Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
No effect of risedronate on femoral periprosthetic bone loss following total hip arthroplasty

Background and purpose — We have previously shown that during the first 2 years after total hip arthroplasty (THA), periprosthetic bone resorption can be prevented by 6 months of risedronate therapy. This follow-up study investigated this effect at 4 years. Patients and methods — A single-center, double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial was carried out from 2006 to 2010 in 73 patients with osteoarthritis of the hip who were scheduled to undergo THA. The patients were randomly assigned to receive either 35 mg risedronate or placebo orally, once a week, for 6 months postoperatively. The primary outcome was the percentage change in bone mineral density (BMD) in Gruen zones 1 and 7 in the proximal part of the femur at follow-up. Secondary outcomes included migration of the femoral stem and clinical outcome scores. Results — 61 of the 73 patients participated in this 4-year (3.9- to 4.1-year) follow-up study. BMD was similar in the risedronate group (n = 30) and the placebo group (n = 31). The mean difference was −1.8% in zone 1 and 0.5% in zone 7. Migration of the femoral stem, the clinical outcome, and the frequency of adverse events were similar in the 2 groups. Interpretation — Although risedronate prevents periprosthetic bone loss postoperatively, a decrease in periprosthetic BMD accelerates when therapy is discontinued, and no effect is seen at 4 years. We do not recommend the use of risedronate following THA for osteoarthritis of the hip.
Respiratory Syncytial Virus and Cellular Stress Responses: Impact on Replication and Physiopathology

Human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a member of the Paramyxoviridae family, is a major cause of severe acute lower respiratory tract infection in infants, elderly and immunocompromised adults. Despite decades of research, a complete integrated picture of RSV-host interaction is still missing. Several cellular responses to stress are involved in the host-response to many virus infections. The endoplasmic reticulum stress induced by altered endoplasmic reticulum (ER) function leads to activation of the unfolded-protein response (UPR) to restore homeostasis. Formation of cytoplasmic stress granules containing translationally stalled mRNAs is a means to control protein translation. Production of reactive oxygen species is balanced by an antioxidant response to prevent oxidative stress and the resulting damages. In recent years, ongoing research has started to unveil specific regulatory interactions of RSV with these host cellular stress responses. Here, we discuss the latest findings regarding the mechanisms evolved by RSV to induce, subvert or manipulate the ER stress, the stress granule and oxidative stress responses. We summarize the evidence linking these stress responses with the regulation of RSV replication and the associated pathogenesis.
Comparison on Functional Assays for Gq-Coupled GPCRs by Measuring Inositol Monophospate-1 and Intracellular Calcium in 1536-Well Plate Format

Cell-based functional assays used for compound screening and lead optimization play an important role in drug discovery for G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). Cell-based assays can define the role of a compound as an agonist, antagonist or inverse agonist and can provide detailed information about the potency and efficacy of a compound. In addition, cell-based screens can be used to identify allosteric modulators that interact with sites other than the binding site of the endogenous ligand. Intracellular calcium assays which use a fluorescent calcium binding dye (such as Fluo-3, Fluo-4 or Fura-2) have been used in compound screening campaigns to measure the activity of Gq-coupled GPCRs. However, such screening methodologies require a special instrumentation to record the rapid change in intracellular free calcium concentration over time. The radioactive inositol 1,4,5- triphosphate (IP3) assay measures 3H-inositol incorporation and is another traditional assay for the assessment of Gq-coupled GPCR activity, but it is not suitable for screening of large size compound collections because it requires a cell wash step and generates radioactive waste. To avoid these limitations, we have optimized and miniaturized a TR-FRET based IP-One assay that measures inositol monophosphate in a 1536-well plate format. This assay is homogenous, non-radioactive and does not require a kinetic readout. It has been tested with the cell lines expressing M1 acetylcholine, FFAR1, vasopressin V1b, or Neuropeptide S receptors. The activities of antagonists determined in the IP-One assay correlated well with these measured in the intracellular calcium assay while the correlation of agonist activities might vary from cell line to cell line. This IP-One assay offers an alternative method for high throughput screening of Gq-coupled GPCRs without using costly kinetic plate readers.
Mont’e Scan

