Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Patterns of illicit drug use and retention in a methadone program: a longitudinal study.

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to analyze illicit drug use of participants in a methadone treatment program in relation to methadone dose, counseling, and retention. METHODS This was a longitudinal study of a cohort of 204 heroin-dependent subjects admitted for the first time to a methadone program in Stockholm. The patients were admitted between 1995 and mid-2000 and were followed until December 2000 or discharge. Up to June 11, 1998, individual psychosocial counseling was provided; after this date individual counseling was replaced with group counseling. Clinical data were collected from patient records and from a laboratory database. Rates of drug-positive urine analyses during different time periods were measured. RESULTS The mean observation time was 2.5 years for all patients. The one-year retention rate was 84 percent, and the two-year rate was 65 percent, with no major differences between the two counseling groups. Almost all patients relapsed to illicit drug use. Discharged patients had a significantly higher rate of positive urine samples (21 percent versus 9 percent) than patients who remained in treatment. Also, low methadone dose and younger age predicted discharge from treatment. CONCLUSION The frequent urine monitoring showed that illicit drug use was rather common, even in a program with structured psychosocial interventions, although it was lower than in other studies. This testing policy can be used for early identification of patients at risk for drop-out or discharge who should be offered complementary interventions.
Competency in managing cardiac arrest: A scenario-based evaluation of dental students

Abstract Objective. Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS) in life-threatening situations is perceived as a basic skill for dental professionals. However, medical emergency training in dental schools is often not standardized. The dental students’ knowledge transfer to an ACLS setting thus remains questionable. The aim of the study was to evaluate dental pre-doctorate students’ practical competence in ACLS in a standardized manner to enable the curriculum to be adapted to meet their particular needs. Materials and methods. Thirty dental students (age 25.47 ± 1.81; 16 male/14 female) in their last year of dental studies were randomly assigned to 15 teams. Students’ ability to successfully manage ACLS was assessed by a scenario-based approach (training module: Laerdal® ALS Skillmaster). Competence was assessed by means of (a) an observation chart, (b) video analysis and (c) training module analysis (Laerdal HeartSim®4000; Version 1.4). The evaluation was conducted by a trained anesthesiologist with regard to the 2010 guidelines of the European Resuscitation Council (ERC). Results. Only five teams (33.3%) checked for all three vital functions (response, breathing and circulation). All teams initiated cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Only 54.12% of the compressions performed during CPR were sufficient. Four teams stopped the CPR after initiation. In total, 93% of the teams used the equipment for bag-valve-mask ventilation and 53.3% used the AED (Automated external defibrillator). Conclusions. ACLS training on a regular basis is necessary and, consistent with a close link between dentistry and medicine, should be a standardized part of the medical emergency curriculum for dental students with a specific focus on the deficiencies revealed in this study.
Anti‐tumor necrosis factor‐alpha treatment reduces allergic responses in an allergic rhinitis mouse model

To cite this article: Mo J‐H, Kang E‐K, Quan S‐H, Rhee C‐S, Lee CH, Kim D‐Y. Anti‐tumor necrosis factor‐alpha treatment reduces allergic responses in an allergic rhinitis mouse model. Allergy 2011; 66: 279–286.
Risk of persistent high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion after electrosurgical excisional treatment with positive margins: a meta-analysis

