Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Developmental Changes in Anterior Corneal Astigmatism in Tohono O’odham Native American Infants and Children

ABSTRACT Purpose: To describe change in corneal astigmatism in infants and children of a Native American tribe with a high prevalence of astigmatism. Methods: Longitudinal measurements of corneal astigmatism were obtained in 960 Tohono O’odham children aged 6 months to <8 years. Change in corneal astigmatism (magnitude (clinical notation), J0, J45) across age in children with high astigmatism (≥2 diopter (D) corneal astigmatism) or low/no astigmatism (<2 D corneal astigmatism) at their baseline measurement was assessed. Results: Regression analyses indicated that early in development (6 months to <3 years), astigmatism magnitude decreased in the high astigmatism group (0.37 D/year) and remained stable in the low/no astigmatism group. In later development (3 to <8 years), astigmatism decreased in the high (0.11 D/year) and low/no astigmatism groups (0.03 D/year). In 52 children who had data at all three of the youngest ages (6 months to <1 year, 1 to <2 years, 2 to <3 years) astigmatism decreased after infancy in those with high astigmatism (p = 0.021), and then remained stable from age 1–2 years, whereas astigmatism was stable from infancy through age 1 year and increased from age 1–2 years in the low/no astigmatism group (p = 0.026). J0 results were similar, but results on J45 yielded no significant effects. Conclusions: The greatest change occurred in highly astigmatic infants and toddlers (0.37 D/year). By age 3 years, change was minimal and not clinically significant. Changes observed were due primarily to change in the J0 component of astigmatism.
In vitro models of neurotrauma

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) continues to be an important cause of mortality and morbidity, but its pathophysiology is no longer considered an instantaneous irreversible event occurring at the time of injury. Therein, neuroprotection is the attempt to salvage sublethally injured neurons which subsequently die in post-primary sequelae. Key to the discovery of neuroprotective strategies is the development of reliable models of brain injury—both in vivo and in vitro. While numerous studies on in vivo animal models have yielded encouraging results, these have largely failed to translate effectively in humans. One approach out of this impasse may be to re-explore in vitro models to dissect out specific pathophysiological mechanisms and only then test clearer hypotheses on in vivo models, which are more likely to subsequently translate into neuroprotective therapies of the future. Moreover, milder forms of TBI are a more realistic target for therapeutic intervention as more is understood about the vulnerability of surviving neurons and the capacity to salvage them. Several types of injury models are described including transection, compression, barotrauma, acceleration, hydrodynamic and cell stretch models with their advantages and disadvantages discussed in turn, as well as a survey of the cell cultures used, namely immortalized cell lines, primary cultures and organotypic (explant) cultures. We emphasize advances in three-dimensional strain simulation and a recent interest in modelling milder injuries, and argue that in vitro models may be a useful complement to in vivo models in studying TBI.
Muscle energy metabolism in female DMD/BMD carriers: A 31P‐MR spectroscopy study

31P nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (31P‐MRS) was used to investigate the energy metabolism of the gastrocnemius muscle in 16 DMD/BMD female carriers. No significant difference was found with the controls in the resting muscle, while all carriers showed a decreased ability to perform work, and a higher Pi/PCr ratio for comparable relative levels of steady‐state work. The rate of postexercise recovery of PCr/Pi ratio was lower in all carriers. The decreased rate of PCr/Pi recovery appears to be mainly due to a decreased rate of Pi recovery. Our findings show abnormal muscle energy metabolism in DMD/BMD female carriers.
Towards quality metrics for OpenStreetMap

Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) is currently a "hot topic" in the GIS community. The OpenStreetMap (OSM) project is one of the most popular and well supported examples of VGL Traditional measures of spatial data quality are often not applicable to OSM as in many cases it is not possible to access ground-truth spatial data for all regions mapped by OSM. We investigate to develop measures of quality for OSM which operate in an unsupervised manner without reference to a "trusted" source of ground-truth data. We provide results of analysis of OSM data from several European countries. The results highlight specific quality issues in OSM. Results of comparing OSM with ground-truth data for Ireland are also presented.
Quantitation of epidermal nerves in diabetic neuropathy