We propose an approach for improving the digitization of shape and color of 3D artworks in a cluttered environment using 3D laser scanning and flash photography. To separate clutter from acquired material, semiautomated methods are employed to generate masks used to segment the range maps and the color photographs. This approach allows the removal of unwanted 3D and color data prior to the integration of acquired data in a 3D model. Sharp shadows generated by flash acquisition are easily handled by this masking process, and color deviations introduced by the flash light are corrected at the color blending step by taking into account the geometry of the object. The approach has been evaluated in a large-scale acquisition campaign of the Mont’e Prama complex. This site contains an extraordinary collection of stone fragments from the Nuragic era, which depict small models of prehistoric nuraghe (cone-shaped stone towers), as well as larger-than-life archers, warriors, and boxers. The acquisition campaign has covered 37 statues mounted on metallic supports. Color and shape were acquired at a resolution of 0.25mm, which resulted in more than 6,200 range maps (about 1.3G valid samples) and 3,817 photographs.
Fractal analysis for the viewpoint invariant classification of celiac disease

In this paper we present a viewpoint invariant method using fractal features for the automatic classification of celiac disease. First the endoscopic images of the duodenum are pre-filtered using the MR8 filter bank. Subsequently we compute the local fractal dimension of each pixel of the filter responses. After finding representative combinations of the local fractal dimensions for images with or without celiac disease, we generate frequency histograms that count how often each representative combinations occur as nearest neighbor for each image (as nearest neighbor to the local fractal dimensions of the filter responses for each pixel position of the images). We use this histograms for the classification of the images. We will see that the result of the proposed method outperforms the approach, our method is based on, as well as other methods for the classification of medical imagery.
Nanoparticle-Mediated Expression of a Wnt Pathway Inhibitor Ameliorates Ocular Neovascularization

Objective— The deficiency of very low-density lipoprotein receptor resulted in Wnt signaling activation and neovascularization in the retina. The present study sought to determine whether the very low-density lipoprotein receptor extracellular domain (VLN) is responsible for the inhibition of Wnt signaling in ocular tissues. Approach and Results— A plasmid expressing the soluble VLN was encapsulated with poly(lactide-co-glycolide acid) to form VLN nanoparticles (VLN-NP). Nanoparticles containing a plasmid expressing the low-density lipoprotein receptor extracellular domain nanoparticle were used as negative control. MTT, modified Boyden chamber, and Matrigel (™) assays were used to evaluate the inhibitory effect of VLN-NP on Wnt3a-stimulated endothelial cell proliferation, migration, and tube formation. Vldlr −/− mice, oxygen-induced retinopathy, and alkali burn–induced corneal neovascularization models were used to evaluate the effect of VLN-NP on ocular neovascularization. Wnt reporter mice (BAT-gal), Western blotting, and luciferase assay were used to evaluate Wnt pathway activity. Our results showed that VLN-NP specifically inhibited Wnt3a-induced endothelial cell proliferation, migration, and tube formation. Intravitreal injection of VLN-NP inhibited abnormal neovascularization in Vldlr −/−, oxygen-induced retinopathy, and alkali burn–induced corneal neovascularization models, compared with low-density lipoprotein receptor extracellular domain nanoparticle. VLN-NP significantly inhibited the phosphorylation of low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 6, the accumulation of &bgr;-catenin, and the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor in vivo and in vitro. Conclusions— Taken together, these results suggest that the soluble VLN is a negative regulator of the Wnt pathway and has antiangiogenic activities. Nanoparticle-mediated expression of VLN may thus represent a novel therapeutic approach to treat pathological ocular angiogenesis and potentially other vascular diseases affected by Wnt signaling.
Examining the Genetic and Environmental Associations between Autistic Social and Communication Deficits and Psychopathic Callous-Unemotional Traits

