Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Discovery of Ethanol-Responsive Small RNAs in Zymomonas mobilis

ABSTRACT Zymomonas mobilis is a bacterium that can produce ethanol by fermentation. Due to its unique metabolism and efficient ethanol production, Z. mobilis has attracted special interest for biofuel energy applications; an important area of study is the regulation of those specific metabolic pathways. Small RNAs (sRNAs) have been studied as molecules that function as transcriptional regulators in response to cellular stresses. While sRNAs have been discovered in various organisms by computational prediction and experimental approaches, their discovery in Z. mobilis has not yet been reported. In this study, we have applied transcriptome analysis and computational predictions to facilitate identification and validation of 15 novel sRNAs in Z. mobilis. We furthermore characterized their expression in the context of high and low levels of intracellular ethanol. Here, we report that 3 of the sRNAs (Zms2, Zms4, and Zms6) are differentially expressed under aerobic and anaerobic conditions, when low and high ethanol productions are observed, respectively. Importantly, when we tested the effect of ethanol stress on the expression of sRNAs in Z. mobilis, Zms2, Zms6, and Zms18 showed differential expression under 5% ethanol stress conditions. These data suggest that in this organism regulatory RNAs can be associated with metabolic functions involved in ethanol stress responses.
Adaptive Mixed Reality Rehabilitation Improves Quality of Reaching Movements More Than Traditional Reaching Therapy Following Stroke

Background. Adaptive mixed reality rehabilitation (AMRR) is a novel integration of motion capture technology and high-level media computing that provides precise kinematic measurements and engaging multimodal feedback for self-assessment during a therapeutic task. Objective. We describe the first proof-of-concept study to compare outcomes of AMRR and traditional upper-extremity physical therapy. Methods. Two groups of participants with chronic stroke received either a month of AMRR therapy (n = 11) or matched dosing of traditional repetitive task therapy (n = 10). Participants were right handed, between 35 and 85 years old, and could independently reach to and at least partially grasp an object in front of them. Upper-extremity clinical scale scores and kinematic performances were measured before and after treatment. Results. Both groups showed increased function after therapy, demonstrated by statistically significant improvements in Wolf Motor Function Test and upper-extremity Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA) scores, with the traditional therapy group improving significantly more on the FMA. However, only participants who received AMRR therapy showed a consistent improvement in kinematic measurements, both for the trained task of reaching to grasp a cone and the untrained task of reaching to push a lighted button. Conclusions. AMRR may be useful in improving both functionality and the kinematics of reaching. Further study is needed to determine if AMRR therapy induces long-term changes in movement quality that foster better functional recovery.
Effect of Lactobacillus casei supplementation on the effectiveness and tolerability of a new second-line 10-day quadruple therapy after failure of a first attempt to cure Helicobacter pylori infection.

BACKGROUND Probiotics have never been used as second-line treatment in patients resistant to a first course of anti-H. pylori treatment. MATERIAL/METHODS 70 consecutive patients with persistent H. pylori infection were enrolled and treated with ranitidine bismuth citrate (RBC) 400 mg b.d, esomeprazole or pantoprazole 40 mg/day, amoxycillin 1 g t.d, tinidazole 500 mg b.d. with (group A) or witlhout (group B) supplementation with 750 mg daily containing 16 billion bacteria Lactobacillus casei subsp. casei DG. Esomeprazole or pantoprazole 40 mg/day was administered for a further 4 weeks in cases of active peptic ulcer or severe gastritis detected at endoscopy. In these cases endoscopy was repeated one month after conclusion of therapy. The remaining patients were checked by 13C-urea breath test. RESULTS Sixty-six patients completed the study, 34 in group A and 32 in group B. One group A patient (2.85%) was excluded for protocol violation and one group B patient (2.85%) was lost to follow-up. 33/34 group A patients were H. pylori-negative [per-protocol: 97.05%, on intention-to-treat: 94.28%]. 5/34 patients (14.7%) showed side-effects, but all of them completed the treatment. In group B, two patients (5.71%) showed severe side-effects and were withdrawn from the study. 30/32 patients were H. pylori-negative [per-protocol: 93.75%, on intention-to-treat: 85.71% (p = n.s.)]. 11/32 patients (34.37%) showed side-effects, but all of them completed the study (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS This 10-day quadruple therapy obtains a high eradication rate, but probiotic supplementation reduces side-effects and permits a slight improvement in eradicating H. pylori.
An Extension of Business Process Model for XML Schema Modeling

