Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An implantable intraocular pressure transducer: initial safety outcomes.

IMPORTANCE To our knowledge, this is a report of the first implantation of a wireless intraocular pressure transducer (WIT) in a human eye. OBJECTIVE To report preliminary safety data on the WIT. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANT In an institutional setting, a patient with open-angle glaucoma consented to be the recipient of the WIT in one eye in an interventional study design. INTERVENTIONS The WIT was implanted into the ciliary sulcus following extracapsular cataract extraction and "in the bag" intraocular lens implantation. The patient was monitored postoperatively for 18 months. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Any adverse events. RESULTS There were no complications noted during the WIT insertion or postoperatively. No persistent intraocular inflammation, pigment dispersion, or angle narrowing was noted. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE The WIT was well tolerated in the eye and no overt signs of toxicity or other adverse events were noted. This may allow the constant monitoring of intraocular pressure in the future.
Lifestyles Associated With Human Semen Quality: Results From MARHCS Cohort Study in Chongqing, China

AbstractDecline of semen quality in past decades is suggested to be potentially associated with environmental and sociopsychobehavioral factors, but data from population-based cohort studies is limited.The male reproductive health in Chongqing College students (MARHCS) study was established in June 2013 as a perspective cohort study that recruited voluntary male healthy college students from 3 universities in Chongqing. The primary objectives of the MARHCS study are to investigate the associations of male reproductive health in young adults with sociopsychobehavioral factors, as well as changes of environmental exposure due to the relocation from rural campus (in University Town) to metro-campus (in central downtown). A 93-item questionnaire was used to collect sociopsychobehavioral information in manner of interviewer–interviewing, and blood, urine and semen samples were collected at the same time.The study was initiated with 796 healthy young men screened from 872 participants, with a median age of 20. About 81.8% of this population met the WHO 2010 criteria on semen quality given to the 6 routine parameters. Decreases of 12.7%, 19.8%, and 17.0%, and decreases of 7.7%, 17.6%, and 14.7% in total sperm count and sperm concentration, respectively, were found to be associated with the tertiles of accumulated smoking amount. Fried food consumption (1–2 times/wk or ≥3 times/wk vs nonconsumers) was found to be associated with decreased total sperm count (10.2% or 24.5%) and sperm concentration (13.7% or 17.2%), respectively. Coffee consumption was found to be associated with increased progressive and nonprogressive motility of 8.9% or 15.4% for subjects consuming 1–2 cups/wk or ≥3 cups/wk of coffee, respectively. Cola consumption appeared an association with decreased semen volume at 4.1% or 12.5% for 1–2 bottles/wk or ≥3 bottles/wk.A cohort to investigate the effects of environmental/sociopsychobehavioral factors act on semen quality was successfully set up. We found smoking, coffee/cola/fried foods consumption to be significantly associated with semen quality from the baseline investigation.
Psychopathology associated with Alzheimer's disease and related disorders.

BACKGROUND This study compared the occurrence of psychiatric symptoms in a large group of community-residing participants enrolled in an Alzheimer's disease patient registry who met clinical diagnostic criteria for Alzheimer's disease or multi-infarct dementia, as well as mixed Alzheimer's disease and multi-infarct dementia. METHODS Psychiatric morbidity observed from a psychiatric examination of 514 patients with Alzheimer's disease, 135 patients with multi-infarct dementia, and 86 cases with mixed dementia was analyzed using analysis of variance comparing symptoms across groups and chi-square test for differences in frequency of occurrence. Associations between pairs of symptoms were also reported. RESULTS The frequency of occurrence and patterns of psychiatric problems were similar in patients with Alzheimer's disease and multi-infarct dementia. Agitation was the most frequent symptom, followed by depression, apathy, and behavioral disorders. Patients with mixed dementia had significantly more psychopathology. CONCLUSION This study demonstrated that significant psychopathology occurs in individuals with Alzheimer's disease or multi-infarct dementia. The high levels of symptoms in mixed dementia suggest that the two conditions have a synergistic effect on behavioral problems. The prevalence of multiple symptoms is higher than previously reported.
Dystroglycan Expression in Hepatic Stellate Cells: Role in Liver Fibrosis

