Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intralesional immunotherapy for difficult to treat warts with Mycobacterium w vaccine

Background: Immunotherapy is an evolving therapeutic modality for the treatment of warts. We conducted a study to assess the efficacy and safety of intralesional Mycobacterium w vaccine for the treatment of warts at sites that were difficult to treat. Materials and Methods: Thirty patients with at least one wart present on either the plantar surface of their feet, palms, volar aspect of their fingers, or periungual or subungual region, were treated with 0.1 ml of killed Mycobacterium w vaccine given intralesionally in a single wart, without any prior sensitisation dose. Thereafter, a single injection of 0.1 ml of vaccine was given at intervals of four weeks in a single wart till there was complete resolution of the warts or a maximum of 10 injections. Treatment was stopped if there was no response after three injections. The patients were followed up for at least six months. Results: Out of the 30 patients, 28 (93.33%) patients had complete resolution of their warts, both at the injected and distant sites. The mean (SD) time for complete clearance of warts was 43.71(32.82) days and the mean (SD) dose of vaccine that was required for complete clearance of warts was 0.186 ml (0.101). Four patients (14.28%) had a recurrence of warts. The treatment was well-tolerated and the side effects were reversible in the majority of the patients. Conclusion: In comparison to the earlier studies using Mycobacterium w vaccine for the treatment of warts, our study was different in the following aspects: No sensitisation dose was given, only a single wart was injected at a time and the duration between the period of injections was increased to four weeks. With all these changes we eliminated the complications due to the sensitisation dose and achieved good results. This study provides new insight into the dose and schedule of treatment of this evolving therapeutic modality.
Impact of Splenectomy and Chelating Agents on Serum Cystatin C Levels in Egyptian Children With Beta-Thalassemia

The outlook for patients with thalassemia has improved in recent decades with the use of modern transfusion practice and iron chelation, but patients continue to be at high risk for iron overload and its toxicities. Cystatin C (CysC) has been suggested as a sensitive marker of glomerular filtration rate providing an early indication of renal impairment, possibly superior to serum creatinine. This study was conducted to observe changes in cystatin C serum concentration in β-thalassemia patients treated with chelating therapy and to determine whether splenectomy could change serum cystatin C concentration. This study recruited 40 pediatrics patients with transfusion-dependent β-thalassemia from Hematology Clinic of Pediatric Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University. A control group of 31 ageand sex-matched Egyptian children was also included. Results: 72.5% of thalassemia patients had cystatin C values greater than the upper limit of normal (ULN, 0.99 mg/L) whereas 2.5% of the patients had increased serum creatinine (ULN, 1.4 mg/dL). Patients on subcutaneous infusion chelation were 10 (25%). They had significant higher serum levels of urea, creatinine, CysC and duration of chelation (P = .016, P = 0.007, P = 0.001, P = 0.000 respectively) than patients on oral chelation therapy. No significant difference was found between patient's subgroups of oral chelation therapy regarding disease onset, disease duration, blood transfusion rate, splenectomy duration, serum levels of urea, creatinine and CysC (P > 0.05) for all. Patients with splenectomy were 22 (55%), with significant higher serum levels of urea, creatinine, CysC and duration of chelation (P = 028, P = 0.003, P = 0.000, P = 0.001 respectively). In thalassemia patients, CysC showed significant positive correlation with serum levels of ALT, AST, urea, creatinine, ,systolic BP,BMI ,duration of chelation and age (r = 0. .380, P = 0.016; r = 0. .432, P = 0.005) , r = . 746, P = . 000 ;r = . 696, P = . 000 ; r =. 530, P = . 000; r = . 356, P = . 024 ; r = . 515, P = . 001 and r = . 543, P = . 000 respectively). Conclusion: These findings suggest that slight changes of cystatin C serum levels in β-thalassemia major patients during chelating therapy or after splenectomy may not reflect renal impairment and, therefore, measurements of this biomarker should be interpreted with caution.
Effects of Online Interaction on Adult Students' Satisfaction and Learning

