Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Excess body weight, liver steatosis, and early fibrosis progression due to hepatitis C recurrence after liver transplantation.

AIM To investigate how weight gain after OLT affects the speed of fibrosis progression (SFP) during recurrent hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection of the graft. METHODS Ninety consecutive patients (63 males, median age 53 years; 55 with HCV-related liver disease), transplanted at a single institution, were studied. All were followed for at least 2 years after OLT and had at least one follow-up graft biopsy, performed not earlier than 1 year after the transplant operation. For each biopsy, a single, experienced pathologist gave an estimate of both the staging according to Ishak and the degree of hepatic steatosis. The SFP was quantified in fibrosis units/month (FU/mo). The lipid metabolism status of patients was summarized by the plasma triglycerides/cholesterol (T/C) ratio. Body mass index (BMI) was measured before OLT, and 1 and 2 years after it. RESULTS In the HCV positive group, the highest SFP was observed in the first post-OLT year. At that time point, a SFP <=0.100 FU/mo was observed more frequently among recipients who had received their graft from a young donor and had a pre-transplant BMI value >26.0 kg/m(2). At completion of the first post-transplant year, a BMI value >26.5 kg/m(2) was associated with a T/C ratio <=1. The proportion of patients with SFP >0.100 FU/mo descended in the following order: female recipients with a high T/C ratio, male recipients with high T/C ratio, and recipients of either gender with low T/C ratio. Hepatic steatosis was observed more frequently in recipients who, in the first post-transplant year, had increased their BMI >=1.5 kg/m(2) in comparison to the pre-transplant value. Hepatic steatosis was inversely associated with the staging score. CONCLUSION Among HCV positive recipients, excess weight gain post-OLT does not represent a factor favoring early liver fibrosis development and might even be protective against it.
Variable length word encodings for neural translation models

As described by Zipf’s law, vast proportions of words in most natural languages occur very infrequently, meaning that in a statistical learning framework these words would be poorly modelled for any given corpus of practical, finite size. This is known as the rare word problem. This is often worsened by the implementation of neural networks, since neural networks make use of softmax functions in the output layer. Evaluating these functions for each word in the vocabulary becomes computationally expensive in both training and runtime, as the normalisation constant is a summation of exponentials in the order O(|V|), where V is the output vocabulary. A simple method to counteract this is to label rare and infrequent words in the training corpus as an unknown word token, thereby limiting the size of the vocabulary. Nevertheless, doing so only worsens the fact that, for a given translation corpus, the vocabulary may not include all words in the natural languages involved. This is an issue in agglutinative languages, where unseen, legitimate words can be formed from known constituent words, making them di cult to model. This is known as the unknown word problem. We attempt to implement LSTM recurrent neural network language models based on Zaremba et al. (2014) for rescoring in the Syntactical-Guided Neural Machine Translation system by Stahlberg et al. (2016). Further, we compare methods to compress the vocabulary of a language through certain coding schemes, in order to reduce the impact of the computationally expensive softmax layer, and investigate there are better ways to represent natural language in neural network structures other than using tokens on the word level. Previous work have focused on word encodings for end-to-end translation systems, while we primarily focus on the more general application of language modelling. We implement byte-pair encoding, Hu↵man coding and character decomposition, and compare their performance in a SMT setting to a truncated vocabulary that is standard for neural network language models. We find that BPE is better than character-level decomposition as it is more e cient, especially for the most frequent words, and it gives higher BLEU scores than Hu↵man coding and is able to decompose new words in the language. We also show that by using byte-pair encoding we can improve the BLEU score performance for SMT systems over that of a truncated vocabulary, investigating whether this is due to the e cient decomposition or the enlarged vocabulary.
Effect of HMM glutenin subunits on wheat quality attributes.

