Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Treatment with cyclophosphamide delays the progression of chronic lesions more effectively than does treatment with azathioprine plus methylprednisolone in patients with proliferative lupus nephritis.

OBJECTIVE To analyze the effect of treatment with either pulse cyclophosphamide (CYC) or azathioprine (AZA) combined with methylprednisolone (MP), on serial biopsy results in patients with proliferative lupus nephritis, and to evaluate the predictive value of various histopathologic and clinical parameters with regard to disease outcome. METHODS Biopsy specimens from patients with proliferative lupus nephritis, obtained at study entry and after 2 years of therapy, were scored according to a standardized method, and results assessed in relation to disease outcome. RESULTS Of the 87 patients originally enrolled, 39 underwent repeat biopsy. These patients were representative of the overall group, both at entry and at 2-year followup. The median activity index changed from 8.0 to 2.7 (no differences between the treatment groups). In the group treated with AZA plus MP (AZA group), the increase in the median chronicity index (from 2.7 to 3.8) was larger than that in the CYC group (from 2.7 to 3.0) (P = 0.050). In multivariate analyses, renal function at enrollment and after 2 years was the best predictor of renal function at the last visit, while none of the histopathologic variables (either at entry or at 2 years) added to this prediction. Comparing patients whose disease transitioned to class II with those who had persistent proliferative lupus nephritis revealed no differences between the treatment groups at either time point, and no clinical differences at 2 years. However, a higher serum creatinine level at entry and greater proteinuria at last visit were characteristic of patients who still had proliferative lupus nephritis at 2 years. CONCLUSION These results indicate that, although both CYC and AZA are effective in reducing active lesions in lupus nephritis, progression of chronic lesions is more effectively halted by CYC. Variables assessed by repeat biopsy do not predict clinical outcome.
Variable-rate adaptive trellis coded QAM for flat-fading channels

A bandwidth-efficient variable-rate adaptive channel coding scheme, ATCQAM, for time-varying flat-fading channels is proposed. In addition to the forward channel, a low-capacity feedback channel is needed to convey channel state information to the transmitter, possibly with delays and noise. A number of transmission modes, with varying throughputs, are incorporated at the transmitter. Appropriate transmission modes are selected based on the feedback channel states. Design issues for the ATCQAM are considered. A closed-loop control scheme to maintain mode synchronization between the transmitter and the receiver is discussed. The effects of feedback delay, a noisy feedback channel, and mobile speed are investigated. Analytical bounds are derived and simulations are performed to verify the results.
Major Role for FeoB in Campylobacter jejuni Ferrous Iron Acquisition, Gut Colonization, and Intracellular Survival

ABSTRACT To assess the importance of ferrous iron acquisition in Campylobacter physiology and pathogenesis, we disrupted and characterized the Fe2+ iron transporter, FeoB, in Campylobacter jejuni NCTC 11168, 81-176, and ATCC 43431. The feoB mutant was significantly affected in its ability to transport 55Fe2+. It accumulated half the amount of iron than the wild-type strain during growth in an iron-containing medium. The intracellular iron of the feoB mutant was localized in the periplasmic space versus the cytoplasm for the wild-type strain. These results indicate that the feoB gene of C. jejuni encodes a functional ferrous iron transport system. Reverse transcriptase PCR analysis revealed the cotranscription of feoB and Cj1397, which encodes a homolog of Escherichia coli feoA. C. jejuni 81-176 feoB mutants exhibited reduced ability to persist in human INT-407 embryonic intestinal cells and porcine IPEC-1 small intestinal epithelial cells compared to the wild type. C. jejuni NCTC 11168 feoB mutant was outcompeted by the wild type for colonization and/or survival in the rabbit ileal loop. The feoB mutants of the three C. jejuni strains were significantly affected in their ability to colonize the chick cecum. And finally, the three feoB mutants were outcompeted by their respective wild-type strains for infection of the intestinal tracts of colostrum-deprived piglets. Taken together, these results demonstrate that FeoB-mediated ferrous iron acquisition contributes significantly to colonization of the gastrointestinal tract during both commensal and infectious relationship, and thus it plays an important role in Campylobacter pathogenesis.
Dextrose 5% in Water as an Alternative Medium to Gel for Performing Ultrasound-Guided Peripheral Nerve Blocks