Many have questioned the efficacy of online instructional approaches; particularly as relates to what is learned and/or the satisfaction levels. A critical element in the success of these programs seems to be levels of Interaction occurring (Woods, 2002; Palloff & Pratt, 2001). This study examined perceptions of levels of Satisfaction and Learning occurring in an online program as relates to Salmon’s Five Step Teaching and Learning Model (2001) of Interaction (Access and Motivation, Online Socialization, Information Exchange, Knowledge Construction, and Development). The study involved the perceptions of twelve hundred and seventy-nine graduate students of various majors in a large U.S. private higher educational system. The students were electronically surveyed at the end of the course regarding their Satisfaction levels, levels of Learning gained and Levels of Interaction occurring. The students agreed slightly regarding Satisfaction, Learning and Interaction Levels. The Overall Interaction scores were positively and significantly related to Overall Satisfaction scores and Overall Learning Scores. Access and Motivation were most predictive of the Satisfaction experienced and Information Exchange and Development were most predictive of Learning gains. The study showed that providing good Access and Motivation are critical for influencing Satisfaction levels. Similarly, if one wants to influence Learning levels, Information Exchange and the Developmental use of information are necessary for beginning online users. Ideas are offered for improving online courses using Salmon’s Interaction ideas; along with proposing further research ideas regarding Interaction in online formats.
Are Islamic risk factors blessings or curse for stock return? evidence from Malaysia based on dynamic GMM and quantile regression approaches

This paper is motivated by the heightened interest in investing in Islamic equities. The paper is the first attempt at analysing the Islamic-effect in a cross-sectional stock return framework to individual 141 Islamic and non- Islamic firms using the dynamic GMM and Quantile regression techniques and we believe this is the first paper that investigates the Islamic-effect in such a context. We combine a unique Malaysian data set of individual Islamic stocks (as opposed to aggregate stock indices) since 1997 with a new method where we apply Islamic business activity and financial ratio screens to the universe of Malaysian stocks. Results tend to indicate that there is no significant relationship between Malaysian Islamic firms and average stock returns. We extend our results by using a Quantile regression approach to show that the non-significant Islamic effect is, in fact, changing at different percentiles that affect the cross-sectional expected returns of Malaysian common stocks. Results tend to show that some focus variables like market value and book to market and control variable, oil price are not significant at different percentiles, and this result has important implications for the growing Islamic finance industry around the world.
Influence of the novel urease inhibitor N-(n-butyl) thiophosphoric triamide on ruminant nitrogen metabolism: I. In vitro urea kinetics and substrate digestion.

Two in vitro digestion experiments were conducted to evaluate the influence of the novel urease inhibitor N-(n-butyl) thiophosphoric triamide (NBPT) on in vitro urea kinetics, substrate digestion, and fermentation characteristics. In Exp. 1, in vitro incubations were conducted in 50-mL test tubes containing . 25 g of ground fescue hay to which 0, 6.5, 13, 26, or 52 mg of NBPT in a buffered ruminal fluid innoculum was added. Tubes were incubated in triplicate at 39 degrees C and replicated on consecutive days, with NH3 N and urea concentrations measured at 0, 10, 30, 60, 120, 240, and 360 min. Samples for VFA analysis were collected at 6 h, and incubations were continued through 48 h to estimate true digestibility (based on NDF analysis). Increasing the dose of NBPT tended (P < .12) to linearly depress the rate of urea hydrolysis and decreased (P < .0004) subsequent NH3 N formation. Although total VFA concentration at 6 h increased linearly (P < .03), acetate:propionate and estimated true digestibility decreased (P < .01) with increasing NBPT concentration. In Exp. 2, we compared in vitro urea kinetics and digestion of forage-only or mixed forage-grain substrates in response to addition of NBPT. In vitro incubations were conducted in 50-mL test tubes containing either . 5 g of ground fescue hay or . 5 g of a ground fescue hay and ground corn mixture (50:50, DM basis) to which 0, 6.5, 13, 26, or 52 mg of NBPT in a buffered ruminal fluid innoculum was added. Tubes were incubated in triplicate at 39 degrees C and replicated on consecutive days, with NH3 N and urea concentrations measured at 0, . 5, 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 24, and 48 h. At 48 h, samples for VFA analysis were collected and true digestibility (based on NDF analysis) was estimated. No (P > .10) NBPT dose x substrate interactions were detected. Increasing the dose of NBPT depressed (P < .003) the rate of urea hydrolysis and subsequent NH3 N formation, regardless of substrate. Although total VFA concentration was unaffected (P > .10), the acetate:propionate and estimated true digestibility decreased (P < .002) with higher NBPT addition. In both experiments, the rate of urea degradation was not different (P > .20) from zero for the 26 and 52 mg NBPT treatments, indicating that nearly complete inhibition of urease had been achieved. We conclude that NBPT can be used to reduce the rate of NH3 N release from dietary urea and, thereby, offers the potential to improve nonprotein nitrogen utilization in ruminants.
Insight into Emotion and Body Part Representation in Relevant Brain Areas: An fMRI Study