Summary Glutenin is a group of polymeric gluten proteins. Glutenin molecules consist of glutenin subunits linked together with disulphide bonds and having higher (HMM-GS) and lower (LMM-GS) molecular mass. The main objective of this study is the evaluation of the influence of HMM-GS on flour processing properties. Seven bread wheat genotypes with contrasting quality attributes and different HMM-GS composition were analyzed during three years. The composition and quantity of HMM-GS were determined by SDS-PAGE and RP-HPLC, respectively. The quality diversity among genotypes was estimated by the analysis of wheat grain, and flour and bread quality parameters. The presence of HMM glutenin subunits 1 and 2* at Glu-A1 and the subunits 5+10 at Glu-D1 loci, as well as a higher proportion of total HMM-GS, had a positive effect on wheat quality. Cluster analysis of the three groups of data (genotype and HMM-GS, flour and bread quality, and dough rheology) yielded the same hierarchical structure for the first top three levels, and similarity of the corresponding dendrograms was proved by the principal eigenvalues of the corresponding Euclidian distance matrices. The obtained similarity in classification based on essentially different types of measurements reflects strong natural association between genetic data, product quality and physical properties. Principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to effectively reduce large data set into lower dimensions of latent variables amenable for the analysis. PCA analysis of the total set of data (15 variables) revealed a very strong interrelationship between the variables. The first three PCA components accounted for 96 % of the total variance, which was significant to the level of 0.05 and was considered as the level of experimental error. These data imply that the quality of wheat cultivars can be contributed to HMM-GS data and should be taken into account in breeding programs assisted by computer models with the aim to improve flour technological quality.
Coordinate Contribution of Lipid Oxidation and Maillard Reaction to the Nonenzymatic Food Browning

Abstract Lipid oxidation and the Maillard reaction are probably the two most important reactions in Food Science. Both include a whole network of different reactions in which an extraordinary complex mixture of compounds are obtained in very different amounts and produce important changes in food flavor, color, texture, and nutritional value, with positive and negative consequences. This article analyzes the interactions between both reactions, with special emphasis in nonenzymatic browning development, by discussing the influence of lipid oxidation products in the Maillard pathway and vice versa, as well as the existence of common intermediates and polymerization mechanisms in both reactions. The existing data suggest that both reactions are so interrelated that they should be considered simultaneously to understand the products of the Maillard reaction in the presence of lipids and vice versa, and should be included in one general pathway that can be initiated by both lipids and carbohydrates.
Undifferentiated uterine carcinoma: Analysis of eighteen cases

Abstract Analysis of the surgicopathological characteristics and clinical follow-up of patients with undifferentiated uterine carcinoma (UUC) was conducted. A total of 18 cases operated between January 1993 and December 2013 were included. Among 1,690 patients with endometrial cancer, 18 patients (1.1%) had UUC. Lymph node involvement was detected in 70.6%; depth of myometrial invasion was ≥ 0.5 in 55.6%; lymphovascular space invasion was detected in 99.3%; cervical stromal invasion was positive in 27.8%; omental and adnexal involvement were detected in 11.8% and 38.9%, respectively. The median follow-up time of the 12 patients evaluated in the survival analysis was 66 months. In the follow-up period, recurrence or progression during adjuvant therapy were observed in four patients (33.3%) and two patients (16.6%) died of the disease. UUC manifests as an aggressive tumour. In conclusion, a high rate of survival could be achieved with complete staging surgery, including an extensive lymphadenectomy with the contribution of adjuvant therapy.
Sex differences of steroid receptor coactivator-1 expression after spinal cord injury in mice

Abstract Objective: The neural functional recovery of female is often better than that of male after spinal cord injury (SCI). Evidences show that estrogen can attenuate inflammation and promote the neural survival and regeneration after SCI. SRC-1 is an essential initiation factor for the estrogen-regulated target gene transcription and plays a key role in regulating estrogen activity. However, it is not known whether and how SRC-1 mediates the neural regeneration promoted by estrogen after SCI. Study of the sex differences and changes of SRC-1 expression after SCI will be helpful to understand the above questions. Methods: In this study, the sex differences of expressions of SRC-1 and cytoskeleton-associated protein Profilin-1 in normal and SCI mice were detected by immunohistochemistry at 1-, 3-, and 7 days after injury, respectively. Results: Although the SRC-1 expression in female mice was lower than that in males under normal conditions, its expression in females was more dominant after SCI. The expression of Profilin-1 in both sexes increased first, and then decreased at 3 days after injury. However, there was a second increase in females at 7 days after injury. Conclusion: Our study suggests that the more SRC-1 expression in females after SCI may play a role in improving the efficiency of estrogen function and thus, promote regeneration better. SRC-1 may also participate in the regulation of Profilin-1 in spinal cord, which is important in the assembly and extension of the axonal cytoskeleton during regeneration after SCI.
Graded Lie algebras and q-commutative and r-associative parameters