Dystroglycan is a membrane component of the dystrophin-glycoprotein transmembrane complex. Its expression is required for the spatial organization of laminin on the cell surface and for basement membrane assembly. In view of the constitution of a perisinusoidal basement membrane during liver fibrosis, we studied dystroglycan expression in liver fibrosis. Dystroglycan mRNA and protein expression were investigated by immunofluorescence, Western blot, and quantitative RT-PCR (TaqMan) in normal human and rat liver and in isolated rat hepatic stellate cells. On Western blot, a 43-kd band corresponding to β-dystroglycan was observed in protein extracted from normal and fibrotic human and rat livers. The specific 43-kd protein was also detected in lysates from rat hepatic stellate cells but not from hepatocytes. By immunofluorescence, patchy deposits of β-dystroglycan were detected on membrane of hepatic stellate cells in culture. On Western blot and quantitative RT-PCR, an up-regulation of β-dystroglycan was shown during spontaneous activation of hepatic stellate cells in culture. Direct evidence for the role of dystroglycan in laminin-hepatic stellate cell interaction was shown because specific antibody directed against α-dystroglycan inhibited partially hepatic stellate cell adhesion on laminin-coated plates. This mechanism was calcium dependent because EDTA inhibited cell/laminin adhesion, an effect reversed by addition of Ca2+. This study shows that dystroglycan is expressed on the membrane of hepatic stellate cells and is up-regulated during liver fibrosis. Dystroglycan interaction with laminin should be implicated in the concentration of pericellular laminin and in the constitution of a perisinusoidal basement membrane during liver fibrosis.
Centrally Administered Ghrelin Acutely Influences Food Choice in Rodents

We sought to determine whether the orexigenic hormone, ghrelin, is involved in the intrinsic regulation of food choice in rats. Ghrelin would seem suited to serve such a role given that it signals hunger information from the stomach to brain areas important for feeding control, including the hypothalamus and reward system (e.g. ventral tegmental area, VTA). Thus, in rats offered a choice of palatable foods (sucrose pellets and lard) superimposed on regular chow for 2 weeks, we explored whether acute central delivery of ghrelin (intracerebroventricular (ICV) or intra-VTA) is able to redirect their dietary choice. The major unexpected finding is that, in rats with high baseline lard intake, acute ICV ghrelin injection increased their chow intake over 3-fold, relative to vehicle-injected controls, measured at both 3 hr and 6 hr after injection. Similar effects were observed when ghrelin was delivered to the VTA, thereby identifying the VTA as a likely contributing neurobiological substrate for these effects. We also explored food choice after an overnight fast, when endogenous ghrelin levels are elevated, and found similar effects of dietary choice to those described for ghrelin. These effects of fasting on food choice were suppressed in models of suppressed ghrelin signaling (i.e. peripheral injection of a ghrelin receptor antagonist to rats and ghrelin receptor (GHSR) knock-out mice), implicating a role for endogenous ghrelin in the changes in food choice that occur after an overnight fast. Thus, in line with its role as a gut-brain hunger hormone, ghrelin appears to be able to acutely alter food choice, with notable effects to promote “healthy” chow intake, and identify the VTA as a likely contributing neurobiological substrate for these effects.
Pre- and Postnatal Arsenic Exposure and Body Size to 2 Years of Age: A Cohort Study in Rural Bangladesh