When talking about emotion perception, the different representations of emotion carriers (face, body, voice and so on) remain unknown in human brain. In this study, we make the participants watch videos of faces, bodies and whole persons with different emotions enclosed. Meanwhile, we used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to fulfill data acquisition. We analyses the 3D imaging data by applying univariate analysis and multi-voxel pattern analysis. Eventually, we find that the signal changes of whole persons were different with a simple average of the signal changes of faces and bodies. Additionally, the extrastriate body area (EBA) had the highest accuracies for emotion classification and body part classification.
Decoding from pooled data: Phase transitions of message passing

We consider the problem of decoding a discrete signal of categorical variables from the observation of several histograms of pooled subsets of it. We present an Approximate Message Passing (AMP) algorithm for recovering the signal in the random dense setting where each observed histogram involves a random subset of size proportional to n of entries. We characterize the performance of the algorithm in the asymptotic regime where the number of observations m tends to infinity proportionally to n, by deriving the corresponding State Evolution (SE) equations and studying their dynamics. We initiate the analysis of the multi-dimensional SE dynamics by proving their convergence to a fixed point, along with some further properties of the iterates. The analysis reveals sharp phase transition phenomena where the behavior of AMP changes from exact recovery to weak correlation with the signal as m/n crosses a threshold. We derive formulae for the threshold in some special cases and show that they accurately match experimental behavior.
Severe Intraoperative Hyperglycemia Is Independently Associated With Surgical Site Infection After Liver Transplantation

Background. Surgical site infection (SSI) is a common postoperative complication associated with increased morbidity and mortality in patients undergoing liver transplantation (LT). Although intraoperative hyperglycemia has been shown to be associated with adverse postoperative outcomes including overall infection rate in LT patients, a relationship between intraoperative hyperglycemia and SSI in LT has not been established. We sought to determine if intraoperative hyperglycemia was associated with SSI after LT. Methods. Patients undergoing LT at our medical center between January 2004 and November 2007 were included in the study. Recipient, donor, and intraoperative variables including a variety of glucose indices were retrospectively analyzed. Independent risk factors of SSI were identified using a multivariate logistic regression model. Results. Of 680 patients, 76 (11.2%) experienced postoperative SSIs. Among all intraoperative glucose indices analyzed, severe hyperglycemia (≥200 mg/dL) was independently associated with postoperative SSI (odds ratio [OR] 2.25, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.26–4.03, P=0.006). Other independent risk factors include repeat surgery (OR 6.58, 95% CI 3.41–12.69, P<0.001), intraoperative administration of vasopressor (OR 3.14, 95% CI 1.65–5.95, P<0.001), preoperative mechanical ventilation (OR 3.01, 95% CI 1.70–5.33, P<0.001), and combined liver and kidney transplantation (OR 2.95, 95% CI 3.41–12.69, P<0.001). Conclusions. Severe, but not mild or moderate, intraoperative hyperglycemia is independently associated with postoperative SSI and should be avoided during LT surgery.
mTOR under stress

