Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PET scan investigations of Huntington's disease: Cerebral metabolic correlates of neurological features and functional decline

Fifteen drug‐free patients with early to midstage Huntington's disease were evaluated with quantitative neurological examinations, scales for functional capacity, computed tomographic (CT) scans, and positron emission tomographic (PET) scans of 18F‐2‐fluoro‐2‐deoxyglucose (18F‐FDG) uptake. All patients had abnormal indices of caudate metabolism on PET scanning, whereas in patients with early disease indices of putamen metabolism and CT measures of caudate atrophy were normal. Indices of caudate metabolism correlated highly with the patients' overall functional capacity (r = 0.906; p < 0.001) and bradykinesia/rigidity (r = −0.692; p < 0.01). Indices of putamen metabolism correlated highly with motor functions: Chorea (r = −0.841; p < 0.01), oculomotor abnormalities (r = −0.849; p < 0.01), and fine motor coordination (r = −0.866; p < 0.01). Indices of thalamic metabolism correlated positively with dystonia (r = 0.559; p < 0.05). The data suggest that PET scanning with 18F‐FDG is a sensitive measure of brain dysfunction in Huntington's disease and that basal ganglia metabolism is highly correlated with the overall functional capacity of individual patients and with the degree of their motor abnormalities.
The association of CXCR4 expression with clinicopathological significance and potential drug target in prostate cancer: a meta-analysis and literature review

CXCR4/CXCL12 axis plays an important role in tumor growth, angiogenesis, metastasis, and therapeutic resistance. The aim of this study is to perform a meta-analysis and literature review to evaluate the association of CXCR4 expression with clinicopathological significance and prognosis in patients with prostate cancer (PCa). A detailed literature search was made in Medline, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Google Scholar for related research publications. The data were extracted and assessed independently. Analysis of pooled data was performed using Review Manager 5.2. Odds ratio (OR) with corresponding confidence intervals were calculated and summarized. The meta-analysis included a total of eleven studies and 630 patients. The rate of CXCR4 protein expression in PCa was significantly higher than in nonmalignant prostate tissues (OR =35.71, P<0.00001). The expression of CXCR4 protein was not significantly associated with Gleason score (P=0.73). However, the frequency of CXCR4 protein expression was significantly higher in T3–4 stage than in T1–2 stage of PCa (OR =2.35, P=0.001). The expression of CXCR4 protein was significantly associated with the presence of lymph node and bone metastasis of PCa: for lymph node metastasis positive versus negative, OR was 5.07 and P=0.0003, and for bone metastasis positive versus negative, OR was 7.03 and P=0.003. Cancer-specific survival of patients with PCa was significantly associated with CXCR4 protein expression, and the pooled Hazard ratio was 0.24 and P=0.002. In conclusion, the high expression of CXCR4 protein is a diagnostic biomarker of PCa, and it is significantly associated with T stages. The increased expression of CXCR4 protein is significantly associated with lymph nodes or bone metastasis, and CXCR4 is a poor prognosis predictor for patients with PCa. Taken together, our findings indicate that CXCR4 could be a target not only for the development of therapeutic intervention but also for the noninvasive monitoring of PCa progression.
Learning Structured Sparsity in Deep Neural Networks

High demand for computation resources severely hinders deployment of large-scale Deep Neural Networks (DNN) in resource constrained devices. In this work, we propose a Structured Sparsity Learning (SSL) method to regularize the structures (i.e., filters, channels, filter shapes, and layer depth) of DNNs. SSL can: (1) learn a compact structure from a bigger DNN to reduce computation cost; (2) obtain a hardware-friendly structured sparsity of DNN to efficiently accelerate the DNNs evaluation. Experimental results show that SSL achieves on average 5.1x and 3.1x speedups of convolutional layer computation of AlexNet against CPU and GPU, respectively, with off-the-shelf libraries. These speedups are about twice speedups of non-structured sparsity; (3) regularize the DNN structure to improve classification accuracy. The results show that for CIFAR-10, regularization on layer depth can reduce 20 layers of a Deep Residual Network (ResNet) to 18 layers while improve the accuracy from 91.25% to 92.60%, which is still slightly higher than that of original ResNet with 32 layers. For AlexNet, structure regularization by SSL also reduces the error by around ~1%. Open source code is in this https URL
Reconciling Estimates of Cell Proliferation from Stable Isotope Labeling Experiments