Background Difficulties in appropriate social interaction are characteristic of both children with autism spectrum disorders and children with callous-unemotional traits (who are at risk of developing psychopathy). Extant experimental studies suggest that the nature of atypical social cognition that characterises these two profiles is not identical. However, ‘empathizing’ difficulties have been hypothesised for both groups, raising questions about the degree of aetiological separation between social impairments that characterize each disorder. This study explored the relative contribution of independent vs. shared aetiological influences to social and communication impairments associated with autistic traits and callous-unemotional traits, indexed by parent-report in a population-based cohort of twins. Methods Participants were over 5,000 twin pairs from a UK cohort (the Twins Early Development Study; TEDS), assessed for callous-unemotional traits at 7 years and autistic social and communication impairments at 8 years. Multivariate model-fitting was used to explore the relative contribution of independent vs. overlapping genetic/environmental influences on these traits. Results Both social and communication impairments and callous-unemotional traits were highly heritable, although the genetic and environmental influences accounting for individual differences on each domain were predominantly independent. Conclusions Extant evidence from experimental and neuro-imaging studies has suggested that, despite some superficially overlapping behaviours, the social difficulties seen in children with autism spectrum disorders and callous-unemotional traits are largely distinct. The current study is the first to demonstrate considerable aetiological independence of the social interaction difficulties seen in children with autism spectrum disorders and those with callous-unemotional traits.
Supervivencia a largo plazo en pacientes con enfermedad renal crónica estadio 5 tratada por hemodiálisis en Lima, Perú

Objetivo: Evaluar la supervivencia a largo plazo de pacientes con enfermedad renal cronica estadio 5 (ERC-5) que ingresaron a un programa de hemodialisis en Lima, Peru y se determino las variables de pronostico que afectaron la supervivencia. Materiales y metodos: Se evaluo una cohorte prospectiva de 604 pacientes que ingresaron a un programa de hemodialisis (1982-2009) y fueron seguidos hasta diciembre del 2015. La supervivencia fue estudiada mediante las curvas de Kaplan Meier; se establecio comparaciones, utilizando la prueba Log-rank segun: edad, etiologia, trasplante renal y periodo de ingreso a hemodialisis. Mediante el analisis de regresion de Cox, se determino variables pronosticas de supervivencia. Resultados: La edad promedio fue de 51,95 ± 16,17 anos. El 43,1% era ≥ 60 anos; el 43,4% fueron mujeres. Las etiologias mas frecuentes fueron las glomerulopatias primarias (21%), diabetes mellitus (20%), hipertension arterial (12%) y las nefropatias intersticiales y/o uropatias obstructivas (11%). El porcentaje de supervivencia (IC95%) en los anos 1, 5, 10, 15 y 20 fue 80% (intervalo de confianza al 95% [IC 95%]: 77% - 83%), 47% (IC 95%: 43% - 51%), 25% (IC 95%: 21% a 29%); 17% (IC 95%: 13% - 21%) y 11% (IC 955: 8% - 14%), respectivamente. La regresion de Cox identifico al adulto mayor y al diabetico como variables desfavorables en la supervivencia y al trasplantado renal como variable favorable. Conclusion: La supervivencia a largo plazo es comparable a otros estudios internacionales. La menor supervivencia de nuestros pacientes se relaciono con la condicion de ser adulto mayor, diabetico y no tener posibilidad de trasplante renal. Los cambios tecnologicos durante el periodo de seguimiento no modificaron significativamente las curvas de supervivencia.
A Planetary Companion to HD 40979 and Additional Planets Orbiting HD 12661 and HD 38529