To the Editor: Icongratulate Dr. Dolan and colleagues for demonstrating the superiority of ultrasound-guided fascia iliaca block to a Bdouble-pop[ technique, and I appreciate the opportunity to ask a few questions regarding the figures and conclusions. First, although the line drawing depicting the fascia iliaca (figure 1B) accurately shows this fascia investing the iliacus muscle and overlying the femoral nerve on the anteromedial surface of the muscle, the ultrasound image above (figure 1A) has an arrow that appears to be pointing to the fascia running superficial to the femoral artery. This is more likely the fascia lata rather than the fascia iliaca deep to it. Gray’s Anatomy describes the fascia iliaca as follows: BImmediately lateral to the femoral vessels, the iliac fascia is prolonged backward and medialward from the inguinal ligament as a band, the iliopectineal fascia, which is attached to the iliopectineal eminence. This fascia divides the space between the inguinal ligament and the hip bone into 2 lacunae or compartments, the medial of which transmits the femoral vessels, the lateral, the psoas major and iliacus, and the femoral nerve. [ The fascia iliaca separates the femoral nerve from the femoral artery. I would also question the criteria of only 20% reduction of adductor muscle strength as indicative of successful obturator block. Only one third (27/80) of all patients had more than 20% reduction of adductor strength, and of those who did, the mean reduction was only 35% to 39%. By contrast, studies of obturator nerve block typically report reduction of adductor strength of 60% to 77%. Because the femoral nerve through innervation of the pectineus muscle contributes to adduction of the thigh, some reduction of adductor strength may have been due to successful femoral nerve block. Improved femoral nerve block in the ultrasoundguided group may explain increased adductor weakness in this group. Although I would agree that ultrasound guidance increased the frequency of femoral nerve block in this study, I question the conclusion that it Bdoubled the frequency of obturator nerve block to 44%. [ The bettersupported conclusion is that ultrasoundguided fascia iliaca block does not reliably produce obturator nerve block.
Serodiagnosis of Helicobacter pylori: evaluation of a rapid, miniaturized immunochromatographic test

Diagnosis and successful eradication of Helicobacter pylori infection has been shown to be significantly related to symptom improvement in patients affected by chronic gastritis, duodenal and gastric ulcer. There is, therefore, an increasing need for the development of new, easy to use, reliable and non-invasive techniques to detect this organism. One such test is Flex-Sure™ (SmithKline Diagnostics Inc., United States), a new, rapid immunochromatographic test which requires a drop of the patient's serum to be placed on the absorbent pad of a strip. If specific antibodies to H. pylori are present a red colour line appears. The present study compared Flex-Sure with a homologous quantitative immunoenzymatic test (HM-CAP, EPI, US) using the same antigen (high molecular weight protein), the second generation GAP test (Bio-Rad, USA), a rapid urease test, culture and histology in a cohort of dyspeptic patients. We produced a semiquantitative visual scale with which to perform this comparison. Our results show that Flex-Sure possesses a sensitivity of 96.1%, a specificity of 73.9%, an overall accuracy of 78.8%, a positive predictive value of 72% and a negative predictive value of 91.6%. It showed a highly significant correlation with histological and cultural results (P < 0.001), and with the other serological tests (P < 0.0001). Based on our data we conclude that Flex-Sure may yield quick (within 4 min), simply readable, qualitative, and according to our colourimetric scale, even semiquantitative results. Furthermore, it does not require any sample dilution, any particular equipment, or any specialized training for the operator.
Somatic mutation profiles of clear cell endometrial tumors revealed by whole exome and targeted gene sequencing

The molecular pathogenesis of clear cell endometrial cancer (CCEC), a tumor type with a relatively unfavorable prognosis, is not well defined. We searched exome‐wide for novel somatically mutated genes in CCEC and assessed the mutational spectrum of known and candidate driver genes in a large cohort of cases.
An inventory of Queensland prioritised invasive plant species for management and research.

