Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Factors affecting the developmental competence of mouse oocytes grown in vitro: Oxygen concentration

The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of oxygen concentration on the developmental competence of mouse oocytes grown in vitro because oxygen has been shown to affect the nuclear maturation of oocytes (Haidri et al., 1971: J Reprod Fertil 26:409–411) and preimplantation embryo development (Whitten, 1971: Adv Biosci 6:129–139). Oocyte—granulosa cell complexes were isolated from the preantral follicles of 12‐day‐old mice and cultured for 10 days in serum‐free medium equilibrated with 5, 10, 15, or 20% O2. Five percent CO2 was used for all groups. Oocytes from all groups were then matured and fertilized, and preimplantation embryos cultured using 5% O2. With increased oxygen tension, there were dramatic decreases in the percentage of (1) oocytes that survived in vitro culture, (2) surviving oocytes that could resume meiosis and undergo germinal vesicle breakdown (GVB), and then cleave to the two‐cell stage, and (3) two‐cell‐stage embryos that completed the blastocyst transition. For example, 42% of the oocytes grown in a 5% O2 atmosphere cleaved to the two‐cell stage compared with only 3% when the oocytes grew in an atmosphere of 20% O2. These dramatic effects of elevated oxygen were mitigated by either increased numbers of the oocyte‐granulosa cell complexes in the culture or increased concentration of oxygen late in the culture period, after the oocytes became surrounded by greater numbers of granulosa cells. When the culture period was extended for 4 days beyond the standard 10 day cultures used in the experiments described above, there was an increased occurrence of precocious GVB or failure of the somatic cells to maintain meiotic arrest. This was prevented by increased oxygen concentration. Nevertheless, extending the time of culture even in the presence of elevated oxygen failed to increase oocyte growth to the equivalent of in vivo‐grown oocytes or to improve the developmental competence of the in vitro‐grown oocytes. It was concluded that concentrations of O2 above 5% have a deleterious effect on oocyte development during the early stages of culture. However, increasing the concentration on O2 during the later stages, in conjunction with other treatments to promote normal granulosa cell development and function and their interaction with the oocyte, may be critical to promote normal oocyte development in vitro. © 1995 wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Remote sensing of marine oil spills from airborne platforms using multi-sensor systems

Airborne oil spill monitoring has become a global concern during the last three decades. Currently there are a multitude of specialized airborne remote sensing systems all over the world, which are operated for this purpose, especially for the deterrence of potential polluters and the support of oil spill clean-up activities. In the 1970s and 1980s the main effort has been directed towards developing sensors with enhanced spill monitoring capabilities which explains the large number of existing well-established oil spill remote sensors like infrared/ultraviolet line scanners, microwave radiometers, laser fluorosensors, and X-band radar systems. Recently, more attention has been paid to the automated processing of remotely sensed oil spill data acquired by airborne multi-sensor platforms in terms of data analysis and fusion. In this paper, we focus on data processing and present ways of improving the usability of airborne multi-sensor oil spill monitoring systems with regard to on-board and ground-based data processing as well as the distribution of remotely sensed oil spill data and derived data products. In this context we (1) give an overview of currently existing oil spill remote sensing technology, (2) present the Multispectral Environmental Data Unit for Surveillance Applications (MEDUSA) for network-based real-time data acquisition, (3) describe a MEDUSA software module for analysis and fusion of multi-sensor data and (4) present the distribution of oil spill data and related data products using web-based geographical information systems (web-based GIS). In particular, the automated generation of thematic maps of the oil spill scene along with their web-based distribution is becoming more important in distributed marine crisis management.
International Study of Heavy Drinking: Attitudes and Sociodemographic Factors in University Students