Mammalian/ mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) and polo like kinase 1 (PLK1) are major drivers of cancer cell growth and proliferation, and inhibitors of both protein kinases are currently being investigated in clinical studies. To date, mTORC1’s and PLK1’s functions are mostly studied separately, and reports on their mutual crosstalk are scarce. Here, we identify PLK1 as a physical mTORC1 interactor in human cancer cells. PLK1 inhibition enhances mTORC1 activity under nutrient sufficiency and in starved cells, and PLK1 directly phosphorylates the mTORC1 component raptor in vitro . PLK1 and mTORC1 reside together at lysosomes, the subcellular site where mTORC1 is active. Consistent with an inhibitory role of PLK1 toward mTORC1, PLK1 overexpression inhibits lysosomal association of the PLK1-mTORC1 complex, whereas PLK1 inhibition promotes lysosomal localization of mTOR. PLK1-mTORC1 binding is enhanced by amino-acid starvation, a condition known to increase autophagy. mTORC1 inhibition is an important step in autophagy activation. Consistently, PLK1 inhibition mitigates autophagy in cancer cells both under nutrient starvation and sufficiency, and a role of PLK-1 in autophagy is also observed in the invertebrate model organism Caenorhabditis elegans . In summary, PLK1 inhibits mTORC1 and thereby positively contributes to autophagy. Since autophagy is increasingly recognized to contribute to tumor cell survival and growth, we propose that cautious monitoring of mTORC1 and autophagy readouts in clinical trials with PLK1 inhibitors is needed to develop strategies for optimized (combinatorial) cancer therapies targeting mTORC1, PLK1, and autophagy.
Single-Carrier Frequency-Domain Turbo Equalization With Various Soft Interference Cancellation Schemes for MIMO Systems

Single-carrier frequency-domain turbo equalization (SC-FDTE) is investigated, with the focus on the design of soft-decision frequency-domain equalizer (SD-FDE) under minimum mean square error (MMSE) criteria. Existing SD-FDEs perform equalization on each frequency bin individually, which however only achieves suboptimal performance, and with the availability of the a priori input, block-wise operation is required to achieve optimal performance. In this paper, optimal MMSE SD-FDE designs with three soft interference cancellation (SIC) schemes are introduced. The first SIC scheme, SIC-I, utilizes the a priori knowledge from the channel decoder, the second SIC scheme, SIC-II, relies on the decoder a priori knowledge as well as the symbol-wise a posteriori soft-decision feedback of the SD-FDE itself, and the third SIC scheme, SIC-III, is comparable to the SIC-II while with a block-wise soft-decision feedback. The optimal SD-FDEs incur high computation complexity due to block-wise processing, then a suboptimal bin-wise SD-FDE with SIC-III is proposed to achieve complexity-performance tradeoff. It is shown that the suboptimal SD-FDE with SIC-III considerably outperforms existing suboptimal SD-FDE with SIC-I, while at a similar magnitude of complexity. It also achieves better performance than the optimal SD-FDE with either SIC-I or SIC-II. Compared to the optimal SD-FDE with SIC-III, the performance loss is marginal.
CNDP 1 , NOS 3 , and MnSOD Polymorphisms as Risk Factors for DiabeticNephropathy amongType 2 Diabetic Patients inMalaysia

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is associated with a high incidence of nephropathy. /e aim of this study was to investigate the association of a genetic polymorphism of carnosinase (CNDP1-D18S880 and -rs2346061), endothelial nitric oxide synthase (NOS3-rs1799983), and manganese superoxide dismutase (MnSOD-rs4880) genes with the development of diabetic nephropathy among Malaysian type 2 diabetic patients. A case-control association study was performed using 652 T2DM patients comprising 227Malays (without nephropathy � 96 and nephropathy � 131), 203 Chinese (without nephropathy � 95 and nephropathy � 108), and 222 Indians (without nephropathy � 136 and nephropathy � 86). DNA sequencing was performed for theD18S880 ofCNDP1, while the rest were tested using DNA Sequenom MassARRAY to identify the polymorphisms. DNA was extracted from the secondary blood samples taken from the T2DM patients. /e alleles and genotypes were tested using four genetic models, and the best mode of inheritance was chosen based on the least p value. /e rs2346061 of CNDP1was significantly associated with diabetic nephropathy among the Indians only with OR � 1.94 and 95% CI � (1.76–3.20) and fitted best the multiplicative model, while D18S880 was associated among all the three major races with the Malays having the strongest association with OR � 2.46 and 95% CI � (1.48–4.10), Chinese with OR � 2.26 and 95% CI � (1.34–3.83), and Indians with OR � 1.77 and 95% CI � (1.18–2.65) in the genotypic multiplicative model. /e best mode of inheritance for both MnSOD and NOS3 was the additive model. For MnSODrs4880, the Chinese had OR � 2.8 and 95% CI � (0.53–14.94), Indians had OR � 2.4 and 95% CI � (0.69–2.84), andMalays had OR � 2.16 and 95% CI � (0.54–8.65), while for NOS3-rs1799983, the Indians had the highest risk with OR � 3.16 and 95% CI � (0.52–17.56), followed by the Chinese with OR � 3.55 and 95% CI � (0.36–35.03) and the Malays with OR � 2.89 and 95% CI � (0.29–28.32). /e four oxidative stress-related polymorphisms have significant effects on the development of nephropathy in type 2 diabetes patients. /e genes may, therefore, be considered as risk factors for Malaysian subjects who are predisposed to T2DM nephropathy.
Fisheries Centre The University of British Columbia Working Paper Series Working Paper # 2015-40 Grenada : Reconstructed Fisheries Catches , 1950-2010