Background: Exposure to arsenic via drinking water has been associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes and infant morbidity and mortality. Little is known, however, about the effects of arsenic on child growth. Objective: We assessed potential effects of early-life arsenic exposure on weight and length of children from birth to 2 years of age. Methods: We followed 2,372 infants born in a population-based intervention trial in rural Bangladesh. Exposure was assessed by arsenic concentrations in urine (U-As) of mothers (gestational weeks 8 and 30) and children (18 months old). Child anthropometry was measured monthly in the first year and quarterly in the second. Linear regression models were used to examine associations of U-As (by quintiles) with child weight and length, adjusted for age, maternal body mass index, socioeconomic status, and sex (or stratified by sex). Results: Median (10th–90th percentiles) U-As concentrations were about 80 (25–400) µg/L in the mothers and 34 (12–159) µg/L in the children. Inverse associations of maternal U-As with child’s attained weight and length at 3–24 months were markedly attenuated after adjustment. However, associations of U-As at 18 months with weight and length at 18–24 months were more robust, particularly in girls. Compared with girls in the first quintile of U-As (< 16 µg/L), those in the fourth quintile (26–46 µg/L) were almost 300 g lighter and 0.7 cm shorter, and had adjusted odds ratios (95% confidence interval) for underweight and stunting of 1.57 (1.02–2.40) and 1.58 (1.05–2.37), respectively, at 21 months. Conclusions: Postnatal arsenic exposure was associated with lower body weight and length among girls, but not boys.
Munc13‐2−/− baseline secretion defect reveals source of oligomeric mucins in mouse airways

Since the airways of control mouse lungs contain few alcian blue/periodic acid–Schiff's (AB/PAS)+ staining ‘goblet’ cells in the absence of an inflammatory stimulus such as allergen sensitization, it was surprising to find that the lungs of mice deficient for the exocytic priming protein Munc13‐2 stain prominently with AB/PAS under control conditions. Purinergic agonists (ATP/UTP) stimulated release of accumulated mucins in the Munc13‐2‐deficient airways, suggesting that the other airway isoform, Munc13‐4, supports agonist‐regulated secretion. Notably, however, not all of the mucins in Munc13‐2‐deficient airways were secreted, suggesting a strict Munc13‐2 priming requirement for a population of secretory granules. AB/PAS+ staining of Munc13‐2‐deficient airways was not caused by an inflammatory, metaplastic‐like response: bronchial–alveolar lavage leucocyte numbers, Muc5ac and Muc5b mRNA levels, and Clara cell ultrastructure (except for increased secretory granule numbers) were all normal. A Muc5b‐specific antibody indicated the presence of this mucin in Clara cells of wildtype (WT) control mice, and increased amounts in Munc13‐2‐deficient mice. Munc13‐2 therefore appears to prime a regulated, baseline secretory pathway, such that Clara cell Muc5b, normally secreted soon after synthesis, accumulates in the gene‐deficient animals, making them stain AB/PAS+. The defective priming phenotype is widespread, as goblet cells of several mucosal tissues appear engorged and Clara cells accumulated Clara cell secretory protein (CCSP) in Munc13‐2‐deficient mice. Additionally, because in the human airways, MUC5AC localizes to the surface epithelium and MUC5B to submucosal glands, the finding that Muc5b is secreted by Clara cells under control conditions may indicate that it is also secreted tonically from human bronchiolar Clara cells.
Multiple loci affecting photoreactivation in Escherichia coli

Sutherland et al. mapped a phr gene in Escherichia coli at 17 min and found that induction of an E. coli strain lysogenic for a lambda phage carrying this gene increased photoreactivating enzyme levels 2,000-fold. Recently, Smith and Youngs and Sancar and Rupert located a phr gene at 15.9 min. We have therefore investigated the properties of photoreactivating enzyme and cellular photoreactivation in cells containing deletions of the gene at 17 min. Cells with this deletion photoreactivated ultraviolet-induced killing at a rate 20% of normal; they also contained approximately 20% of the normal photoreactivating enzyme level. The residual enzyme in these cells was characterized to determine whether the reduced cellular photoreactivation rate and photoreactivating enzyme levels resulted from reduced numbers of normal enzymes or from an altered enzyme. Photoreactivating enzymes from strains carrying a deletion of the region at 17 min had an apparent Km about two- to threefold higher than normal enzyme and showed markedly increased heat lability. The gene at 17 min thus contains information determining the function of the E. coli photoreactivating enzyme rather than the quantity of the enzyme. It is proposed that the gene at 17 min be termed phrA and that located at 15.9 min be termed phrB.
Transcriptome Analysis in Cotton Boll Weevil (Anthonomus grandis) and RNA Interference in Insect Pests