We study graded Lie algebras whose transformation parameters are graded q -commutativive and r -associative. We study first some graded algebras over a field, with no zero divisors at the level of monomials in their graded algebra generators. These generators are q -commutative and r -associative. We address the cohomology of the q -function and r -functions, in particular we study quaternions and octonions. We then define algebras whose transformation parameters are q -commutative and r -associative. We address a generalization of a theorem by Scheunert on its relation to Lie (super)algebras. We show finally that for the cases studied by Scheunert there is always a real and faithful transformation parameter basis with the required q -commutativity. We use this basis to perform a transformation on the graded Lie algebra that relates it to a plain Lie (super)algebra while respecting the self-adjoint character of generators and preserving the group grading. Keywords: Graded Lie (super)algebras, Color Lie (super)algebras, noncommutative algebras, nonassociative algebras, cohomology of deformation parameters, perfect algebra. AMS-MSC: 17B70, 17B75, 22E60, 17A99, 17D99, 13D03, 20J06.
Optimal Collusion with Limited Liability and Policy Implications

Collusion sustainability depends on firms’ aptitude to impose sufficiently severe punishments in case of deviation from the collusive rule. We characterize the ability of oligopolistic firms to implement a collusive strategy when their ability to punish deviations over one or several periods is limited by a severity constraint. It captures all situations in which either structural conditions (the form of payoff functions), institutional circumstances (a regulation), or financial considerations (profitability requirements) set a lower bound to firms’ losses. The model specifications encompass the structural assumptions (A1-A3) in Abreu (1986) [Journal of Economic Theory, 39, 191-225]. The optimal punishment scheme is characterized, and the expression of the lowest discount factor for which collusion can be sustained is computed, that both depend on the status of the severity constraint. This extends received results from the literature to a large class of models that include a severity constraint, and uncovers the role of structural parameters that facilitate collusion by relaxing the constraint.
An expert panel review of clinical challenges in neurology CURRENT AND FUTURE TREATMENTS FOR ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE

There are currently >5 million people in the United States who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. That prevalence rate is expected to triple as the population ages. The health and economic burden due to Alzheimer's disease is a worldwide problem, with some of the greatest burden coming from the developing world as people live longer in those societies. Throughout the world, the projected growth of Alzheimer's disease is dramatic. This is a worldwide public health problem of the highest order, and there is a compelling need to develop new treatments and methods of earlier diagnosis need to slow the progression of the disease and lessen its impact. The major risk factor for Alzheimer's disease is age. Based on population estimates, the fastest growing segment of the population are those individuals >85 years of age, who are also at highest risk for developing Alzheimer's disease (Slide 1). Alzheimer's disease doubles in incidence every 5 years after 65 years of age, affecting -30% to 50% of those a85 years of age. Some factors may be modifiable in lessening the impact of Alzheimer's disease, such as lifestyle and nutrition. Attaining higher education appears to have a modifying influence. Physical exercise and engaging in social activities and hobbies may be helpful in lessening impact of the disease. The brain is a dynamic organ that requires stimulation to maintain healthy synaptic networks. The nutritional factors that promote healthy brain aging is an active area of investi-
Back to the "wall": How to use Facebook in the college classroom

The evolving world of the Internet — blogs, podcasts, wikis, social networks — offers instructors and students radically new ways to research, communicate, and learn. Integrating these Internet tools into the college classroom, however, is not an easy task. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to examine the role of social networking in education and demonstrate how social network sites (SNS) can be used in a college classroom setting. To do this, existing research relating to SNS and education is discussed, and the primary advantages and disadvantages of using SNS in the classroom are explored. Most importantly, specific instructions and guidelines to follow when implementing SNS ( i.e. , Facebook) within the college classroom are provided. Specifically, we show that multiple types of Facebook course integration options are available to instructors. It is concluded that SNS, such as Facebook, can be appropriately and effectively used in an academic setting if proper guidelines are established and implemented.
Global and regional longitudinal strain assessed by two-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography identifies early myocardial dysfunction and transmural extent of myocardial scar in patients with acute ST elevation myocardial infarction and relatively preserved LV function.