We describe methods to quantify epidermal nerve fibers (ENFs) in skin biopsy specimens from diabetic candidates for pancreas transplantation and control subjects.ENFs and the dermal-epidermal basement membrane were stained by immunohistochemical methods, imaged with a confocal microscope, and quantified using a neuron tracing system. The number of ENFs per surface of epidermis was diminished in diabetic subjects. ENF number and summed length of all ENFs per volume of epidermis examined were also decreased. Length and number of branch points of single surviving ENFs were similar in skin of control and diabetic subjects. The methods and results constitute a basis for continued study of the effects of the euglycemia that attends successful pancreas transplantation and the effects of therapy in patients with various types of polyneuropathy. NEUROLOGY 1996;47: 1042-1048
Validation of a fluorescence-based screening concept to identify ribosome assembly defects in Escherichia coli

While the structure of mature ribosomes is analyzed in atomic detail considerably less is known about their assembly process in living cells. This is mainly due to technical and conceptual hurdles. To analyze ribosome assembly in vivo, we designed and engineered an Escherichiacoli strain—using chromosomal gene knock-in techniques—that harbors large and small ribosomal subunits labeled with the fluorescent proteins EGFP and mCherry, respectively. A thorough characterization of this reporter strain revealed that its growth properties and translation apparatus were wild-type like. Alterations in the ratio of EGFP over mCherry fluorescence are supposed to indicate ribosome assembly defects. To provide proof of principle, subunit specific assembly defects were provoked and could be identified by both manual and fully automated fluorometric in vivo assays. This is to our knowledge the first methodology that directly detects ribosome assembly defects in vivo in a high-throughput compatible format. Screening of knock-out collections and small molecule libraries will allow identification of new ribosome assembly factors and possible inhibitors.
Compliance, network, security and the people related factors in cloud ERP implementation

Cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a buzz in the information technology domain. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) do not have the financial budget to invest in on‐premise ERP solution. The use of cloud‐based services for SMEs has led to widespread diffusion of technology. The two big stakeholders in the cloud ERP are cloud user and cloud vendor. This paper brings out the factors that are under the influence of these two stakeholders. Critical success factors that are influenced by the people in the organization are considered for the study. Compliance, network, and security are the concerns that are under the control of cloud vendor. This study shows the factors that have an impact on the successful implementation of cloud ERP. An online questionnaire was designed and data from 208 respondents belonging to SMEs were collected. Structural equation modeling was used for data analysis. It was found that people‐related factors and compliance had an impact toward the successful implementation of cloud‐based services. Network and security factors did not show any significant impact on the implementation of cloud ERP. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Systematic Design and Implementation of Distributed Controllers in Industrial Automation

This paper discusses systematic approaches to the design of distributed controllers in industrial automation systems. Several design approaches are compared that lead to the distributed control of manufacturing machines and their parts. In particular, a decentralized control method is introduced that does not require a master controller. The implementation frameworks of IEC 61131-3 and IEC 61499 are checked on their fitness to the distributed control. A migration method from a PLC-based control to IEC 61499 is illustrated. A layered architecture for distributed controllers is introduced and tested on examples.
CZECH TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY IN PRAGUE DOCTORAL THESIS STATEMENT