Cotton plants are subjected to the attack of several insect pests. In Brazil, the cotton boll weevil, Anthonomus grandis, is the most important cotton pest. The use of insecticidal proteins and gene silencing by interference RNA (RNAi) as techniques for insect control are promising strategies, which has been applied in the last few years. For this insect, there are not much available molecular information on databases. Using 454-pyrosequencing methodology, the transcriptome of all developmental stages of the insect pest, A. grandis, was analyzed. The A. grandis transcriptome analysis resulted in more than 500.000 reads and a data set of high quality 20,841 contigs. After sequence assembly and annotation, around 10,600 contigs had at least one BLAST hit against NCBI non-redundant protein database and 65.7% was similar to Tribolium castaneum sequences. A comparison of A. grandis, Drosophila melanogaster and Bombyx mori protein families’ data showed higher similarity to dipteran than to lepidopteran sequences. Several contigs of genes encoding proteins involved in RNAi mechanism were found. PAZ Domains sequences extracted from the transcriptome showed high similarity and conservation for the most important functional and structural motifs when compared to PAZ Domains from 5 species. Two SID-like contigs were phylogenetically analyzed and grouped with T. castaneum SID-like proteins. No RdRP gene was found. A contig matching chitin synthase 1 was mined from the transcriptome. dsRNA microinjection of a chitin synthase gene to A. grandis female adults resulted in normal oviposition of unviable eggs and malformed alive larvae that were unable to develop in artificial diet. This is the first study that characterizes the transcriptome of the coleopteran, A. grandis. A new and representative transcriptome database for this insect pest is now available. All data support the state of the art of RNAi mechanism in insects.
GraphChi: Large-Scale Graph Computation on Just a PC

Current systems for graph computation require a distributed computing cluster to handle very large real-world problems, such as analysis on social networks or the web graph. While distributed computational resources have become more accessible, developing distributed graph algorithms still remains challenging, especially to non-experts. In this work, we present GraphChi, a disk-based system for computing efficiently on graphs with billions of edges. By using a well-known method to break large graphs into small parts, and a novel parallel sliding windows method, GraphChi is able to execute several advanced data mining, graph mining, and machine learning algorithms on very large graphs, using just a single consumer-level computer. We further extend GraphChi to support graphs that evolve over time, and demonstrate that, on a single computer, GraphChi can process over one hundred thousand graph updates per second, while simultaneously performing computation. We show, through experiments and theoretical analysis, that GraphChi performs well on both SSDs and rotational hard drives. By repeating experiments reported for existing distributed systems, we show that, with only fraction of the resources, GraphChi can solve the same problems in very reasonable time. Our work makes large-scale graph computation available to anyone with a modern PC.
Comparing the Efficacy of Bupropion and Amantadine on Sexual Dysfunction Induced by a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor

Antidepressant-induced sexual dysfunction (SD) is a common problem, associated with a significant risk of non-adherence. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) are associated with a substantial risk of SD. Only 10 % of patients show spontaneous improvement during follow up period. The aim is to compare two proposed medication (bupropion vs.amantadine) in alleviating SD of patients treated with SSRIs. The study was a single-blind,4-week trial SSRI treated outpatients, in remission for more than 8weeks and have SD, were randomly allocated to two parallel groups. Twenty patients were given bupropion Eighteen patients were randomly assigned to another group, given amantadine. Patients were assessed with the Arizona Sexual Experience Scale (ASEX) at baseline and 4 weeks after the treatment.38 patients completed the study (18 patients in amantadine vs.20 patients in bupropion). The mean ASEX scores gradually declined in both study groups during the trial. The reduction of ASEX score of bupropion is greater than the amantadine that was statistically significant. SoThe addition of bupropion at higher doses appears to be more effective approach in comparison with amantadine. These results provide empirical support for conducting a further study on comparing different add-on strategies for treating drug induced SD.
Four varieties of voltage-gated proton channels.