ABSTRACT CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE: Even if precursor lesions of cervical cancer are properly treated, there is a risk of persistence or recurrence. The aim here was to quantify the risks of persistence of high-grade intraepithelial squamous lesions, one and two years after cervical electrosurgical excisional treatment with positive margins. DESIGN AND SETTING: Systematic review of the literature and meta-analysis at Instituto Fernandes Figueira. METHODS: This meta-analysis was on studies published between January 1989 and July 2009 that were identified in Medline, Scopus, Embase, Cochrane, SciELO, Lilacs, Adolec, Medcarib, Paho, Wholis, Popline, ISI Web of Science and Sigle. Articles were selected if they were cohort studies on electrosurgical excisional treatment of high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions with a minimum follow-up of one year, a histopathological outcome of persistence of these lesions and a small risk of bias. RESULTS: The search identified 7,066 articles and another 21 in the reference lists of these papers. After applying the selection and exclusion criteria, only four articles were found to have extractable data. The risk of persistence of high-grade intraepithelial lesions after one year was 11.36 times greater (95% confidence interval, CI: 5.529-23.379, P < 0.0001) in patients with positive margins and after two years, was four times greater (95% CI: 0.996-16.164), although without statistical significance. CONCLUSION: This meta-analysis confirms the importance of positive margins as an indicator of incomplete treatment after the first year of follow-up and highlights the need for appropriately chosen electrosurgical techniques based on disease location and extent, with close surveillance of these patients.
Feature Reduction for Dimensional Emotion Recognition in Human-Robot Interaction

The introduction of social robots in human living spaces has brought to attention the need for robots to be equipped with emotion recognition capabilities to facilitate natural and social human-robot interactions. This paper explores the recognition of continuous dimensional emotion from facial expressions. It further investigates the use of principal component analysis (PCA), locality preserving projections (LPP) and factor analysis (FA) for reduction of the many features that are typically produced by facial feature extraction algorithms. The reduced features sets are modelled using Nonlinear Auto Regressive with Exogenous inputs Recurrent Neural Networks (NARX-RNN). The results show that PCA significantly out perfoms both LPP and FA techniques, and that the NARX-RNN model is a powerful predictor of continuous emotion.
Seleção de ameixeiras promissoras para a Serra da Mantiqueira

salicina Lindl) is a fruit species commercially cultivated in regions of mild and severe winters, and cultivar selection is mainly based on climate adaptation. The objective of this study was to select superior genetic materials, adapted to edafoclimatic conditions to the south region of Minas Gerais State, in the highlands of Serra da Mantiqueira. The evaluations were carried out with the plum cultivars 'Pretinha', 'Irati', 'Gema de Ouro', 'Reubennel', 'Roxa de Delfim Moreira', 'Gulfblaze', 'Frontier', 'Santa Rosa', and nine selections (selection I, selection II, selection III, selection IV, selection V, selection VI, selection VII, selection VIII and selection IX), grafted onto the rootstock 'Okinawa'. The experiment was arranged in arandomized block design, with eigth cultivars and nine selections, with four repetitions. Plant vegetative development of eighteen, and twenty-four month old plum trees was evaluated during the crop cycle 2007/2008, besides phenological data on sprouting, blooming, fruiting and harvest. The results showed that the selections III and IX were earlier; selections VII, VIII, 'Gema de Ouro' and 'Reubennel' were mid-season; and 'Irati' and 'Gulfblaze' were late. Cultivars Irati, Gema de Ouro and Reubennel showed better adaptation to soil and climatic conditions to the region of the highlands of the Mantiqueira Mountain Range in Minas Gerais.
Rapid Color Evolution in an Aposematic Species: A Phylogenetic Analysis of Color Variation in the Strikingly Polymorphic Strawberry Poison-dart Frog

Abstract Aposematism is one of the great mysteries of evolutionary biology. The evolution of aposematic coloration is poorly understood, but even less understood is the evolution of polymorphism in aposematic signals. Here, we use a phylogeographic approach to investigate the evolution of color polymorphism in Dendrobates pumilio, a well-known poison-dart frog (family Dendrobatidae), which displays perhaps the most striking color variation of any aposematic species. With over a dozen color morphs, ranging from bright red to dull green, D. pumilio provides an ideal opportunity to examine the evolution of color polymorphism and evolutionary shifts to cryptic coloration in an otherwise aposematic species. We constructed a phylogenetic tree for all D. pumilio color morphs from 3051bp of mtDNA sequence data, reconstructed ancestral states using parsimony and Bayesian methods, and tested the recovered tree against constraint trees using parametric bootstrapping to determine the number of changes to each color type. We find strong evidence for nearly maximal numbers of changes in all color traits, including five independent shifts to dull dorsal coloration. Our results indicate that shifts in coloration in aposematic species may occur more regularly than predicted and that convergence in coloration may indicate that similar forces are repeatedly driving these shifts.
Sex differences in the structural connectome of the human brain