A new salient semantics-less blob detector named the Stable Wave Detector (SWD) is suggested. The detector proved to be particularly very useful in tracking a target in a videosequence. SWD is a multiscale blob detector in the intensity image. The targets are blobs in 2D which correspond to local maxima/minima of the image intensities or positive and negative peaks in 1D. SWD belongs to a group of interest point/regions-like operators aiming at detecting repeatedly distinguished entities regardless of their meaning. Precision, robustness and speed of the SWD detector are main issues. The detector is based on the phase of the first harmonic wave in the window sliding across the image. Its localization is a result of an integral transformation rather than a usual derivative. Thus, the blob detector is inherently robust to noise and blur in the image. The SWD provides a subpixel localization of blobs together with the estimate of its precision, the measure of the strength/significance and the estimate of the size/scale for each blob. Detected blobs have some minimal distance given by the period used for detection. Their minimal mutual distance can facilitate matching of corresponding scene points. The properties of the SWD detector itself did not beat the state of the art considerably. The situation has improved dramatically when the SWD detector was employed in tracking a target, i.e. in establishing a point to point (blob to blob) correspondences across the videosequence. The outcome is an ultrafast tracker able perform better than the stateof-the-art. The tracker takes two inputs: (a) the location of the blob in the previous frame estimating its location in the current frame and (2) the current frame in which the blob should be found. The problem of tracking is considered in several levels of abstraction. At a low level, correspondences between individual points are established at different scales independently. The high level of tracking system incorporates a model of the movement and a model of the target. The trade off between the precision and the range of trackable displacement at different scales must be solved. It is shown how the movement and target model can be used in a coarse to fine approach solving the trade off between the precision and the range. The SWD detector and the tracker utilizing it were extensively tested experimentally. Test results are presented in the thesis. The implementation of the involved algorithms in C language is provided to the research community.
Nepal: a path query language for communication networks

Communication networks are typically large, dynamic and extremely complicated. To deploy, maintain, and trouble-shoot such networks, it is essential to understand how network elements---such as servers, switches, virtual machines, and virtual network functions---are connected to one another, and be able to discover communication paths between them. It is also essential to understand how connections change over time, and be able to pose time-travel queries to retrieve information about past network states. This problem is becoming more acute with the advent of software defined networks, where network functions are virtualized and managed in a cloud infrastructure. We represent a communication network inventory as a graph where the nodes are network entities and edges represent relationships between them, e.g. hosted-on, communicates-with, etc. Querying such a graph, e.g. for troubleshooting, using existing graph query languages is too cumbersome for network analysts. Thus, in this paper we present Nepal---a network path query language, which is designed to effectively retrieve desired paths from a network graph. The main novelty of Nepal is to consider paths as first-class citizens of the language, which achieves closure under composition while maintaining simplicity. We demonstrate the capabilities of Nepal by examples and discuss query evaluation. We illustrate how path queries can simplify the extraction of information from a dynamic inventory of a multi-layer network and can be used for troubleshooting.
Pivotal Role of Stat4 and Stat6 in the Pathogenesis of the Lupus-Like Disease in the New Zealand Mixed 2328 Mice 1

We have developed novel genetically lupus-prone (NZB × NZW)F1-derived congenic New Zealand mixed (NZM) 2328 lines, which are either Stat4- or Stat6-deficient. Our studies show that the deficiency of Stat4 and Stat6 significantly alters the phenotype of the lupus-like disease in NZM 2328 congenic mice. Specifically, Stat4-deficient NZM mice develop accelerated nephritis and increased mortality in the absence of high levels of autoantibodies including anti-dsDNA Abs, and in the presence of relatively reduced levels of IFN-γ. In contrast, Stat6-deficient NZM mice display a significant reduction in incidence of kidney disease, with a dramatic increase in survival, despite the presence of high levels of anti-dsDNA Abs. The lack of correlation between levels of these autoantibodies and kidney disease raises the question of the direct cause-effect relationships between the presence of autoantibodies and kidney disease. Furthermore, these results also question the apparent equation of the effect of Stat deficiency with loss of secretion or response to particular cytokines.
Amniotic Fluid Protein Profiles of Intraamniotic Inflammatory Response to Ureaplasma spp. and Other Bacteria