Abstract. The authors studied the prevalence of heavy drinking among students in 21 developed and developing countries using an anonymous survey of 7,846 male and 9,892 female students aged 17 to 30 years. There were wide variations in the prevalence of drinking among countries, and the highest rates of heavy drinking (defined as 5 or more drinks for men and 4 or more drinks for women on at least 1 occasion over the past 2 weeks) were reported in Belgium, Colombia, Ireland, and Poland (men), and Ireland and England (women). Heavy drinking was associated with living away from home, having a wealthier family background, and having well-educated parents. Beliefs about the dangers to health of excessive consumption were negatively related to heavy drinking. Heavy drinking is a concern among students in several countries and is associated with greater affluence. Challenging beliefs concerning health risks is a crucial aspect of prevention in this population.
Iron and fungal pathogenesis: a case study with Cryptococcus neoformans

The acquisition of iron from mammalian hosts is an important aspect of infection because microbes must compete with the host for this nutrient and iron perception often regulates virulence factor expression. For example, iron levels are known to influence the elaboration of two major virulence factors, the polysaccharide capsule and melanin, in the pathogenic fungus Cryptococcus neoformans. This pathogen, which causes meningoencephalitis in immunocompromised people, acquires iron through the use of secreted reductants, cell surface reductases, a permease/ferroxidase uptake system and siderophore transporters. In addition, a master regulator, Cir1, integrates iron sensing with the expression of virulence factors, with growth at 37°C and with signalling pathways that also influence virulence. The challenge ahead is to develop mechanistic views of the iron acquisition functions and regulatory schemes that operate when C. neoformans is in host tissue. Achieving these goals may contribute to an understanding of the notable predilection of the fungus for the mammalian central nervous system.
Terminal Illness: Attitudes in Both an Acute Care and an Extended Care Teaching Hospital

This paper describes an attitudinal survey carried out at Sunnybrook Medical Centre, a teaching hospital with large acute and extended care sections. The study assesses and compares the attitudes and behaviour of acute care and extended care staff towards terminally ill patients and also the attitudes and beliefs of a sample on non-terminally ill patients. Six hundred and fifty-one completed questionnaires were reviewed. Respondents were asked questions regarding the management of terminally ill patients in acute beds; informing patients of the nature of their disease; management of patient's emotional and physical needs; the use of investigations in the terminally ill. A majority felt that the terminally ill should not be managed in acute hospital beds and that patients should be informed of the nature of their disease, although staff did not uniformly favour full disclosure. While physical care was thought to be quite good, staff responses were much less favourable about fulfillment of patients’ emotional needs. As well, staff in acute care, more so than in extended care, felt that investigations were being over-utilized.
Assessing the Assessors: The Feasibility and Validity of Clinicians as a Source for Personality Disorder Research

The use of knowledgeable informants is a particularly valuable tool for the diagnosis and assessment of personality disorder (PD). This review details the use of one particular type of informant—practicing clinicians—in PD research. We detail a wide variety of studies that have employed clinicians as an assessment source, including those focused on interrater agreement, comparative validity with other methods, cognitive factors of diagnosis, and opinion surveys. We demonstrate limitations, such as potential biases and limited convergent validity, which caution against the assumption that clinicians’ ratings should be considered a gold-standard. Nonetheless, we also highlight the potential value of research that focuses on clinicians due to its external validity to real-world practice settings. Finally, we outline several issues to consider when sampling clinicians, such as participation rate and sample size, and call for future research that collects ratings from clinicians using systematic, well-validated measures.
RELATION OF STRUCTURE TO FUNCTION IN BACTERIAL O‐ANTIGENS. V. NATURE OF ACTIVE SITES IN ENDOTOXIC LIPOPOLYSACCHARIDES OF SERRATIA MARCESCENS *

