Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improved function from progressive strengthening interventions after total knee arthroplasty: a randomized clinical trial with an imbedded prospective cohort.

OBJECTIVE To determine the effectiveness of progressive quadriceps strengthening with or without neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) on quadriceps strength, activation, and functional recovery after total knee arthroplasty (TKA), and to compare progressive strengthening with conventional rehabilitation. METHODS A randomized controlled trial was conducted between July 2000 and November 2005 in an academic outpatient physical therapy clinic. Two hundred patients who had undergone primary, unilateral TKA for knee osteoarthritis were randomized to 1 of 2 interventions 4 weeks after surgery, and 41 patients eligible for enrollment who did not participate in the intervention were tested 12 months after surgery (standard of care group). All randomized patients received 6 weeks of outpatient physical therapy 2 or 3 times per week through 1 of 2 intervention protocols: an exercise group (volitional strength training) or an exercise-NMES group (volitional strength training and NMES). Treatment effects were evaluated by a burst superimposition test to assess quadriceps strength and volitional activation 3 and 12 months postoperatively. The Medical Outcomes Study Short Form 36 and Knee Outcome Survey were completed. Knee range of motion, Timed Up and Go, Stair-Climbing Test, and 6-Minute Walk were also measured. RESULTS Strength, activation, and function were similar between the exercise and exercise-NMES groups at 3 and 12 months. The standard of care group was weaker and exhibited worse function at 12 months compared with both treatment groups. CONCLUSION Progressive quadriceps strengthening with or without NMES enhances clinical improvement after TKA, achieving similar short- and long-term functional recovery and approaching the functional level of healthy older adults. Conventional rehabilitation does not yield similar outcomes.
Handbook of Neurosurgery

on issues relating to organ transplantation is presented as a series of essays organized into four sections. The book uses the story of Jesica Santillan as an introduction to the types of attitudes, perspectives, and ethical dilemmas that organ transplantation can fuel. Santillan was an undocumented immigrant teenager from Mexico who received a heart lung transplant at Duke University Medical Center in 2003. Unfortunately, the organs used were not the correct blood type. To save the girl’s life, a second transplant was performed days later with a proper set of organs. Sadly, Jesica’s already exhausted body was beyond repair and she died soon after. Whose fault was it that such a grave medical mistake was made? How could a second set of organs be obtained so quickly? Is it right to let an undocumented immigrant receive an organ transplant at all? Questions such as these are explored further in essays whose topics range from the racial tensions surrounding organ transplantation in the 1960s and ’70s to a detailed overview of the organ allocation process of today, from the realities of the black market of organ trade to market-oriented medical ethics, from the details of harvesting organs to all that can go wrong during and after transplantation. The essays do a great job of formulating their overall conclusions in the context of Jesica’s bungled transplant, a familiar home base to anyone reading this book. The topics discussed in A Death Retold are greatly interdisciplinary, and, not surprisingly, the authors include anthropologists, medical ethicists, historians, transplant surgeons, and health lawyers. They have successfully connected economics, sociology, history, ethics, and medicine in the framework of organ transplantation. If you are interested in any aspect of organ transplantation, this is a fascinating book to read.
Alteration of cytoplasmic Ca2+ in resting and stimulated human neutrophils by short-chain carboxylic acids at neutral pH

The results reported here indicate that the short-chain carboxylic acids acetate and propionate stimulate cytoplasmic calcium mobilization in human polymorphonuclear leukocytes, while butyrate and lactate do not. Together with the results of previous work, this indicates that there are at least three classes of short-chain carboxylic acids: those which can alter only cytoplasmic pH (e.g., lactic acid), those which can alter cytoplasmic pH and actin (e.g., butyric acid), and those which can alter cytoplasmic pH, actin, and calcium (e.g., acetate and propionate).
Antifibrotic effect through the regulation of transcription factor using ring type‐Sp1 decoy oligodeoxynucleotide in carbon tetrachloride‐induced liver fibrosis

Liver fibrosis is characterized by the excessive accumulation of extracellular matrix (ECM). Recent advances in the knowledge about the cellular, molecular and genetic aspects of fibrosis have opened a new era of research on liver cirrhosis. A transcription factor, Sp1, originally described as a ubiquitous transcription factor, is involved in the basal expression of ECM genes and may be important in the fibrotic processes.
Assessment of early stage autonomic nerve dysfunction in diabetic subjects--application of power spectral analysis of heart rate variability.

To assess early stage autonomic nerve dysfunction, power spectral analyses were conducted on the consecutive RR records of healthy subjects (N/C, n = 21) and age-matched diabetic patients without neuropathy (DNN, n = 11), with peripheral neuropathy alone (DPN, n = 14), and with autonomic neuropathy (DAN, n = 13) during resting, deep breathing, and tilting. From the analyses, power spectral densities of low frequency (0.05-0.1 Hz) component (LF; msec2) and of high frequency (0.2-0.35 Hz) component (HF; msec2) were calculated as expressing sympathetic activity and parasympathetic activity, respectively. In N/C, LF and HF were 466 +/- 332 and 251 +/- 151, respectively. Deep breathing significantly (p less than 0.05 by paired t-test) increased HF to 403 +/- 305 and tilting increased LF significantly to 593 +/- 375. In diabetics as a group, both LF and HF were significantly smaller than those in N/C. DNN showed significantly smaller HFs than N/C. DPN showed a significantly smaller HF during deep breathing (135 +/- 93) and a significant smaller LF during tilting (122 +/- 119) than N/C. DAN showed a significantly smaller HF during deep breathing (49 +/- 49) and a significantly smaller LF during tilting (54 +/- 52) than DPN. Tilting increased LF significantly (p less than 0.001) in N/C but not in diabetics. Deep breathing increased HF significantly (p less than 0.001) in N/C and DNN. HF in diabetics highly correlated with known duration of diabetes. LF in diabetics did not correlate with known duration of diabetes nor level of hemoglobin A1c. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Virulence of Metarhizium anisopliae (Deuteromycotina: Hyphomycetes) on Anastrepha ludens (Diptera: Tephritidae): Laboratory and Field Trials