Various notations for business process modeling are nowadays very popular for software analysis. They allow modeling business processes as well as exchanged data at the conceptual level. Later, a conceptual schema of a business process can be translated to an executable script expressed in, e.g. BPEL. While this part of translation has been solved in recent research, there is a lack of methods which allow to easily derive suitable communication data formats between the components of the business process. Usually, XML is considered for message exchange. However, XML formats suitable for the business process must be derived manually by schema designers. In this paper, we present a novel method which derives XML formats for message exchange among components of a business process. We suppose a conceptual schema of the business process as an input. We then derive XML formats for communication links in the conceptual schema and optimize them by minimizing two metrics. Firstly, we measure data redundancies in respective XML documents. Secondly, we measure how easy it is to evaluate a set of business rules given by the conceptual schema. The result is a set of quality XML formats with respect to the conceptual diagram of the implemented business process.
Activity of Gatifloxacin Alone or in Combination with Pyrimethamine or Gamma Interferon against Toxoplasma gondii

ABSTRACT The activity of gatifloxacin against Toxoplasma gondii, either alone or in combination with pyrimethamine or gamma interferon (IFN-γ), was examined in vitro and in vivo. In vitro, gatifloxacin significantly inhibited intracellular replication of tachyzoites of the RH strain with a 50% inhibitory concentration of 0.21 μg/ml at 48 h after addition of the drug to the cultures. Toxicity for host cells was not observed at this concentration. A synergistic effect (combination indices < 0.5) was demonstrated in vitro following 48 h of treatment with the combination of gatifloxacin and pyrimethamine (1:1 ratio). Doses of gatifloxacin of 100 and 200 mg/kg of body weight/day administered orally to mice for 10 days resulted in significant (P values of 0.056 and <0.0001, respectively) prolongation in time to death following infection with a lethal inoculum of tachyzoites. A dose of 400 mg/kg resulted in 20% survival (P = 0.0001). Mortality was 100% in untreated control mice and in mice treated with 25 or 50 mg/kg/day. Treatment of infected mice with a combination of gatifloxacin at 200 mg/kg/day and pyrimethamine at 12.5 mg/kg/day resulted in 85% survival, whereas 100 and 80% of mice treated with gatifloxacin alone or pyrimethamine alone, respectively, died (P < 0.0001). Moreover, a gatifloxacin dose of 200 mg/kg/day administered orally for 10 days plus 2 μg of recombinant murine IFN-γ/day administered intraperitoneally for 10 days resulted in significant survival compared with IFN-γ alone (P < 0.0001) or gatifloxacin alone (P < 0.007).
Kernel Least Mean $p$-Power Algorithm

This letter proposes a novel kernel least mean <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$p$</tex-math> </inline-formula>-power (KLMP) algorithm for nonlinear system identification in the presence of additive non-Gaussian impulsive noises, modeled by a symmetric <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\alpha$</tex-math> </inline-formula>-stable distribution with heavy tail. The KLMP algorithm based on the fractional lower order statistics error criterion can effectively scale down the dynamic recursive weight coefficients affected by the impulsive estimation error to avoid the significant performance degradation. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has favorable convergence properties than the classical kernel least-mean-square algorithm using a conventional error criterion in the non-Gaussian impulsive environment.
Diversification strategies in the changing environment: empirical evidence from Indian firms

Abstract The objective of the paper is to study the extent of diversification on a sample of 536 companies in India. The Jacquemin-Berry Entropy-Index measure has been used. The study covers a period of 10 years from 2001 to 2011. This period takes into account the influence of both liberalization reforms and global recession. The results show that related diversification (RD) has been the most favored diversification strategy in the Indian corporate sector. Further, the pattern of diversification during this period of 10 years suggests that both forward and backward movements are being followed by Indian companies; thus making the overall pattern somewhat erratic.
A distributed coordination control scheme for odor source localization