An understanding of the mechanism of action of endotoxic preparations must ultimately be related to their chemical and physical structures. In order to find those structural components or properties of bacterial lipopolysaccharides which are responsible for the biological reactions, acidic hydrolyses have been most often applied in the past (Boivin et al., 1933; Brinkley et al., 1945; Freeman, 1943; Morgan and Partridge, 1940; Bendich and Chargaff, 1946; Westphal and Liideritz, 1954). While Westphal and coworkers believe the biological effects to be elicited by the so-called “Lipid A” portion of the molecule (19601, Ribi and associates attempted to disprove this possibility. Their hypothesis, elaborated in several papers, states tha t a certain molecular size is required to exhibit endotoxic reactions (Haskins et al., 1961; Ribi et al . , 1962; Milner et al., 1963; Ribi et al., 1964). A critical evaluation of these claims and other experimental results has been published recently (Nowotny, 1965). Previous papers from this laboratory indicated tha t long-chain carboxylic acids esterified to hydroxyl groups of carbohydrates form the lipopolysaccharides and the presence of these 0-acyl groups may be involved in the characteristic biological effects of these preparations (Nowotny, 1963, 1964 and 1965). A continuation of the above studies was carried out by studying the kinetics of alkaline hydrolysis and its effects on endotoxic lipopolysaccharides. The aims of these kinetic investigations were two-fold: (1) To determine the smallest “building block” which still retained full potency. This could be visualized by considering a depolymerization of the large aggregates into smaller active fragments. (2) To obtain further information concerning the chemical nature of those groups which might be responsible for biological activity.
Crowdsourcing in Surgical Skills Acquisition: A Developing Technology in Surgical Education.

Background The application of crowdsourcing to surgical education is a recent phenomenon and adds to increasing demands on surgical residency training. The efficacy, range, and scope of this technology for surgical education remains incompletely defined. Objective A systematic review was performed using the PubMed database of English-language literature on crowdsourced evaluation of surgical technical tasks up to April 2017. Methods Articles were reviewed, abstracted, and analyzed, and were assessed for quality using the Medical Education Research Study Quality Instrument (MERSQI). Articles were evaluated with eligibility criteria for inclusion. Study information, performance task, subjects, evaluative standards, crowdworker compensation, time to response, and correlation between crowd and expert or standard evaluations were abstracted and analyzed. Results Of 63 unique publications initially identified, 13 with MERSQI scores ranging from 10 to 13 (mean = 11.85) were included in the review. Overall, crowd and expert evaluations demonstrated good to excellent correlation across a wide range of tasks (Pearson's coefficient 0.59-0.95, Cronbach's alpha 0.32-0.92), with 1 exception being a study involving medical students. There was a wide range of reported interrater variability among experts. Nonexpert evaluation was consistently quicker than expert evaluation (ranging from 4.8 to 150.9 times faster), and was more cost effective. Conclusions Crowdsourced feedback appears to be comparable to expert feedback and is cost effective and efficient. Further work is needed to increase consistency in expert evaluations, to explore sources of discrepant assessments between surgeons and crowds, and to identify optimal populations and novel applications for this technology.
ICARE on-board SAC-C: More than 8 years of SEU & MCU, analysis and prediction

This paper presents the SEU & MCU detected by several dedicated memories of the instrument ICARE onboard the Argentinean satellite SAC-C from November 2000 to May 2009. The correlation between SEU rate and the space environment is shown along with the evolution of the geomagnetic cut-off, the geographical dependence of the MBU multiplicity inside the SAA is also shown. Moreover, the output of MUSCA SEP3 (SEE prediction code) has been compared with in-flight data obtaining a good match.
A Three-Gene Signature for Outcome in Soft Tissue Sarcoma