Objective This study aimed to evaluate the amniotic fluid protein profiles and the intensity of intraamniotic inflammatory response to Ureaplasma spp. and other bacteria, using the multiplex xMAP technology. Methods A retrospective cohort study was undertaken in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University Hospital Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic. A total of 145 pregnant women with preterm prelabor rupture of membranes between gestational age 24+0 and 36+6 weeks were included in the study. Amniocenteses were performed. The presence of Ureaplasma spp. and other bacteria was evaluated using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The levels of specific proteins were determined using multiplex xMAP technology. Results The presence of Ureaplasma spp. and other bacteria in the amniotic fluid was associated with increased levels of interleukin (IL)-6, IL-8, IL-10, brain-derived neurotropic factor, granulocyte macrophage colony stimulating factor, monocyte chemotactic protein-1, macrophage inflammatory protein-1, and matrix metalloproteinasis-9. Ureaplasma spp. were also associated with increased levels of neurotropin-3 and triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells-1. Conclusions The presence of Ureaplasma spp. in the amniotic fluid is associated with a slightly different protein profile of inflammatory response, but the intensity of inflammatory response to Ureaplasma spp. is comparable with the inflammatory response to other bacteria.
Iron-Mediated Control of Pseudomonas aeruginosa-Staphylococcus aureus Interactions in the Cystic Fibrosis Lung

ABSTRACT Communication is an important factor for bacterial survival, growth, and persistence. Much work has examined both inter- and intraspecies interactions and their effects on virulence. Now, researchers have begun to explore the ways in which host-modulated factors can impact bacterial interactions and subsequently affect patient outcomes. In this issue, two papers discuss how the host environment alters interactions between the pathogens Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus, largely in the context of cystic fibrosis.
Efficacy and Safety of Crizotinib among Chinese EML4-ALK-Positive, Advanced-Stage Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients

Introduction We report the efficacy and safety of crizotinib treatment among Chinese patients with advanced-stage NSCLC. Methods We retrospectively analyzed patients with EML4-ALK positive advanced NSCLC who were treated with crizotinib from May 2012 to Aug 2013. Baseline clinical parameters, treatment protocol, response to therapy and survival were noted. The primary goal was to evaluate the efficacy of crizotinib in patients who were previously treated patients or who had poor ECOG performance status (PS). Results Forty patients were evaluable for safety and efficacy. Median age was 43 years, 100% had adenocarcinoma and stage IV disease, and 42.5% were female. Six patients received frontline treatment with crizotinib, 17 patients had 1 prior treatment, and 17 patients had more than 2 lines of prior treatment. Patients received a median of 5 cycles of treatment (range 1–15 cycles). After the first cycle, 92.5% (37/40) patients archived partial remission (PR). At the end of the follow-up period, the overall PR rate was 70% (28/40), and progression of disease (PD) occurred in 30% of patients (12/40). The median PFS was 28 weeks (95% CI 15.4 to 40.5 weeks), and median OS was 40 weeks (95% CI 38.6 to 49.3 weeks). The most frequent treatment-related AEs were vomiting (47.5%), vision disorder (27.5%) and increased ALT/AST (42%); most toxicities were Grade 1/2. Observed treatment-related Grade 3/4 AEs included increased ALT/AST (10%) and vomiting (5%). The EML4-ALK fusion rate and number of prior chemotherapy cycles did not appear to significantly affect the efficacy of crizotinib. However, PS 0–2 patients had improved PFS (50 weeks vs. 24 weeks, p = 0.015). Conclusions Crizotinib was safe, well-tolerated, and effective in Chinese patients with pre-treated ALK-rearranged NSCLC. QOL was improved and PS appears to have an effect on the efficacy of crizotinib, but prior treatment and ALK fusion rate do not.
dried grains with solubles from the diet on growth performance and carcass Effects of abrupt introduction and removal of high and low digestibility corn distillers

A.M. Hilbrands, L.J. Johnston, K.M. McClelland, R.B. Cox, S.K. Baidoo, L.W. O. Souza characteristics of growing-finishing pigs dried grains with solubles from the diet on growth performance and carcass Effects of abrupt introduction and removal of high and low digestibility corn distillers doi: 10.2527/jas.2012-5162 originally published online October 9, 2012 2013, 91:248-258. J ANIM SCI http://www.journalofanimalscience. org/content/91/1/248 the World Wide Web at: The online version of this article, along with updated information and services, is located on
CYP2D6 and CYP2C19 in Papua New Guinea: High frequency of previously uncharacterized CYP2D6 alleles and heterozygote excess.