There are currently ~300 declared weeds in Queensland (QLD), Australia, but this list requires a review as the last known exercise dealing with weed risk assessment and prioritisation was undertaken about two decades ago. In this paper we propose an updated list of invasive alien (plant) species of significant concern in QLD, based on information derived from pest management plans of local governments, herbarium records and published/ grey literature, expert knowledge, and opinion from diverse groups of stakeholders. Weed diversity varies significantly between local government areas and regions. Regions on the mainland eastern seaboard of the State share similar weed communities, unlike western regions and the Torres Strait islands, which share fewer, weed species. Stakeholders identified the top research and management priorities for the weed list. These were: studies involving biological control options (34.8% of respondents), public awareness and education (18.5%), effective herbicide-use and application techniques (15.2%), ecology, taxonomy and risk analysis (11.5%), and adaptive pasture management (9.3%). Based on occurrence and distribution across local government areas/regional jurisdictions and onground stakeholders’ perceived weed severity, a weed priority list of high-medium and-low impact scores for policy, research and management was compiled for each region and State-wide.
The Relationship between Organizational Justice and Social Capital of Staff Education Organization of Miyaneh City

The aim of current research is study relation of organizational justice and social capital of staff education organization of miyaneh city. In this study, is considered as a statistical society that is 90 staff education organization of miyaneh city that uses Cochran's formula 75 of them was selected and questionnaires were filled by them. The method used in this study was descriptive - survey and in order to achieve validity were used content validity. Data were collected through two questionnaires which reliability by using the Cronbach's alpha coefficient . 812 which was approved. The results showed that there were positive and significant relations between organizational justice and social capital. Also, findings of the research showed meaningful and positive relationship among distributive, procedural, and interactional justice and social capital of staff education organization of miyaneh city. In other words, by increasing organizational justice, social capital of staff is also increasing. Finally, a set analyzing of data is by using Spearman's correlation coefficient test and structural equation modeling (SEM).
Who Is Willing to Sacrifice Ethical Values for Money and Social Status?

Women select into business school at a lower rate than men and are underrepresented in high-ranking positions in business organizations. We examined gender differences in reactions to ethical compromises as one possible explanation for these disparities. In Study 1, when reading decisions that compromised ethical values for social status and monetary gains, women reported feeling more moral outrage and perceived less business sense in the decisions than men. In Study 2, we established a causal relationship between aversion to ethical compromises and disinterest in business careers by manipulating the presence of ethical compromises in job descriptions. As hypothesized, an interaction between gender and presence of ethical compromises emerged. Only when jobs involved making ethical compromises did women report less interest in the jobs than men. Women’s moral reservations mediated these effects. In Study 3, we found that women implicitly associated business with immorality more than men did.
Independent Validation of a Model Predicting the Need for Packed Red Blood Cell Transfusion at Liver Transplantation

Objectives. Orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) may be associated with major blood loss and equally considerable transfusion requirements. We had developed previously a model capable of predicting the probability of packed red blood cell (PRBC) transfusion. We tested the ability of that model in predicting the need for PRBC transfusion after its conversion into the nomogram format, which represents a friendly tool to be used. Moreover, the nomogram was validated in an independent cohort of 109 prospectively gathered OLTs. Materials and Methods. A total of 515 OLTs were performed by a group of 17 anesthesiologists and 7 hepatobiliary surgeons. The initial series of 406 OLTs were used for model development. The remaining 109 OLTs were used as an independent validation cohort. Logistic regression analyses addressed the relationship between the three previously identified predictors of the likelihood of PRBC transfusion and the actual rate of PRBC transfusion. The predictors consisted of plasma transfusion status, phlebotomy, and immediate preoperative hemoglobin value. The regression coefficients from the multivariable logistic regression model that included all three predictors were used to develop a nomogram predicting the individual probability of PRBC transfusion. Results. In univariable models, transfusion of plasma (odds ratio [OR] 15.0, P<0.001) increased the rate of PRBC transfusion. Conversely, phlebotomy (OR 0.06, P<0.001) and a high starting hemoglobin level (OR 0.95, P<0.001) had a protective effect. In the multivariable model, all three variables reached independent predictor status (P<0.001). The bootstrap-adjusted area under curve (AUC) of the model was 89.8%. Conclusion. Our nomogram represents the first model capable of predicting the individual risk of PRBC transfusion at OLT.
Hubs in Space: Popular Nearest Neighbors in High-Dimensional Data