Purpose: Finding markers or gene sets that would further classify patients into different risk categories and thus allow more individually adapted multimodality treatment regimens in soft tissue sarcomas is necessary. In this study, we investigated the prognostic values of hypoxia-inducible factor 1a (HIF1a), heparin-binding epidermal growth factor–like growth factor (HB-EGF), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and other angiogenesis-related gene expressions, as well as their interrelationships. Experimental Design: Formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue samples were obtained from 45 patients with soft tissue sarcoma (median age 57 years, range 16–85 years). After laser capture microdissection direct quantitative real-time reverse transcription-PCR (TaqMan) assays were done in triplicates to determine HIF1a, HB-EGF, VEGF, and other gene expression levels. Results: Multivariate Cox regression analysis revealed significant independent associations of HB-EGF, HIF1a, and VEGF-C gene expression to the overall survival (P < 0.0001). A combined factor of these three genes showed a relative risk for shorter survival of 5.5, more than twice higher as in an increasing International Union against Cancer Stage. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis showed a significant sensitivity of 73% and specificity of 82% of this factor for the diagnosis of short (<3 years) versus long (3-9 years) survival (P = 0.0002). VEGF-A showed significant gender differences in the association to survival. Conclusions: Measuring HIF1a, HB-EGF, and VEGF-C expression may contribute to a better understanding of the prognosis of patients with soft tissue sarcoma and may even play a crucial role for the distribution of patients to multimodal therapeutic regimens. Prospective studies investigating the response to different adjuvant or palliative therapies seem to be warranted. (Clin Cancer Res 2009;15(16):5191–8)
The Effect of Feeding Red Ginger (Zingiber officinale Rosc) as Phytobiotic on Broiler Slaughter Weight and Meat Quality

The research aimed to evaluate the potency of Red Ginger (Zingiber officinale Rosc) as a source of phytobiotic in the ration to increase physical quality of broiler meat. Two hundred of five days old broiler chickens were plotted into five different groups and each group was further divided into five sub-groups. Each group was given different rations, i.e.: R-0 (control ration without red ginger added); R-0.5, R-1.0, R-1.5, and R-2.0% (control ration added with red ginger at level 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0% of the ration, respectively). All rations were designed as iso-protein ration with CP content of 21.0-23.0%, iso-caloric with energy content of 3150 kcal ME/kg, Ca 1.0%, and P 0.5%. The broilers were raised for 5 weeks. After five weeks all broilers were slaughtered and weighed to get data for carcass quality (slaughter weight, carcass weight, carcass percentage, fat weight and fat percentage) and the data of meat physical quality including pH, tenderness, water holding capacity (WHC), cooking loss (CL). The collected data were subjected to analysis of One Way Classification of Completely Randomized Design (CRD) and Duncan’s New Multiple Range Test (DMRT). The result showed that broilers given ration with red ginger showed significantly higher slaughter weight (P<0.05) and carcass percentage (P<0.01) but lower fat weight (P<0.05) than broilers given ration without red ginger. Feeding red ginger in the ration as treatment slightly increased pH and tenderness of broiler meat but decreased water holding capacity and cooking loss as compared to those in the control treatment without red ginger in the ration. Feeding of red ginger phytobiotic feed additive increased productive performance, carcass and meat quality of broiler. Feeding the phytobiotic feed additive at level 1.0 to 1.5% looked to be the most optimum level for those purposes. Further researches have to be conducted to evaluate the potential of red ginger as a source of phytobiotic feed additive to replace the chemical antibiotics.
Convergence Theory of Nonlinear Newton-Krylov Algorithms

This paper presents some convergence theory for nonlinear Krylov subspace methods. The basic idea of these methods, which have been described by the authors in an earlier paper, is to use variants of Newton’s iteration in conjunction with a Krylov subspace method for solving the Jacobian linear systems. These methods are variants of inexact Newton methods where the approximate Newton direction is taken from a subspace of small dimension. The main focus of this paper is to analyze these methods when they are combined with global strategies such as linesearch techniques and model trust region algorithms. Most of the convergence results are formulated for projection onto general subspaces rather than just Krylov subspaces.
Will there be a pharmacy leadership crises? An ASHP Foundation Scholar-in-residence report.