Stable isotope labeling is the state of the art technique for in vivo quantification of lymphocyte kinetics in humans. It has been central to a number of seminal studies, particularly in the context of HIV-1 and leukemia. However, there is a significant discrepancy between lymphocyte proliferation rates estimated in different studies. Notably, deuterated 2H2-glucose (D2-glucose) labeling studies consistently yield higher estimates of proliferation than deuterated water (D2O) labeling studies. This hampers our understanding of immune function and undermines our confidence in this important technique. Whether these differences are caused by fundamental biochemical differences between the two compounds and/or by methodological differences in the studies is unknown. D2-glucose and D2O labeling experiments have never been performed by the same group under the same experimental conditions; consequently a direct comparison of these two techniques has not been possible. We sought to address this problem. We performed both in vitro and murine in vivo labeling experiments using identical protocols with both D2-glucose and D2O. This showed that intrinsic differences between the two compounds do not cause differences in the proliferation rate estimates, but that estimates made using D2-glucose in vivo were susceptible to difficulties in normalization due to highly variable blood glucose enrichment. Analysis of three published human studies made using D2-glucose and D2O confirmed this problem, particularly in the case of short term D2-glucose labeling. Correcting for these inaccuracies in normalization decreased proliferation rate estimates made using D2-glucose and slightly increased estimates made using D2O; thus bringing the estimates from the two methods significantly closer and highlighting the importance of reliable normalization when using this technique.
INFLUENCE OF HORMONES ON TUMOR GROWTH AND PLASMA PROLACTIN LEVELS IN RATS BEARING A PITUITARY "MAMMOTROPIC" TUMOR.

Summary The effects of estradiol, cortisol acetate, thyroxine, or thiouracil on tumor growth, organ weights, and plasma prolactin levels were determined in rats bearing a Furth pituitary “mammotropic” tumor (MtT.F 4 ). This tumor is known to secrete large amounts of adrenocorticotropin, somatotropin, and prolactin, but no follicle-stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, or thyrotropin. At the dose levels used, estradiol significantly suppressed tumor growth without influencing body growth, and it partially inhibited enlargement of the adrenals and atrophy of the thymus. Cortisol acetate significantly reduced both tumor and body growth. Thyroxine had no significant effect on tumor growth but enhanced the somatotropic effect as indicated by increases in body growth and organ weights. Thiouracil had no significant effect on tumor or body growth, although it significantly increased thyroid weight. Estradiol, cortisol acetate, and thyroxine each increased the plasma prolactin levels of the tumor-bearing rats.
The Effect of Inhalation of Aromatherapy Blend containing Lavender Essential Oil on Cesarean Postoperative Pain

Background Pain is a major problem in patients after cesarean and medication such as aromatherapy which is a complementary therapy, in which the essences of the plants oils are used to reduce such undesirable conditions. Objectives In this study, the effect of aromatherapy using Lavender (Lavandula) essential oil on cesarean postoperative pain was assessed. Materials and Methods In a triple blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial study, 60 pregnant women who were admitted to a general hospital for cesarean section, were divided randomly into two groups. After cesarean, the Lavender group inhaled about 3 drops of 10% Lavender oil essence and the placebo group inhaled 3 drops of placebo after the start of postoperative pain, four, eight and 12 hours later, for 5 minutes from the 10 cm distance. Patient's pain was measured by the VAS (Visual Analog Scale) score before and after each intervention, and vital sign, complications and level of satisfaction of every patient were recorded before and after aromatherapy. Results There was no statistically significant difference between groups in age, height, weight, and time to the first analgesic requirement. Patients in the Lavender group had less postoperative pain in four (P = 0.008), eight (P = 0.024) and 12 (P = 0.011) hours after first medication than the placebo group. The decreased heart rate and patients' level of satisfaction with analgesia were significantly higher in the Lavender group (P = 0.001). In the placebo group, the use of diclofenac suppositories for complete analgesia was also significantly higher than the Lavender group (P = 0.008). Conclusions The inhaled Lavender essence may be used as a part of the multidisciplinary treatment of pain after cesarean section, but it is not recommended as the sole pain management.
24-Element Antenna-in-Package for Stationary 60-GHz Communication Scenarios