Significance Sex differences are of high scientific and societal interest because of their prominence in behavior of humans and nonhuman species. This work is highly significant because it studies a very large population of 949 youths (8–22 y, 428 males and 521 females) using the diffusion-based structural connectome of the brain, identifying novel sex differences. The results establish that male brains are optimized for intrahemispheric and female brains for interhemispheric communication. The developmental trajectories of males and females separate at a young age, demonstrating wide differences during adolescence and adulthood. The observations suggest that male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action, whereas female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes. Sex differences in human behavior show adaptive complementarity: Males have better motor and spatial abilities, whereas females have superior memory and social cognition skills. Studies also show sex differences in human brains but do not explain this complementarity. In this work, we modeled the structural connectome using diffusion tensor imaging in a sample of 949 youths (aged 8–22 y, 428 males and 521 females) and discovered unique sex differences in brain connectivity during the course of development. Connection-wise statistical analysis, as well as analysis of regional and global network measures, presented a comprehensive description of network characteristics. In all supratentorial regions, males had greater within-hemispheric connectivity, as well as enhanced modularity and transitivity, whereas between-hemispheric connectivity and cross-module participation predominated in females. However, this effect was reversed in the cerebellar connections. Analysis of these changes developmentally demonstrated differences in trajectory between males and females mainly in adolescence and in adulthood. Overall, the results suggest that male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action, whereas female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes.
microRNA-218 Inhibits Oxygen-induced Retinal Neovascularization via Reducing the Expression of Roundabout 1

Background: The mechanisms of pathological retinal neovascularization (RNV) remain unknown. Several microRNAs were reported to be involved in the process of RNV. Oxygen-induced retinopathy (OIR) is a useful model to investigate RNV. Our present work explored the expression and the role of microRNA-128 (miR-218) in oxygen-induced RNV. Methods: OIR was used to establish RNV model. The expression level of miR-218 in the retina from OIR mice was assessed by quantitative real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. Fluorescein angiography was performed in retinae of OIR mice, and RNV was quantified by hematoxylin and eosin staining to evaluate the effect of pCDH-CMV-miR-218 intravitreal injection on RNV in OIR mice. Roundabout 1 (Robo1) expression was detected by Western blotting in mouse retinal vascular endothelial cells expressing a high or low level of miR-218 and retinal tissues from OIR mice. Cell migration was evaluated by scratch wound assay. Results: In OIR mice, the expression level of miR-218 was significantly down-regulated (P = 0.006). Retinal Robo1 expression was significantly increased at both mRNA and protein levels (P = 0.001, 0.008; respectively). miR-218 intravitreal injection inhibited retinal angiogenesis in OIR mice, and the restoration of miR-218 in retina led to down-regulation of Robo1. Conclusions: Our experiments showed that restoration of miR-218 inhibited retinal angiogenesis via targeting Robo1. MiR-218 contributed to the inhibition of retinal angiogenesis and miR-218 might be a new therapeutic target for preventing RNV.
The extratemporal facial nerve and its branches: analysis of 42 hemifacial dissections in fresh Persian (Iranian) cadavers.