n human beings, infection with the tubercle bacillus usually results in inapparent disease, recognized only by a positive tuberculin reaction. However, about 10% of tuberculin-positive people develop clinically active tuberculosis (TB). The Lurie tubercle count method is probably the most accurate way to measure a vaccine's ability to prevent such clinical disease. Yet, it is rarely used. Briefly, vaccinated and control rabbits are infected by aerosol with a known quantity of virulent human-type tubercle bacilli (strain H37Rv). [Human-type bacilli are not fully virulent for rabbits. ] Five weeks later, the rabbits are sacrificed, and counts are made of the number of grossly visible primary tubercles in their lungs. The best vaccines cause the greatest reduction in the number of such visible tubercles. This report describes the method, and the immunologic mechanisms involved. It also suggests how the method can be used to test TB vaccines in both mice and guinea pigs, as well as in rabbits.
Online Bayesian changepoint detection for articulated motion models

We introduce CHAMP, an algorithm for online Bayesian changepoint detection in settings where it is difficult or undesirable to integrate over the parameters of candidate models. CHAMP is used in combination with several articulation models to detect changes in articulated motion of objects in the world, allowing a robot to infer physically-grounded task information. We focus on three settings where a changepoint model is appropriate: objects with intrinsic articulation relationships that can change over time, object-object contact that results in quasi-static articulated motion, and assembly tasks where each step changes articulation relationships. We experimentally demonstrate that this system can be used to infer various types of information from demonstration data including causal manipulation models, human-robot grasp correspondences, and skill verification tests.
Sparse Matrix Formats Evaluation and Optimization on a GPU

The data parallel programming model comes back with massive multicore architectures. The GPU is one of these and offers important possibilities to accelerate linear algebra. However, the irregular structure of sparse matrix operations generates problems with this programming model to obtain efficient performance. This depends on the used format to store values and the matrix structure. The sparse matrix-vector product (SpMV) is one of the most used kernel in scientific computing and is the main performance source of iterative methods. We propose an evaluation and optimization of several sparse formats for the SpMV kernel which have succeeded at the time of data parallel computer. This study is realized by analyzing the performances following the distribution of the non zeros values in the matrix to determine the best and the worst reachable value. The results show that all sparse formats converge to the same efficiency and perform poorly with a strong distribution of elements.
Inclusive, Adaptive Design for Students with Learning Disabilities

Young adults with severe disabilities and learning difficulties (SLD) have very limited access to appropriate learning resources. Their unique individual needs and requirements prevent them from accessing traditional methods of online learning, and resources tend not to be age appropriate. The majority of SLD learners has difficulty accessing a computer with standard peripherals such as a mouse and relies on assistive technologies (e.g. switches) to do so. Each learner tends to have specific needs that must be addressed in order to provide an accessible and adaptive platform for learning. The aim of this research project was, with the assistance and support of the learners and their tutors, to design and develop an adaptable and inclusive online learning environment specifically catering for the needs of young adults with SLD. Each stage of development was prototyped and assessed in the college environment to ensure the needs of the learners were thoroughly addressed.
Word Equations over Graph Products

For a restricted class of monoids, we prove that the decidability of the existential theory of word equations is preserved under graph products. Furthermore, we show that the positive theory of a graph product of groups can be reduced to the positive theories of some of the factor monoids and the existential theories of the remaining factors. Both results also include suitable constraints for the variables. Larger classes of constraints lead in many cases to undecidability results.