 − 1/ e . This paper was accepted by Dimitris Bertsimas and Yinyu Ye, optimization .
Building a Large Annotated Corpus of English: The Penn Treebank

Abstract : As a result of this grant, the researchers have now published oil CDROM a corpus of over 4 million words of running text annotated with part-of- speech (POS) tags, with over 3 million words of that material assigned skeletal grammatical structure. This material now includes a fully hand-parsed version of the classic Brown corpus. About one half of the papers at the ACL Workshop on Using Large Text Corpora this past summer were based on the materials generated by this grant.
Health Literacy, Numeracy, and Graphical Literacy Among Veterans in Primary Care and Their Effect on Shared Decision Making and Trust in Physicians

Studies reveal high levels of inadequate health literacy and numeracy in African Americans and older veterans. The authors aimed to investigate the distribution of health literacy, numeracy, and graph literacy in these populations. They conducted a cross-sectional survey of veterans receiving outpatient care and measured health literacy, numeracy, graph literacy, shared decision making, and trust in physicians. In addition, the authors compared subgroups of veterans using analyses of covariance. Participants were 502 veterans (22–82 years). Low, marginal, and adequate health literacy were found in, respectively, 29%, 26%, and 45% of the veterans. The authors found a significant main effect of race qualified by an age and race interaction. Inadequate health literacy was more common in African Americans than in Whites. Younger African Americans had lower health literacy (p <.001), graph literacy (p <.001), and numeracy (p <.001) than did Whites, even after the authors adjusted for covariates. Older and younger participants did not differ in health literacy, objective numeracy, or graph literacy after adjustment. The authors found no health literacy or age-related differences regarding preferences for shared decision making. African Americans expressed dissatisfaction with their current role in decision making (p =.03). Older participants trusted their physicians more than younger participants (p =.01). In conclusion, African Americans may be at a disadvantage when reviewing patient education materials, potentially affecting health care outcomes.
Performance Analysis of Stochastic Timed Petri Nets Using Linear Programming Approach

Stochastic timed Petri nets are a useful tool in the performance analysis of concurrent systems such as parallel computers, communication networks and flexible manufacturing systems. In general, performance measures of stochastic timed Petri nets are difficult to obtain for practical problems due to their sizes. In this paper, we provide a method to efficiently compute upper and lower bounds for the throughputs and mean token numbers for a large class of stochastic timed Petri nets. Our approach is based on uniformization technique and linear programming.
The neural substrate and temporal dynamics of interference effects in working memory as revealed by event-related functional MRI.

Research on the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of monkeys and humans indicates that this region supports a heterogeneous repertoire of mental processes that contribute to many complex behaviors, such as working memory. Anatomical evidence for some of these processes derives from functional neuroimaging experiments using blocked experimental designs, which average signal across all components of many trials and therefore cannot dissociate distinct processes with different time courses. Using event-related functional MRI, we were able to isolate temporally the neural correlates of processes contributing to the target presentation, delay, and probe portions of an item-recognition task. Two types of trials were of greatest interest: those with Recent Negative probes that matched an item from the target set of the previous, but not the present, two trials, and those with Nonrecent Negative probes that did not match a target item from either the present or the two previous trials. There was no difference between the two trial types in target presentation (i.e., encoding) or delay-period (i.e., active maintenance) PFC activation, but there was significantly greater activation for Recent Negatives than Nonrecent Negative activation associated with the probe period within left ventrolateral PFC. These findings characterize spatially and temporally a proactive interference effect that may reflect the operation of a PFC-mediated response-inhibition mechanism that contributes to working memory performance.