We report the detection of three extrasolar planets from the Lick and Keck observatories. The F8 V star HD 40979 has a companion with orbital period P = 263.1 ± 3 days, eccentricity e = 0.25 ± 0.05, and velocity semiamplitude K = 101.2 ± 5.6 m s-1. The inferred semimajor axis is 0.83 AU and M sin i = 3.28MJup. Observations of planetary companions orbiting the G6 V star HD 12661 and the G4 IV star HD 38529 have already been published, and here we report additional, longer period companions for both of these stars. The outer companion to HD 12661 has Pc = 1444.5 ± 12.5 days, ec = 0.20 ± 0.04, and Kc = 27.6 ± 2.5 m s-1. Adopting a stellar mass of 1.07 M☉, we find Mc sin i = 1.57MJup and a semimajor axis of 2.56 AU. The second companion to HD 38529 has Pc = 2174 ± 30 days, ec = 0.36 ± 0.05, and Kc = 170.5 ± 9 m s-1. The assumed mass of 1.39 M☉ for HD 38529 yields Mc sin i = 12.7MJup and a semimajor axis of 3.68 AU. Photometric observations at Fairborn Observatory reveal low-amplitude brightness variations in HD 40979 and HD 38529 due to rotational modulation in the visibility of photospheric starspots, and they yield rotation periods of 7.0 and 35.7 days, respectively, very different from the planetary orbital periods. The orbital parameters of these two systems are compared with updated parameters for all of the known multiple-planet systems. Updated velocities are provided for the ϒ Andromedae system.
Estimating topical context by diverging from external resources

Improving query understanding is crucial for providing the user with information that suits her needs. To this end, the retrieval system must be able to deal with several sources of knowledge from which it could infer a topical context. The use of external sources of information for improving document retrieval has been extensively studied. Improvements with either structured or large sets of data have been reported. However, in these studies resources are often used separately and rarely combined together. We experiment in this paper a method that discounts documents based on their weighted divergence from a set of external resources. We present an evaluation of the combination of four resources on two standard TREC test collections. Our proposed method significantly outperforms a state-of-the-art Mixture of Relevance Models on one test collection, while no significant differences are detected on the other one.
Incremental Coreference Resolution for German

The main contributions of this thesis are as follows: 1. We introduce a general model for coreference and explore its application to German. • The model features an incremental discourse processing algorithm which allows it to coherently address issues caused by underspecification of mentions, which is an especially pressing problem regarding certain German pronouns. • We introduce novel features relevant for the resolution of German pronouns. A subset of these features are made accessible through the incremental architecture of the discourse processing model. • In evaluation, we show that the coreference model combined with our features provides new state-of-the-art results for coreference and pronoun resolution for German. 2. We elaborate on the evaluation of coreference and pronoun resolution. • We discuss evaluation from the view of prospective downstream applications that benefit from coreference resolution as a preprocessing component. Addressing the shortcomings of the general evaluation framework in this regard, we introduce an alternative framework, the Application Related Coreference Scores (ARCS). • The ARCS framework enables a thorough comparison of different system outputs and the quantification of their similarities and differences beyond the common coreference evaluation. We demonstrate how the framework is applied to state-of-the-art coreference systems. This provides a method to track specific differences in system outputs, which assists researchers in comparing their approaches to related work in detail. 3. We explore semantics for pronoun resolution. • Within the introduced coreference model, we explore distributional approaches to estimate the compatibility of an antecedent candidate and the occurrence context of a pronoun. We compare a state-of-the-art approach for word embeddings to syntactic co-occurrence profiles to this end. • In comparison to related work, we extend the notion of context and thereby increase the applicability of our approach. We find that a combination of both compatibility models, coupled with the coreference model, provides a large potential for improving pronoun resolution performance. We make available all our resources, including a web demo of the system, at: http://pub.cl. uzh.ch/purl/coreference-resolution
Membrane Omega-3 Fatty Acid Deficiency as a Preventable Risk Factor for Comorbid Coronary Heart Disease in Major Depressive Disorder

Major depression disorder (MDD) significantly increases the risk for coronary heart disease (CHD) which is a leading cause of mortality in patients with MDD. Moreover, depression is frequently observed in a subset of patients following acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and increases risk for mortality. Here evidence implicating omega-3 (n-3) fatty acid deficiency in the pathoaetiology of CHD and MDD is reviewed, and the hypothesis that n-3 fatty acid deficiency is a preventable risk factor for CHD comorbidity in MDD patients is evaluated. This hypothesis is supported by cross-national and cross-sectional epidemiological surveys finding an inverse correlation between n-3 fatty acid status and prevalence rates of both CHD and MDD, prospective studies finding that lower dietary or membrane EPA+DHA levels increase risk for both MDD and CHD, case-control studies finding that the n-3 fatty acid status of MDD patients places them at high risk for emergent CHD morbidity and mortality, meta-analyses of controlled n-3 fatty acid intervention studies finding significant advantage over placebo for reducing depression symptom severity in MDD patients, and for secondary prevention of cardiac events in CHD patients, findings that n-3 fatty acid status is inversely correlated with other documented CHD risk factors, and patients diagnosed with MDD after ACS exhibit significantly lower n-3 fatty acid status compared with nondepressed ACS patients. This body of evidence provides strong support for future studies to evaluate the effects of increasing dietary n-3 fatty acid status on CHD comorbidity and mortality in MDD patients.
Designing and Psychometric Evaluation of Breast Self-Examination Behavior Predicting Scale (BSEBPS)