AIMS Global and regional longitudinal strain (GLS-RLS) assessed by two-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography (2D-STE) are considered reliable indexes of left-ventricular (LV) function and myocardial viability in chronic ischaemic patients when compared with delayed-enhanced cardiac magnetic resonance (DE-CMR). In the present study, we tested whether GLS and RLS could also identify early myocardial dysfunction and transmural extent of myocardial scar in patients with acute ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and relatively preserved LV function. METHODS AND RESULTS Twenty STEMI patients with LVEF ≥40%, treated with PPCI within 6 h from symptoms onset, underwent DE-CMR and 2D-echocardiography for 2D-STE analysis 6 ± 2 days after STEMI. Wall motion score index (WMSI) and LV ejection fraction (LVEF) were calculated by both methods. Infarct size and transmural extent of necrosis were assessed by CMR. GLS and RLS were obtained by 2D-STE. Mean GLS of the study population was -14 ± 3.3, showing a significant correlation with both LVEF and WMSI, by CMR (r = -0.86, P = 0.001, and r = 0.80, P = 0.001, respectively) and time-to-PCI (r = 0.66, P = 0.038). A weaker correlation was found between GLS and LVEF and WMSI assessed by 2D-echo (r = -0.65, P = 0.001, and r = 0.53, P = 0.013, respectively). RLS was significantly lower in DE-segments when compared with normal myocardium (P < 0.0001). A cut-off value of RLS of -12.3% by receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves identified DE-segments (sensitivity 82%, specificity 78%), whereas a cut-off value of -11.5% identified transmural extent of DE (sensitivity 75%, specificity 78%). CONCLUSION Our findings indicate that RLS and GLS evaluation provides an accurate assessment of global myocardial function and of the presence of segments with transmural extent of necrosis, with several potential clinical implications.
Impact of brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity and ankle-brachial blood pressure index on mortality in hemodialysis patients.

BACKGROUND Pulse wave velocity (PWV) and ankle-brachial blood pressure index (ABPI) are markers for atherosclerosis, and each predicts mortality in patients undergoing hemodialysis. However, there have been no studies in the past that compared head-to-head the clinical validity of these 2 parameters. Compared with conventional aortic PWV, brachial-ankle PWV (baPWV) is considered simple and thereby easily applicable to clinical use. METHODS To clarify the relationship between baPWV and ABPI and assess their prognostic values, we analyzed 785 hemodialysis patients with a mean age of 60.2 +/- 12.5 (SD) years for whom ABPI and baPWV at baseline had been measured simultaneously and who were followed up for 33.8 +/- 10.8 months. RESULTS Of 785 patients, 131 deaths were recorded. In Kaplan-Meier analysis, all-cause mortality was progressively and significantly greater from the lowest quartile of baPWV onward (log-rank test, 41.8; P < 0.001). However, in Cox proportional hazards analysis, the impact of baPWV was insignificant when ABPI was included as a covariate. ABPI maintained strong predictive power in this model. When patients who had advanced peripheral arterial occlusive disease (ABPI < 0.9) were excluded from analysis, patients with the highest quartile of baPWV had significantly increased hazard ratios of all-cause (hazard ratio, 4.08; 95% confidence interval, 1.46 to 11.43; P < 0.007) and cardiovascular (hazard ratio, 7.03; 95% confidence interval, 1.49 to 33.08; P < 0.014) mortality. The predictive power of baPWV in this population was independent from other covariates associated with atherosclerotic disorders. CONCLUSION In a head-to-head comparison, ABPI, but not baPWV, showed strong power in predicting the mortality of hemodialysis patients. However, baPWV was useful to pick a high-risk population in patients with ABPI greater than 0.9. Thus, screening hemodialysis patients by means of baPWV and ABPI provides complementary information in identifying a high-risk population.
Collateral Circulation Imaging: MR Perfusion Territory Arterial Spin-Labeling at 3T