BACKGROUND The facial nerve controls facial muscles and expressions. Variability in branching patterns of the nerve creates variability in facial animation, which is evident in facial plastic surgery both between patients and ethnic groups and between sides of the face. Identifying relationships between the main trunk of the facial nerve and its network of branches to soft tissues/bony fixed points contributes to safer aesthetic and reconstructive techniques. OBJECTIVE The authors evaluate facial nerve branches in Persian (Iranian) cadavers, propose classification of the extratemporal nerve, determine topography of the nerve using fixed facial points, and define a new fixed point. METHODS Twenty-one cadavers were dissected, for a total of 42 hemifaces. Bicoronal and preauricular to submandibular incisions were made to deglove the face. Coded data were analyzed using a statistical program. The average of various quantitative and qualitative data points was analyzed. Averaged quantitative variables were compared between groups. The primary fixed index to specify the main trunk of the facial nerve was a point on a line from the upper edge of the tragus to the tip of the mastoid. RESULTS The study confirmed the variable branching pattern of the extratemporal facial nerve. Temporal branches on the zygomatic arch numbered 1 to 3. Distance from the nearest branch to the tragus was 20.62 ± 3.84 mm on the right and 21.33 ± 3.10 mm on the left. The variability in distribution may explain different facial expressions among ethnic groups. CONCLUSIONS Research using cadavers may improve facial surgery procedures and clarify variability in the facial nerve branching patterns among different ethnic groups.
Effect of the cutting date on blooming and fruit-bearing of Ostericum palustre Beesser

In fresh moist meadows, double-cut, located in the Bydgoszcz Canal Valley, you can find Ostericum palustre , a species of priority importance, which requires protection in the form of designation of Natura 2000 sites. The aim of the present research was to define the effect of the cutting date on blooming and fruit-bearing of O. palustre in meadows covered by the PO1b agro-environmental programme. Phenological observations included three populations of O. palustre . The first one occurs in a traditionally used meadow, not covered by the agro-environmental programme (2) where the date of the first cut falls in mid June. The second one is located in a meadow covered by the agro-environmental programme (1) where the first cutting date is possible from July 1, and the third population located in a natural meadow is not agriculturally used (0). The present research showed that individuals of O. palustre in the traditionally used meadows (2), prior to the first cut, reach the leaf rosette phase, while individuals which occur in the meadow covered by the agro-environmental programme (1), prior to the first cut, reach the generative tiller phase. Full bloom of O. palustre in the traditionally used meadows occurs after July 20, while individuals of O. palustre in the agro-environmental programme reach that phase only at the beginning of August. At the same time, about August 6, the first inflorescence in 70% of individuals in the agriculturally unused meadow (0) has ripe fruit, and in mid August all fruits are ripe. In mid August 70% of individuals in the meadow used for traditional cutting have ripe fruits of the first inflorescence, and right before the second cut, on August 27, almost 90% of fruits were ripe. Most O. palustre individuals in the meadows covered by the agro-environmental programme do not finish blooming of the first inflorescence before mid August. By the end of August, about 60% of individuals reach the phase of young fruits. The first ripe fruits occur as late as September 12. About September 20 most fruits are ripe. To sum up, delayed PO1b agro-environmental programme meadow cutting, after July 1, does not facilitate the production of ripe fruit in O. palustre individuals.
Analysis of Ground-Measured and Passive-Microwave-Derived Snow Depth Variations in Midwinter across the Northern Great Plains

Abstract Accurate estimation of snow mass is important for the characterization of the hydrological cycle at different space and time scales. For effective water resources management, accurate estimation of snow storage is needed. Conventionally, snow depth is measured at a point, and in order to monitor snow depth in a temporally and spatially comprehensive manner, optimum interpolation of the points is undertaken. Yet the spatial representation of point measurements at a basin or on a larger distance scale is uncertain. Spaceborne scanning sensors, which cover a wide swath and can provide rapid repeat global coverage, are ideally suited to augment the global snow information. Satellite-borne passive microwave sensors have been used to derive snow depth (SD) with some success. The uncertainties in point SD and areal SD of natural snowpacks need to be understood if comparisons are to be made between a point SD measurement and satellite SD. In this paper three issues are addressed relating satellite deriva.
Characterization of the Human SNM1A and SNM1B/Apollo DNA Repair Exonucleases