Background: Breast cancer is a public health challenge in most populations and a cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Lack of reliable and valid tools for assessing predicting factors, which influence on breast self-examination behavior of Iranian women, is obvious. This study aimed at designing and evaluating the psychometric properties of this instrument. Objectives: The purpose of this study was psychometric validation health action process approach (HAPA) scale for prediction of breast self-examination behavior among Iranian women over 40 years. Methods: In this cross sectional study, the participants were registered women 40 years and older in urban health centers in Tehran, Iran. The 200 subjects were selected by multi-stage cluster sampling. Content and face validity have been verified by a panel of experts and participants. Using exploratory and structural equation modeling confirmatory factor analyses was conducted construct validity. Results: Using explanatory factor analysis, 8 factors of health action process approach model were identified with appropriate variance explained (67.18%). The HAPA had an acceptable fit to the observations (χ2 = 2.21, df = 3, χ2/df = 1.35, P < 0.001, RMSEA = 0.049 (CI = 0.044, 0.056; AGFI = 0.90; P = 0.452; PGFI = 0.13). Conclusions: The results of the present study suggested an initial for validity and reliability of the HAPA-based breast self-examination among Iranian women.
Biomechanics study of human lower limb walking: Implication for design of power-assisted robot

Walking gait based on actual machine elements that capture the major features of human locomotion may enhance the understanding of human leg morphology and control, and provide necessary background science for the design and control of human-robot exoskeleton interaction system. This paper describes an investigation into the biomechanical effects of human lower limb joints during different loaded walking. Healthy volunteers walked on a level with different loaded (0kg, 10kg, 20kg, 30kg). The experiment results of human walking motion may give the base which joint of power-assisted lower extremity robot should be actuated, and what driving method should be used. At the same time, the kinematics and kinetics data of human walking motion give some bases for the choose of the actuator.
Latent Semantic Analysis Parameters for Essay Evaluation using Small-Scale Corpora*

Abstract Some previous studies (e.g. that carried out by Van Bruggen et al. in 2004) have pointed to a need for additional research in order to firmly establish the usefulness of LSA (latent semantic analysis) parameters for automatic evaluation of academic essays. The extreme variability in approaches to this technique makes it difficult to identify the most efficient parameters and the optimum combination. With this goal in mind, we conducted a high spectrum study to investigate the efficiency of some of the major LSA parameters in small-scale corpora. We used two specific domain corpora that differed in the structure of the text (one containing only technical terms and the other with more tangential information). Using these corpora we tested different semantic spaces, formed by applying different parameters and different methods of comparing the texts. Parameters varied included weighting functions (Log-IDF or Log-Entropy), dimensionality reduction (truncating the matrices after SVD to a set percentage of dimensions), methods of forming pseudo-documents (vector sum and folding-in) and measures of similarity (cosine or Euclidean distances). We also included two groups of essays to be graded, one written by experts and other by non-experts. Both groups were evaluated by three human graders and also by LSA. We extracted the correlations of each LSA condition with human graders, and conducted an ANOVA to analyse which parameter combination correlates best. Results suggest that distances are more efficient in academic essay evaluation than cosines. We found no clear evidence that the classical LSA protocol works systematically better than some simpler version (the classical protocol achieves the best performance only for some combinations of parameters in a few cases), and found that the benefits of reducing dimensionality arise only when the essays are introduced into semantic spaces using the folding-in method.