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Current knowledge of the collateral circulation remains sparse, and a noninvasive method to better characterize the role of collaterals is desirable. The aim of our study was to investigate the presence and distal flow of collaterals by using a new MR perfusion territory imaging, vessel-encoded arterial spin-labeling (VE-ASL). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Fifty-six patients with internal carotid artery (ICA) or middle cerebral artery (MCA) stenosis were identified by sonography. VE-ASL was performed to assess the presence and function of collateral flow. The perfusion information was combined with VE maps into high signal-intensity-to-noise-ratio 3-colored maps of the left carotid, right carotid, and posterior circulation territories. The presence of the anterior and posterior collateral flow was demonstrated by the color of the standard anterior cerebral artery/MCA flow territory. The distal function of collateral flow was categorized as adequate (cerebral blood flow [CBF] ≥10 mL/min/100 g) or deficient (CBF <10 mL/min/100 g). The results were compared with those of MR angiography (MRA) and intra-arterial digital subtraction angiography (DSA) in cross table, and κ coefficients were calculated to determine the agreement among different methods. RESULTS: The κ coefficients of the presence of anterior and posterior collaterals by using VE-ASL and MRA were 0.785 and 0.700, respectively. The κ coefficient of the function of collaterals by using VE-ASL and DSA was 0.726. Apart from collaterals through the circle of Willis, VE-ASL showed collateral flow via leptomeningeal anastomoses. CONCLUSIONS: In patients with ICA or MCA stenosis, VE-ASL could show the presence, the origin, and distal function of collateral flow noninvasively.
Regional anaesthesia to prevent chronic pain after surgery: a Cochrane systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND Regional anaesthesia may reduce the risk of persistent (chronic) pain after surgery, a frequent and debilitating condition. We compared regional anaesthesia vs conventional analgesia for the prevention of persistent postoperative pain (PPP). METHODS We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, PubMed, EMBASE, and CINAHL from their inception to May 2012, limiting the results to randomized, controlled, clinical trials (RCTs), supplemented by a hand search in conference proceedings. We included RCTs comparing regional vs conventional analgesia with a pain outcome at 6 or 12 months. The two authors independently assessed methodological quality and extracted data. We report odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) as our summary statistic based on random-effects models. We grouped studies according to surgical interventions. RESULTS We identified 23 RCTs. We pooled data from 250 participants in three trials after thoracotomy with outcomes at 6 months. Data favoured epidural anaesthesia for the prevention of PPP with an OR of 0.33 (95% CI 0.20-0.56). We pooled two studies investigating paravertebral block for breast cancer surgery; pooled data of 89 participants with outcomes ≈ 6 months favoured paravertebral block with an OR of 0.37 (95% CI 0.14-0.94). Adverse effects were reported sparsely. CONCLUSIONS Epidural anaesthesia and paravertebral block, respectively, may prevent PPP after thoracotomy and breast cancer surgery in about one out of every four to five patients treated. Small numbers, performance bias, attrition, and incomplete outcome data especially at 12 months weaken our conclusions.
Violation of the Leggett–Garg inequality with weak measurements of photons

By weakly measuring the polarization of a photon between two strong polarization measurements, we experimentally investigate the correlation between the appearance of anomalous values in quantum weak measurements and the violation of realism and nonintrusiveness of measurements. A quantitative formulation of the latter concept is expressed in terms of a Leggett–Garg inequality for the outcomes of subsequent measurements of an individual quantum system. We experimentally violate the Leggett–Garg inequality for several measurement strengths. Furthermore, we experimentally demonstrate that there is a one-to-one correlation between achieving strange weak values and violating the Leggett–Garg inequality.