An integrated multilayer antenna-in-package (AiP) targeted for stationary 60-GHz communication is presented. The key differences in design conditions for mass-market-level and prototype-level AiP are discussed and reflected during the design process. Hence, a low-cost and high-reliability package solution is realized. The proposed AiP consists of a 4 × 6 array of 24 stacked circular patch antennas and corresponding antenna feed lines designed for phased array. The finalized LTCC AiP prototype features 20 × 15 × 1.02 mm3 in dimension. Solder bump flip-chip technology is used to attach the AiP to the RFIC for system-level assembly. The assembled package is evaluated using a custom-designed near-field measurement setup. EM simulations and measurements confirm the presented AiP features more than 9 GHz bandwidth, 45° beam-steering ranges in both E- and H-planes, and more than 14.5 dBi gain at boresight.
Effect of Arabinogalactan Proteins from the Root Caps of Pea and Brassica napus on Aphanomyces euteiches Zoospore Chemotaxis and Germination12[C][W]

Root tips of many plant species release a number of border, or border-like, cells that are thought to play a major role in the protection of root meristem. However, little is currently known on the structure and function of the cell wall components of such root cells. Here, we investigate the sugar composition of the cell wall of the root cap in two species: pea (Pisum sativum), which makes border cells, and Brassica napus, which makes border-like cells. We find that the cell walls are highly enriched in arabinose and galactose, two major residues of arabinogalactan proteins. We confirm the presence of arabinogalactan protein epitopes on root cap cell walls using immunofluorescence microscopy. We then focused on these proteoglycans by analyzing their carbohydrate moieties, linkages, and electrophoretic characteristics. The data reveal (1) significant structural differences between B. napus and pea root cap arabinogalactan proteins and (2) a cross-link between these proteoglycans and pectic polysaccharides. Finally, we assessed the impact of root cap arabinogalactan proteins on the behavior of zoospores of Aphanomyces euteiches, an oomycetous pathogen of pea roots. We find that although the arabinogalactan proteins of both species induce encystment and prevent germination, the effects of both species are similar. However, the arabinogalactan protein fraction from pea attracts zoospores far more effectively than that from B. napus. This suggests that root arabinogalactan proteins are involved in the control of early infection of roots and highlights a novel role for these proteoglycans in root-microbe interactions.
Antioxidant approaches for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease

Oxidative stress is an important factor, and one that acts in the earliest stages, of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathogenesis. The reduction of oxidative stress has been tested as a therapy for AD. While the trial of vitamin E supplementation in moderately severe AD is the most promising so far, it also reveals the limitations of general antioxidant therapies that simply lower oxidative stress and, therefore, the complexity of the redox system. The multiple contributing factors that foster the clinical manifestations of AD should be considered when designing antioxidative stress therapy. In this article, we discuss the multiple pathogenic mechanisms of oxidative stress in AD and the potential targeting approaches.
New constraints on source processes of volcanic tremor at Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica, using broadband seismic data

Broadband seismic data recorded 2.3 km from the active vent of Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica, provide new constraints on tremor source processes. Arenal's tremor contains as many as seven harmonics, whose frequencies vary temporally by up to 75 percent, from initial values of 1.9 Hz for the first peak immediately following explosive eruptions to 3.2–3.5 Hz several minutes later. We infer that gas bubble concentration is variable within the conduit and also changes as a function of time, thereby changing the acoustic velocity. We infer that the source is a shallow, 200–660 m‐long, vertically oriented 1‐D resonator with matched boundary conditions, radiating seismic energy from a displacement antinode. Polarization analyses show that particle motion azimuths abruptly rotate, which may be explained by a decrease of the incidence angle. We suggest that energy is radiated predominantly from a displacement antinode that is changing position with time. Tremor consists mainly of transverse waves that travel at speeds of about 800 m/s. P waves in the magma conduit will couple very efficiently into S waves in the surrounding medium when there is virtually no impedance contrast between the two media for these two types of waves. The tremor at Arenal is similar to tremor at nine other volcanoes.
Temporally Asymmetric Learning Supports Sequence Processing in Multi-Winner Self-Organizing Maps