PURPOSE Health-system pharmacy directors, managers, practitioners, students, and employers were surveyed to assess the situation of current and future leaders in pharmacy and generate recommendations for preventing shortages. METHODS Online surveys were sent to pharmacy directors, pharmacy middle managers, current pharmacy practitioners pharmacy students, and employers recruiting for management positions using ASHP's membership and CareerPharm databases. Directors, managers, and practitioners were asked about their job satisfaction and future plans. The trends in demographics and attitudes toward the balance between family and work were assessed among directors, managers, practitioners, and students. Employers were asked about their perceived ease of filling managerial positions. RESULTS While most pharmacy directors and middle managers were satisfied with their current positions, 80% of directors and 77% of middle managers anticipated leaving their jobs in the next decade. Men comprised 72% of directors, 50% of middle managers, 62% of practitioners, and 21% of pharmacy students. The majority of pharmacy students and practitioners reported being married to a working spouse and having children and expressed a desire to balance their personal life with their career. The top reasons cited by students and practitioners for not seeking leadership positions were having to give up clinical practice and competing responsibilities. More than half of employers felt it was more difficult to recruit managers now than it was three years ago. CONCLUSION A significant gap in pharmacy leadership in the next 5-10 years is expected, as well as a shift in work force composition and attitude. Mentoring and residencies are important methods of fostering new leaders in the profession.
Acinetobacter: environmental and biotechnological applications

Among microbial communities involved in different ecosystems such as soil, freshwater, wastewater and solid wastes, several strains belonging to the genus of Acinetobacter have been attracting growing interest from medical, environmental and a biotechnological point of view. Bacteria of this genus are known to be involved in biodegradation, leaching and removal of several organic and inorganic man-made hazardous wastes. It is also well known that some of Acinetobacter strains produce important bioproducts. This review summarizes the usefulness and environmental applications of Acinetobacter strains. (African Journal of Biotechnology: 2003 2(4): 71-75)
Pharmacological studies on Indian black tea (leaf variety) in acute and chronic inflammatory conditions

Infusions of Indian black tea (BTI), when administered orally, produced significant inhibition of rat paw oedema, induced with carrageenin (pre and post treatment) and arachidonic acid. BTI was also found to inhibit peritoneal capillary permeability and caused a marked reduction of lipopolysaccharide induced PGE2 generation. In these models, the observed antioedema effect was similar to that of BW755C (a dual inhibitor of cyclooxygenase and 5‐lipoxygenase enzymes). BTI was found to scavenge superoxide and hydroxyl radicals, and also protected rat erythrocytes from the damaging effects of hydrogen peroxide. In chronic studies, BTI inhibited granuloma formation along with the reduction of both lipid peroxidation and hydroxyproline content (in the granuloma tissue). Significant antiarthritic activity was observed with regular administration of BTI in the Freund's adjuvant induced model of arthritis. Chronic treatment with BTI (in arthritic rats) resulted in a decrease of paw diameter and tissue lipid peroxidation, along with a restoration of GSH, catalase and superoxide dismutase levels. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Navigated versus Conventional Total Knee Arthroplasty

Abstract Computer-aided navigation in total knee arthroplasty (TKA) promises improved alignment, performance, and survivorship. Previous meta-analyses demonstrated that navigation yields better component alignment; however, they did not discuss other indicators of performance. This meta-analysis compares navigated (NAV) and conventional (CONV) TKAs and includes clinical outcomes and adverse events. Forty-seven studies (22 randomized trials) of varying methodological quality involving 7,151 TKAs created the sample population. Statistical analyses included analysis of variance of weighted means and random effects modeling. As seen in previous meta-analyses, NAV is favored over CONV TKA. Analysis of surgical characteristics found that length of surgery and tourniquet times were lower for CONV, but not significant. Meta-analysis found that tourniquet times favored CONV but not a strong relationship for length of surgery. Analysis of individual adverse events did not reveal any significant differences. However, when examining adverse events in their totality, the NAV experienced significantly fewer complications. TKA performed with imageless navigation improves component alignment, provides for lower blood loss, improves clinical outcomes as measured by Knee Society and WOMAC scores, and has fewer total adverse events. Published data are insufficient to determine any correlations between component alignment and outcomes.