PURPOSE A high frequency of previously unknown CYP2D6 alleles have been reported in Oceania populations. Genetic and functional properties of these alleles remain unknown. METHODS We performed analyses of the genetic variability of CYP2D6 and CYP2C19 genes using AmpliChip genotyping in cohorts from two distinct Papua New Guinea (PNG) populations (Kunjingini, n=88; Alexishafen, n=84) focussing on the genetic characterisation of PNG-specific alleles by re-sequencing. RESULTS Previously unknown CYP2D6 alleles have population frequencies of 24% (Kunjingini) and 12% (Alexishafen). An allele similar to CYP2D6*1, but carrying the 1661G>C substitution, was the second most frequent CYP2D6 allele (20% Kunjingini and 10% Alexishafen population frequency). Sequencing suggests the CYP2D6* 1661G>C allele originated from a cross-over between CYP2D6*1 and *2 and thus is predicted to confer fully active CYP2D6 enzyme. Two additional predicted full activity alleles [1661G>C;4180G>C] and 31G>A were found in the Kunjingini cohort (frequencies 3 c/c and 1%, respectively) and a novel predicted reduced activity allele [100C>T;1039C>T] was found in the Alexishafen cohort (frequency 2%). A high frequency of ultra-rapid (15%) and notably low frequencies of intermediate and poor CYP2D6 metabolizers (<5%) and a high frequency of poor CYP2C19 metabolizers were observed in PNG. Both CYP2D6 and CYP2C19 showed heterozygote excess that may be explained by exogamy and recent introduction of alleles by migration that are yet to reach HWE in relatively isolated populations. CONCLUSION The CYP2D6*1661 allele common in Oceania may be regarded as functionally equivalent to the full activity CYP2D6*1 allele.
Reduced electrocortical response to threatening faces in major depressive disorder

Background: There is growing support for the emotion context insensitivity hypothesis, which states that major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with a deficit in emotional reactivity. Under this hypothesis, depressed individuals exhibit reduced behavioral and physiological responses to both appetitive and aversive stimuli. We sought to examine this possibility using the late positive potential, a neural response sensitive to aversive and threatening stimuli. Methods: Forty‐seven individuals participated in the study, 22 of whom met criteria for current MDD and 25 with no history of depression or other Axis I disorders. All individuals passively viewed emotional faces while event‐related potentials were recorded. Results: The vertex positive potential was significantly increased in response to fearful and angry faces across the entire sample. The late positive potential was also increased in response to threatening faces, but only among never‐depressed individuals. In the MDD group, this electrocortical response to emotional faces was absent. Conclusions: This study provides neural evidence in support of the view that MDD is associated with blunted emotional reactivity to negative stimuli, which until now has been examined primarily with measures of behavior, self‐report, and peripheral physiology. These results are also consistent with two prior studies showing reduced amygdala activation in response to fearful faces among depressed individuals. It remains to be determined whether abnormal activity in response to emotional stimuli is associated with trait risk for MDD or results from MDD. Depression and Anxiety, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Low-Cost Integrable Tuning-Free Converter for Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Optimization

The future in terms of autonomous devices is about to experience an important breakthrough because of the development of energy-harvesting systems. This paper presents a new vibration energy-harvesting electrical interface for optimizing the power extracted from piezoelectric elements. Based on piezoelectric energy-harvesting properties, the proposed circuit allows an optimization of the extracted energy independently from the structure's parameters and without any tuning required. Contrary to classical converter topologies (for instance, step-down or buck-boost), the proposed architecture does not require large inductors, allowing a high-integration potential, while requiring a very little power consumption.