Grenada is a small country in the south eastern Caribbean Sea consisting of the primary island of Grenada and several islands at the southern end of the Grenadine chain. Fisheries are largely artisanal and for many years utilized traditional techniques. An industrial fishery began in the early 1990s when eight longliners with cold storage entered the fishery. This report reconstructed fisheries for Grenada for 19502010 and found that the reconstructed catches were 1.5 times the data reported to the FAO for the same time period. Fish caught from Grenada made up 89% of the catch. Artisanal fisheries contributed 71% of the total catch, with subsistence and industrial sectors contributing 20.5% and 8.4%, respectively, whilst the recreational fishery made up less than 0.1%. Yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) was the primary taxon in the catch, mostly caught by the industrial fishery in the later part of the time period, and contributing 12.3% to the overall removals. Bigeye scad (Selar crumenophthalmus; 11.4%), red hind (Epinephelus guttatus; 10.6%) and flying fish (Exocoetidae; 8.9%) were also important.
Reliability of comparative genomic hybridization to detect chromosome abnormalities in first polar bodies and metaphase II oocytes.

BACKGROUND Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) using FISH to analyze up to nine chromosomes to discard chromosomally abnormal embryos has resulted in an increase of pregnancy rates in certain groups of patients. However, the number of chromosomes that can be analyzed is a clear limitation. We evaluate the reliability of using comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) to detect the whole set of chromosomes, as an alternative to PGD using FISH. METHODS AND RESULTS We have analysed by CGH both, first polar bodies (1PBs) and metaphase II (MII) oocytes from 30 oocytes donated by 24 women. The aneuploidy rate was 48%. Considering two maternal age groups, a higher number of chromosome abnormalities were detected in the older group of oocytes (23% versus 75%, P < 0.02). About 33% of the 1PB-MII oocyte doublets diagnosed as aneuploid by CGH would have been misdiagnosed as normal if FISH with nine chromosome probes had been used. CONCLUSION We demonstrate the reliability of 1PB analysis by CGH, to detect almost any chromosome abnormality in oocytes as well as unbalanced segregations of maternal translocations in a time frame compatible with regular in vitro fertilization (IVF). The selection of euploid oocytes could help to increase implantation and pregnancy rates of patients undergoing IVF treatment.
Detailed Spectroscopic Analysis of SN 1987A: The Distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud Using the Spectral-fitting Expanding Atmosphere Method

Supernova 1987A remains the most well studied supernova to date. Observations produced excellent broadband photometric and spectroscopic coverage over a wide wavelength range at all epochs. We model the observed spectra from day 1 to day 81 using a hydrodynamical model. We show that good agreement can be obtained at times up to about 60 days if we allow for extended nickel mixing. Later than about 60 days the observed Balmer lines become stronger than our models can reproduce. We show that this is likely due to a more complicated distribution of gamma rays than we allow for in our spherically symmetric calculations. We present synthetic light curves in UBVRIJHK and a synthetic bolometric light curve. Using this broad baseline of detailed spectroscopic models, we find a distance modulus of μ = 18.5 ± 0.2 using the spectral-fitting expanding atmosphere method of determining distances to supernovae. We find that the explosion time agrees with that of the neutrino burst and is constrained at 68% confidence to within ±0.9 days. We argue that the weak Balmer lines of our detailed model calculations cast doubt on the accuracy of the purely photometric expanding photosphere method. We also suggest that Type IIP supernovae will be most useful as distance indicators at early times because of a variety of effects.