We examine the extent to which modified Kohonen self-organizing maps (SOMs) can learn unique representations of temporal sequences while still supporting map formation. Two biologically inspired extensions are made to traditional SOMs: selection of multiple simultaneous rather than single winners and the use of local intramap connections that are trained according to a temporally asymmetric Hebbian learning rule. The extended SOM is then trained with variable-length temporal sequences that are composed of phoneme feature vectors, with each sequence corresponding to the phonetic transcription of a noun. The model transforms each input sequence into a spatial representation (final activation pattern on the map). Training improves this transformation by, for example, increasing the uniqueness of the spatial representations of distinct sequences, while still retaining map formation based on input patterns. The closeness of the spatial representations of two sequences is found to correlate significantly with the sequences' similarity. The extended model presented here raises the possibility that SOMs may ultimately prove useful as visualization tools for temporal sequences and as preprocessors for sequence pattern recognition systems.
Chlamydophila pneumoniae inhibits differentiation of progenitor adipose cells and impairs insulin signaling.

BACKGROUND Recent clinical studies have shown Chlamydophila pneumoniae seropositivity to be related to overweight status and inversely related to insulin sensitivity. The present study was performed to investigate the potential effects of C. pneumoniae infection of adipocytes. METHODS 3T3-L1 cells and primary epididymal preadipocytes were infected with C. pneumoniae either before or after induction of differentiation, and the effects on adipogenesis and insulin signaling were determined. Tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha signaling was examined by assessing the effects of C. pneumoniae infection in preadipocytes isolated from epididymal adipose tissue of both wild-type and TNF-alpha(-/-) mice. RESULTS C. pneumoniae successfully infected both undifferentiated and differentiated 3T3-L1 cells in vitro. The bacteria were also detected in adipose tissue of infected low-density lipoprotein receptor-deficient mice. TNF-alpha protein levels were significantly increased in cells infected with either live or heat-killed C. pneumoniae or treated with lipopolysaccharide or heat-shock protein 65; this increase was associated with inhibition of adipocyte differentiation and down-regulation of insulin-stimulated tyrosine-phosphorylated insulin receptor and its substrate. In contrast, C. pneumoniae infection in TNF-alpha(-/-) adipocytes produced no apparent changes, but addition of recombinant TNF-alpha reversed this effect. CONCLUSIONS We demonstrate for the first time that C. pneumoniae can infect murine pre- and postdifferentiated adipocytes and, through a TNF-alpha-mediated inflammatory mechanism, can impair differentiation and insulin signaling.
Overexpression of coupling factor 6 attenuates exercise-induced physiological cardiac hypertrophy by inhibiting PI3K/Akt signaling in mice

Background: Regular exercise improves systolic cardiac dysfunction through Akt cascade-mediated physiological hypertrophy in congestive heart failure. Tissue acidosis impairs Akt cascade, and coupling factor 6 induces tissue acidosis via activation of ecto-F1Fo complex. We tested the hypothesis that coupling factor 6 attenuates physiological cardiac hypertrophy induced by exercise and its benefit in mice. Methods and results: Adult wild-type mice (n = 20) and coupling factor 6-overexpressing transgenic mice (n = 20) were divided into two groups with or without 4-week exercise consisting of 90-min swimming twice daily. Left ventricular posterior wall and interventricular septum thicknesses were increased by 0.12 ± 0.1 and 0.16 ± 0.1 mm, respectively, after 4-week swimming in wild-type mice (both P < 0.01), but unchanged in transgenic mice. Fractional shortening was increased from 37 ± 1 to 41 ± 1% after 4-week swimming in wild-type mice (P < 0.05), whereas it was unchanged in transgenic. The insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) receptor protein and its phosphorylated form in the heart were both increased by 1.83 ± 0.23 and 1.83 ± 0.09 times, respectively, after 4-week swimming in wild-type mice (both P < 0.05), but were unchanged in transgenic. Downstream phosphoinsulin receptor substrate 1, phosphoinositide 3-kinase, and phospho-Akt were increased by 2.22 ± 0.22, 1.78 ± 0.31, and 2.24 ± 0.49 times, respectively, in wild-type mice (all P < 0.05), but were unchanged in transgenic. Restoration of phospho-Akt by IGF-1 injection recovered left ventricular hypertrophy and systolic function after 4-week swimming in transgenic. Conclusion: Overexpression of coupling factor 6 attenuates exercise-induced physiological cardiac hypertrophy by downregulating Akt signaling, thereby cancelling its benefit for cardiac function in mice. Reduction in coupling factor 6 level seems to be useful for drawing the exercising effects on cardiac function.
Amplify-and-forward versus decode-and-forward relaying: which is better?