This paper deals with the problem of odor source localization using multiple mobile robots. A distributed coordination control scheme is proposed by introducing a trajectory level into the original distributed architecture. In the trajectory level, a spiral model is designed and used to deal with a new robot position produced by cooperative search algorithms in order to generate a spiral trajectory that can describe position transition from the current position of the robot to the new position. The effectiveness of the distributed coordination control scheme is illustrated in the problem of odor source localization.
North-South trade, employment, and inequality

Finally: "Unfortunately the federal government is going to remain a large system for the foreseeable future. Even a remarkably small federal government would spend well over $1 trillion a year and have well over a million civilian employees. There are still things that people expect from the government. " (Page 224.) Without quibbling about the exactitude of the trillions and the millions, we can see that this is a very hardheaded Speaker speaking. Government as a supplement to and a correction of the market system has always been, is, and will continue to be, an intrinsic part of capitalism. The real debate is not the shoddy one on the meretricious issue of whether the government is good or evil, but who will benefit from government policies. The constituency of the Republican Party is the welloff, and the well-off have been helped. The rich have gotten richer, everybody else has gotten poorer. No surprise here. The policies and practices of the 1920s prevail. Government as bold innovator, as guar
Efficacy, Complications and Clinical Outcomes of Endoscopic Sclerotherapy with N-Butyl-2-Cyanoacrylate for Bleeding Gastric Varices

Background: Bleeding gastric varices (BGV) are a severe complication of portal hypertension. Although the obliteration of gastric varices using cyanoacrylate has been shown effective to eradicate gastric varices, there are still few data available on its effectiveness for acutely BGV, cyanoacrylate-related complications and follow-up. Aims: To report on the feasibility, efficacy and outcomes of N-buytl-2-cyanoacrylate sclerotherapy in patients with BGV. Methods: This is a retrospective cohort study of consecutive patients who were evaluated for BGV at University of Magdeburg Medical Center. Data abstracted for analysis from the prospectively collected database included patient’s demographics, etiology of gastric varices, Child-Pugh score, effectiveness of endoscopic treatment, clinical and endoscopic follow-up. Immediate hemostasis was defined as visible and clinical arrest of bleeding. The following were considered as potential complications of the procedure: aspiration, fever, worsening hemorrhage due to the sclerotherapy and systemic embolization of cyanoacrylate. Results: 33 patients (17 F, 16 M; mean age 54 years, range 18–81) with BGV (29 had active bleeding and 4 had stigmata of recent bleeding) underwent endoscopic injections of N-butyl-2-cyanoacrylate for hemostasis over a 5-year period. Mean follow-up: 9 months (range: 1 month to 5 years). Initial hemostasis was achieved in 88%. Treatment-related complications occurred in 5 (15.1%), the most common being deep ulcerations, which also resulted in recurrent bleeding. One patient presented with distal cyanoacrylate embolization. During long-term follow-up, 6 patients died, 5 as a consequence of the underlying liver disease and 1 as a consequence of complications due to systemic cyanoacrylate embolization. Conclusions: N-butyl-2-cyanoacrylate sclerotherapy is highly effective for the treatment of BGV, with rare complications occurring both acutely and in the long term.
Musculoskeletal involvement of brucellosis in different age groups: a study of 195 cases.