Background: The nucleases hSNM1A and hSNM1B are implicated in DNA interstrand cross-link repair. Results: hSNM1A and hSNM1B were biochemically characterized using undamaged and cross-linked DNA. A real-time assay for the nucleases suitable for inhibitor identification was developed. Conclusion: Preferential hSNM1A activation by high molecular weight and cross-linked DNA was observed. Significance: This work provides a basis for hSNM1A inhibitor development for improved cancer therapy. Human SNM1A and SNM1B/Apollo have both been implicated in the repair of DNA interstrand cross-links (ICLs) by cellular studies, and SNM1B is also required for telomere protection. Here, we describe studies on the biochemical characterization of the SNM1A and SNM1B proteins. The results reveal some fundamental differences in the mechanisms of the two proteins. Both SNM1A and SNM1B digest double-stranded and single-stranded DNA with a 5′-to-3′ directionality in a reaction that is stimulated by divalent cations, and both nucleases are inhibited by the zinc chelator o-phenanthroline. We find that SNM1A has greater affinity for single-stranded DNA over double-stranded DNA that is not observed with SNM1B. Although both proteins demonstrate a low level of processivity on low molecular weight DNA oligonucleotide substrates, when presented with high molecular weight DNA, SNM1A alone is rendered much more active, being capable of digesting kilobase-long stretches of DNA. Both proteins can digest past ICLs induced by the non-distorting minor groove cross-linking agent SJG-136, albeit with SNM1A showing a greater capacity to achieve this. This is consistent with the proposal that SNM1A and SNM1B might exhibit some redundancy in ICL repair. Together, our work establishes differences in the substrate selectivities of SNM1A and SNM1B that are likely to be relevant to their in vivo roles and which might be exploited in the development of selective inhibitors.
Novel Risk Factors for Premature Peripheral Arterial Occlusive Disease in Non-Diabetic Patients: A Case-Control Study

Background This study aimed to determine the prevalence of genetic and environmental vascular risk factors in non diabetic patients with premature peripheral arterial disease, either peripheral arterial occlusive disease or thromboangiitis obliterans, the two main entities of peripheral arterial disease, and to established whether some of them are specifically associated with one or another of the premature peripheral arterial disease subgroups. Methods and Results This study included 113 non diabetic patients with premature peripheral arterial disease (diagnosis <45-year old) presenting either a peripheral arterial occlusive disease (N = 64) or a thromboangiitis obliterans (N = 49), and 241 controls matched for age and gender. Both patient groups demonstrated common traits including cigarette smoking, low physical activity, decreased levels of HDL-cholesterol, apolipoprotein A–I, pyridoxal 5′-phosphate (active form of B6 vitamin) and zinc. Premature peripheral arterial occlusive disease was characterized by the presence of a family history of peripheral arterial and carotid artery diseases (OR 2.3 and 5.8 respectively, 95% CI), high lipoprotein (a) levels above 300 mg/L (OR 2.3, 95% CI), the presence of the factor V Leiden (OR 5.1, 95% CI) and the glycoprotein Ia807T,837T,873A allele (OR 2.3, 95% CI). In thromboangiitis obliterans group, more patients were regular consumers of cannabis (OR 3.5, 95% CI) and higher levels in plasma copper has been shown (OR 6.5, 95% CI). Conclusions According to our results from a non exhaustive list of study parameters, we might hypothesize for 1) a genetic basis for premature peripheral arterial occlusive disease development and 2) the prevalence of environmental factors in the development of thromboangiitis obliterans (tobacco and cannabis). Moreover, for the first time, we demonstrated that the 807T/837T/873A allele of platelet glycoprotein Ia may confer an additional risk for development of peripheral atherosclerosis in premature peripheral arterial occlusive disease.
Uncertainty-Induced Reallocations and Growth

Focusing on both micro and aggregate U.S. data, we show the existence of a significant link between aggregate uncertainty and reallocation of resources away from R&D-intensive capital. This link is important because a decrease in the aggregate share of R&D-oriented capital forecasts lower medium-term growth. In a multi-sector production economy in which (i) growth is endogenously supported by risky R&D investments, and (ii) the representative agent is volatility-risk averse and has access to other safer technologies that do not support growth, uncertainty shocks have a first-order negative impact on medium-term growth and welfare.