Different aspects of the curse of dimensionality are known to present serious challenges to various machine-learning methods and tasks. This paper explores a new aspect of the dimensionality curse, referred to as hubness, that affects the distribution of k-occurrences: the number of times a point appears among the k nearest neighbors of other points in a data set. Through theoretical and empirical analysis involving synthetic and real data sets we show that under commonly used assumptions this distribution becomes considerably skewed as dimensionality increases, causing the emergence of hubs, that is, points with very high k-occurrences which effectively represent "popular" nearest neighbors. We examine the origins of this phenomenon, showing that it is an inherent property of data distributions in high-dimensional vector space, discuss its interaction with dimensionality reduction, and explore its influence on a wide range of machine-learning tasks directly or indirectly based on measuring distances, belonging to supervised, semi-supervised, and unsupervised learning families.
Why Democracies Collapse: The Reasons for Democratic Failure and Success

Most studies of democratic stability are based within either the socioeconomic or the politico-institutional tradition, but usually not on both. This article combines the two approaches. In all, 11 variables associated with democratic stability are divided into four groups (institutional, societal, mediating, and extraneous) and examined in 30 cases of democratic collapse and 32 cases of stable democracies. Five variables prove to be the most influential on the fate of democracies. When a country scores negatively on four of these five variables it is almost doomed to collapse. Some of the variables prove to be correlated in an opposite way to that which has been suggested in the literature.
Predictors of Self-Reported Depression in Korean Children 9 to 12 Years of Age

Purpose The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationships among various psychosocial factors, behavior problems, and depressive symptoms reported by parents, and to investigate self-reported depression in Korean children using a community sample. Materials and Methods The sample consisted of 1279 children between 9 and 12 years of age. The children were evaluated using the Korean version of the Child Behavior Checklist (K-CBCL) and the Child Depression Inventory (CDI). Results The average self-reported depression score as measured by the CDI was 12.34 (SD: 6.79), and a cut-off point of 19 identified approximately 14% of the children as depressed. The group difference was identified by the age at which younger children were found to have higher CDI scores. Univariate logistic regression analysis showed that the high-CDI group and the low-CDI group differed in all behavioral domains identified in the parent-reported subscales of the K-CBCL. Age and father's education level were also independently associated with the risk for childhood depression. In addition, results from the logistic regression analyses indicated that parental reporting of problem internalization, total behavior problems, and social competence were independent predictors of child depression not identified by the anxious/depressed subscale. Conclusion It is believed that extensive behavioral problems reported by parents and several sociodemographic factors are related to childhood depression. However, parents tend to under-report depressive symptoms relative to what their own children report. Thus, clinicians must consider the self-reports of children related to depression in their diagnosis and intervention, because reports of depressive symptoms from children are more valid measures than those from parents.
Human Papillomavirus in Men: An Update

HPV 6 and 11 cause greater than 90% of genital warts in males and females. Data show that approximately 3–4 million cases of genital warts in men occur each year with a peak rate of 500 per 100,000 in the 25–29 year old group. (1) The majority of these genital warts are diagnosed in men under the age of 30 years. In addition to genital warts, men are at risk for several HPV-related morbidities including penile, anal and oral cancers.
Thymosin beta 4 ophthalmic solution for dry eye: a randomized, placebo-controlled, Phase II clinical trial conducted using the controlled adverse environment (CAE™) model