OBJECTIVE The aim of the present study was to determine the distribution and characteristics of arthritis in 195 patients with musculoskeletal involvement due to brucellosis in different age groups in the southeastern region of Turkey. PATIENTS AND METHODS We carried out a retrospective analysis of 283 patients with brucellosis records and identified 195 with musculoskeletal involvement. Patients were classified into acutesubacute (<12 months) and chronic (>12 months) brucellosis. Patients were also classified into three age groups: <15 years old (group A), 15-45 years (group B), and over 45 years (group C). In addition, patients were classified into five subgroups according to type of arthritis: peripheral arthritis, polyarthritis, spondylitis, sacroiliitis, and spondylitis/sacroiliitis. RESULTS 195 (69%) of the 283 patients [138 female (49%), 145 male (51%)] had musculoskeletal involvement. Of the patients with musculoskeletal involvement 113 (58%) were female and 82 (42%) were male, ranging in age from 3 to 71 years (mean age 33.14 +/- 15.03). Of 195 patients studied, 39 (14%) were <15 years old (group A), 122 (43%) were aged 15-45 (group B), and 34 (12%) were over 45 (group C). The most commonly affected joints were the sacroiliac joint in 108 patients (55%), peripheral joints in 106 (54%), and spondylitis in 60 (31%). Of 108 patients with sacroiliitis, 19 were in group A, 76 in group B, and 13 in group C. Bilateral sacroiliitis was less common in group B (23 patients) than in groups A (3) and C (3) (p <0.05). Spondylitis was more common in group B (18%). Sacroiliitis and polyarthritis were more common than other types of musculoskeletal involvement in females, whereas in males the distribution of all types was similar. In patients aged under 15 and 15-45, sacroiliitis and polyarthritis were common compared with other types of arthritis, but the distribution was similar in patients over 45. CONCLUSION In southeastern Anatolia musculoskeletal involvement in brucellosis is frequent. The series presented suggests that musculoskeletal involvement in group A is higher than groups A and C. The prevalence of musculoskeletal involvement appears to differ according to age, sex and clinical type.
Entity Retrieval and Text Mining for Online Reputation Monitoring

Online Reputation Monitoring (ORM) is concerned with the use of computational tools to measure the reputation of entities online, such as politicians or companies. In practice, current ORM methods are constrained to the generation of data analytics reports, which aggregate statistics of popularity and sentiment on social media. We argue that this format is too restrictive as end users often like to have the flexibility to search for entity-centric information that is not available in predefined charts. As such, we propose the inclusion of entity retrieval capabilities as a first step towards the extension of current ORM capabilities. However, an entity's reputation is also influenced by the entity's relationships with other entities. Therefore, we address the problem of Entity-Relationship (E-R) retrieval in which the goal is to search for multiple connected entities. This is a challenging problem which traditional entity search systems cannot cope with. Besides E-R retrieval we also believe ORM would benefit of text-based entity-centric prediction capabilities, such as predicting entity popularity on social media based on news events or the outcome of political surveys. However, none of these tasks can provide useful results if there is no effective entity disambiguation and sentiment analysis tailored to the context of ORM. Consequently, this thesis address two computational problems in Online Reputation Monitoring: Entity Retrieval and Text Mining. We researched and developed methods to extract, retrieve and predict entity-centric information spread across the Web.
Changes in the MEG background activity in patients with positive symptoms of schizophrenia: spectral analysis and impact of age

The frequency spectrum of the magnetoencephalogram (MEG) background activity was analysed in 15 schizophrenia (SCH) patients with predominant positive symptoms and 17 age-matched healthy control subjects using the following variables: median frequency (MF), spectral entropy (SpecEn) and relative power in delta (RPδ), theta (RPθ), lower alpha (RPα1), upper alpha (RPα2), beta (RPβ) and gamma (RPγ) bands. We found significant differences between the two subject groups in the average level of MF and RPγ in some regions of the scalp. Additionally, the MF, SpecEn, RPβ and RPγ values of SCH patients with positive symptoms had a different dependence on age as compared with the results of control subjects, suggesting that SCH affects the way in which the brain activity evolves with age. Moreover, we also classified the MEG signals by means of a cross-validated feature selection process followed by a logistic regression. The subjects were classified with 71.3% accuracy and an area under the ROC curve of 0.741. Thus, the spectral and classification analysis of the MEG in SCH may provide insights into how this condition affects the brain activity and may help in its early detection.
Epstein-Barr virus strains with latent membrane protein-1 deletions: prevalence in the Italian population and high association with human immunodeficiency virus-related Hodgkin's disease.