Performance of multi-hop MIMO relay channels under the amplify-and-forward and decode-and-forward proto- cols are compared via the capacity and SNR gains. In an N - hop channel of linear topology with multi-antenna source and destination and single-antenna relay nodes, the capacity gain of the DF relaying over the AF one does not exceed log 2 N bit/s/Hz and its SNR gain does not exceed N , for any channel realization. This conclusion also applies to selection relaying, to the outage probability/capacity and the ergodic capacity in an arbitrary block-fading channel, and can be further extended to hybrid relaying. The conditions under which the DF and AF
Day‐case and short‐stay surgery: the future for thyroidectomy?

Day‐case and short‐stay thyroid surgery is carried out routinely around the world. In the UK longer postoperative stay is usually advocated to circumvent/identify potentially catastrophic complications following thyroidectomy. In the current climate of the National Health Service with focus on patient‐centred service, reduced hospital stay and cost cutting, we conducted a review to provide a comprehensive assessment of day‐case and short‐stay thyroidectomy. A systematic electronic literature search using MEDLINE, Ovid, Embase, PubMed and Cochrane databases revealed 22 original studies that met our inclusion criteria.
Accurate Estimation of Leakage Power Variability in Sub-micrometer CMOS Circuits

Leakage power has already become the major contributor to the total on-chip power consumption, rendering its estimation a necessary step in the IC design flow. The problem is further exacerbated with the increasing uncertainty in the manufacturing process known as process variability. We develop a method to estimate the variation of leakage power in the presence of both intra-die and inter-die process variability. Various complicating issues of leakage prediction such as spatial correlation of process parameters, the effect of different input states of gates on the leakage, and DIBL and stack effects are taken into account while we model the simultaneous variability of the two most critical process parameters, threshold voltage and effective channel length. Our subthreshold leakage current model is shown to fit closely on the HSPICE Monte Carlo simulation data with an average coefficient of determination (R2) value of 0.9984 for all the cells of a standard library. We also demonstrate the adjustability of this model to wider ranges of variation and its extendability to future technology scalings. We show that our framework imposes little timing penalty on the system design flow and is applicable to real design cases. The procedures explained in this paper are part of VAREX, an academic variability modeling framework for estimation of the effect of process variation on power consumption and performance of Multiprocessor SoCs.
Combining Two Lazy Learning Methods for Classification and Knowledge Discovery - A Case Study for Malignant Melanoma Diagnosis

The goal of this paper is to construct a classifier for diagnosing malignant melanoma. We experimented with two lazy learning methods, k-NN and LID, and compared their results with the ones produced by decision trees. We performed this comparison because we are also interested on building a domain model that can serve as basis to dermatologists to propose a good characterization of early melanomas. We shown that lazy learning methods have a better performance than decision trees in terms of sensitivity and specificity. We have seen that both lazy learning methods produce complementary results (k-NN has high specificity and LID has high sensitivity) suggesting that a combination of both could be a good classifier. We report experiments confirming this point. Concerning the construction of a domain model, we propose to use the explanations provided by the lazy learning methods, and we see that the resulting theory is as predictive and useful as the one obtained from decision trees.