Background The purpose of this study was to evaluate the safety and efficacy of thymosin beta 4 ophthalmic solution (RGN-259; Tβ4) in subjects with moderate to severe dry eye using the CAE™ model. Methods This single-center, prospective, double-masked, placebo-controlled Phase II study randomized 72 qualifying subjects 1:1 to receive either 0.1% Tβ4 or placebo treatment for a total of 28 days. The study consisted of six visits over a 32-day period, including a screening visit (day –1), controlled adverse environment challenge (CAE) visits (day 1, day 28), and follow-up visits (days 14, 29, and 30). The primary efficacy endpoints were ocular discomfort scores and inferior corneal staining measured at visit 5 on day 29. Secondary endpoints included central and superior corneal staining, conjunctival staining, conjunctival redness, tear-film break-up time, and daily symptom scores recorded over the course of the study. Safety measures included visual acuity, slit-lamp evaluation, conjunctival redness, tear film break-up time, intraocular pressure, dilated funduscopy, and corneal sensitivity. Results Neither of the primary endpoints, ie, ocular discomfort or inferior corneal staining, showed a significant difference between treatment and control groups at visit 5. Despite this, significant differences between treatment groups were observed for a number of secondary endpoints. The discomfort scores in the CAE on day 28 were reduced by 27% in 0.1% Tβ4-treated subjects compared with the placebo group (P=0.0244). Subjects in the 0.1% Tβ4 treatment group also showed statistically significant improvements in central and superior corneal staining compared with staining scores in the control group (P=0.0075 and P=0.0210). No adverse events were observed. Conclusion This study confirms the efficacy of 0.1% Tβ4 as a topical treatment for relief of signs and symptoms of dry eye. Significant improvements in both signs and symptoms of dry eye were observed, and the treatment exhibited a large safety window, with no adverse events reported by any subjects enrolled in the study.
Periphyton nutrient limitation and nitrogen fixation potential along a wetland nutrient-depletion gradient

While intensified nutrient limitation of periphyton has been reported along wetland nutrientdepletion gradients, changes to the specific nutrient that limits periphyton growth are not documented. In this study, we used artificial nutrient-diffusing substrata to determine nutrient limitation status of periphyton along a nitrogen- and phosphorus-depletion gradient in a freshwater marsh during the growing season of 2003. We also characterized water-column nutrient content, N:P ratio of dissolved nutrients, and periphytic N2 fixation potential along the gradient. Dissolved inorganic nitrogen concentrations consistently decreased (60%–95%) from inflow to outflow during all bioassays, while soluble reactive phosphorus concentrations decreased during the April (49%) and September (39%) bioassays but increased in the July bioassay (51%). Unequal N and P retention resulted in a general decrease in DIN:SRP mass ratio from 20.2 ± 5.0 to 3.8 ± 1.6 between inflow and outflow, respectively. Periphyton at the wetland inflow never responded to N additions alone, while periphyton at the outflow always responded to N enrichment. Periphyton at the inflow were either not limited by nutrients (September) or co-limited by N+P (April and July). At the outflow, periphyton were either N-limited (April and September) or strongly co-limited by N+P (July). A significant increase in N2 fixation potential (p<0.05) from inflow to outflow locations was noted for all measured events. Our results suggest that, in addition to the severity of nutrient limitation, some wetlands may display spatial heterogeneity in the specific nutrient that limits periphyton growth. Further, these shifts influence the structure and function of wetland periphyton assemblages.
Humanoid robot HRP-4 - Humanoid robotics platform with lightweight and slim body

This paper presents the development of humanoid robotics platform - 4 (or HRP-4 for short). The high-density implementation used for HRP-4C, the cybernetic human developed by AIST, is also applied to HRP-4. HRP-4 has a total of 34 degrees of freedom, including 7 degrees of freedom for each arm to facilitate object handling and has a slim, lightweight body with a height of 151 [cm] and weight 39 [kg]. The software platform OpenRTM-aist and a Linux kernel with the RT-Preempt patch are used in the HRP-4 software system. Design concepts and mechanisms are presented with its basic specification in this paper.