Six Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-related lymphoproliferative disorders were investigated to verify whether the EBV strain harbored by neoplastic cells had the same EBNA-2 and latent membrane protein-1 (LMP-1) DNA sequences of the virus carried by normal lymphocytes of the same patients. Within each case, the analysis of neoplastic lymph nodes, reactive lymphadenopathies, and/or EBV+ spontaneous lymphoblastoid cell lines gave concordant results with respect to type-specific EBNA-2 region and LMP-1 gene. In particular, five cases showed the same deletion in the 3' end of the LMP-1 gene in both normal and neoplastic cells. We also determined the prevalence of LMP-1 deletions in a large series of normal peripheral blood mononucleated cells (PBMCs) from Italian individuals. The analysis showed that 50% (9 of 18) of PBMCs from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-seronegative donors carried a 30-bp deletion in the C-terminal portion of the LMP-1 gene, whereas a nondeleted fragment was amplified in about 44% (8 of 18) of the cases. Only one sample (5.6%) showed the amplification of a full-length LMP-1 band together with a deleted fragment. Similarly, PBMCs from HIV-infected patients showed an almost equivalent prevalence of full-length (17 of 37, 46%) and deleted (16 of 37, 43.2%) LMP-1 fragments, whereas about 11% of samples (4 of 37) showed evidence of double infections. Of note, deletions in the LMP-1 gene were detected with similar prevalence values in EBV+ Hodgkin's disease (HD) (13 of 30, 43.3%) and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) (2 of 5, 40%) cases from HIV-seronegative patients and in HIV-related, EBV+ NHLs (4 of 7, 57.1%). Conversely, a 30-bp LMP-1 deletion was found in 10 of 12 HIV-associated HD cases (83%), a prevalence significantly higher than that detected in HIV-unrelated HD (P = .01). These findings indicate that: (1) the same EBV strain carrying LMP-1 deletions is harbored by normal and neoplastic cells of patients with EBV+ disorders, ruling out that these mutations might result from immunoselection phenomena; (2) in the Italian population, the prevalence of LMP-1 deletion mutants is comparable to that of EBV strains with full-length LMP-1; (3) HIV-induced immunosuppression is not associated with an increased prevalence of LMP-1 deletions in PBMCs; and (4) HIV-related HD cases, but not those of HIV-seronegative Italian patients, are closely correlated with the presence of LMP-1 deletions, suggesting that infection with these strains may increase the risk of developing HD in the HIV setting.
Laser Therapy in Acute Stroke Treatment

Recent development of near infrared light therapy (NILT) as an acute stroke treatment is promising. In various preclinical animal stroke models, NILT has been shown to be effective in improving long-term stroke outcome. More importantly, NILT has a long postischemic therapeutic window that has not been previously observed in other treatment modalities. The preliminary efficacy and safety of NILT in acute stroke patients were demonstrated in the recently published phase II ***NeuroThera Effectiveness and Safety Trial (NEST-1). If confirmed by the NEST-II trial, ***NILT will revolutionize acute stroke management as ***ut has a long time window (possible 24 hr) for therapy. Moreover, understanding the mechanisms of action of NILT will provide a new therapeutic target for future drug or device development.
Phytochemical study and cytotoxicity evaluation of Colchicum stevenii Kunth (Colchicaceae): A Jordanian meadow saffron

Isolation, characterization, and biological evaluation of active components of Colchicum stevenii Kunth (Colchicaceae) are described. Colchicum stevenii is an unexplored Jordanian specie with toxic reputation. Directed by brine shrimp lethality test (BST), methanolic extraction, liquid–liquid partition, preparative TLC, and semi-preparative HPLC, it resulted in the isolation of six cytotoxic compounds. The compounds, reported for the first time from this specie, are: (−)-colchicine (1), 2-demethyl-(−)-colchicine (2), (−)-cornigerine (3), β-lumicolchicine (4), (−)-isoandrocymbine (5) and (−)-O-methylandrocymbine (6). A new, in-house developed, acidic-based reverse-phase gradient semi-preparative HPLC method for the separation of colchisides is presented here. Structural elucidation was based on spectroscopic techniques principally; 1H-NMR and low resolution EIMS. Based on BST results, reported as LC50 values in µg mL−1 (ppm) with 95% confidence intervals, (−)-colchicine (2.5 ppm) and (−)-cornigerine (2.7 ppm) were the most potent.