Abstract Twenty isolates of the fungus Metarhizium anisopliae (Metsch.) Sorkin (Ma) were evaluated to determine their virulence against last instar and adult emergence of Mexican fruit fly, Anastrepha ludens (Loew). Larvae were exposed by immersion in a conidial suspension at a concentration of 108 UFC/ml under laboratory conditions. Larvae and pupae cumulative mortality rates ranged from 37.9 to 98.75%. Thirteen isolates caused mortality rates >83.7%, and their LT50 values ranged from 1.8 to 6.2 d. The Ma2, Ma8, and Ma16 isolates were evaluated at seven different concentrations ranging from 101 to 107 UFC/ml, showing LC50 values from 3.7 to 4.8 × 105 UFC/ml. In a field-cage experiment, 200 ml of a conidial suspension of Ma2, at a concentration of 2.5 × 106 UFC/ml, was applied on 2,500 cm2 soil surface (2 × 105 UFC/cm2). The fungus reduced adult emergence, 22% fewer adults emerging in a sandy loam soil, and 43% fewer in loam soil, compared with the controls. M. anisopliae may offer a preferable alternative to chemicals as a biological control agent against A. ludens.
Distractor Generation for Chinese Fill-in-the-blank Items

This paper reports the first study on automatic generation of distractors for fill-in-the-blank items for learning Chinese vocabulary. We investigate the quality of distractors generated by a number of criteria, including part-of-speech, difficulty level, spelling, word co-occurrence and semantic similarity. Evaluations show that a semantic similarity measure, based on the word2vec model, yields distractors that are significantly more plausible than those generated by baseline methods.
Periodontal bacterial load: a proposed new epidemiological method for periodontal disease assessment.

AIM The purpose of this study was to identify a periodontal clinical measure that correlates with red complex bacteria usually associated with periodontal disease. METHODS AND MATERIALS Periodontal clinical parameters were recorded in 116 postpartum women at six sites per tooth for all teeth excluding third molars. Two subgingival plaque samples per subject were collected and analyzed for 39 bacterial species using the Checkerboard DNA-DNA hybridization technique. Periodontal Bacterial Load (PBL) was calculated as the sum of all pocket depth measurements of 4 mm at sites with a Clinical Attachment Level (CAL) of 4 mm. The association of clinical and bacterial scores was analyzed using the Spearman correlation coefficient and the Kruskal-Wallis test. RESULTS The PBL was correlated with microorganisms from the red complex that included Porphyromonas gingivalis, Tannerella forsythia, and Treponema denticola, individually or grouped (p<0.05). The PBL was not associated with periodontally beneficial species from the yellow, green, purple, and blue complexes (p>0.05). The proportions and mean counts of the red complex were increased according to the quartile groups of distribution of the PBL. CONCLUSION PBL appears to be a reliable measure of periodontal status in postpartum women. CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE PBL avoids bias in the assessment of periodontal status in studies of periodontal disease.
Phage infection of capsule-producing lactic acid bacteria with ultimate application in the formulation of phage-inhibitory

Lactic cultures that produce capsular polysaccharides are widely used in the dairy industry. However, little information is available on their phage-cell interactions. Concanavalin A (Con A), lysozyme, and saccharides were investigated for their ability to modify phage-cell interactions in such a manner as to inhibit phage infection. The ability of phage to infect cells was determined by measuring acid production in Elliker broth. Acid production by capsule-producing Streptococcus thermophilus was inhibited less by bacteriophage when cells were pretreated with Con. A than was acid production by a capsule-free variant. The presence of 0.5 mg/ml lysozyme in Elliker broth significantly reduced phage infection. However, there was no increased effect when lysozyme and Con A were combined in the growth medium. The addition of 5 g/L of glucosamine to Elliker broth also inhibited phage infection. The results of this study indicate that it is possible to reduce phage infection of capsule-forming S. thermophilus by blocking or modifying phage adsorption sites.
Serum fibronectin levels in acute and chronic viral hepatitis patients.

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to investigate the serum fibronectin (FN) levels and liver enzyme activities in patients with acute hepatitis (A, B, C) and chronic viral hepatitis (B, C); determine whether the virus types correlated with disease severity; and assess whether FN could be used as a marker of virus type or disease severity in patients. METHODS A total of 60 subjects were enrolled in the study, including 20 patients with acute hepatitis (A, B, C), 20 with chronic hepatitis (B, C), and 20 healthy controls. Serum fibronectin (FN), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT), and albumin were measured in all patients from blood samples. RESULTS Serum FN levels were significantly lower in acute (122.9 μg/mL (SD 43.1), P < 0.001) and chronic hepatitis patients (135.7 μg/mL (SD 46.0), P < 0 . 001) compared to controls 221.4 μg/mL (SD 32.5). A negative correlation was found between serum FN and AST (r(2) = 0.528, P < 0.001), ALT (r(2) = 0.425, P < 0.001), and GGT (r(2) = 0.339, P < 0.001). Additionally, high serum GGT levels (β = -0.375, P = 0.010), and low serum albumin levels (β = -0.305, P = 0.008) were associated with low serum FN levels. CONCLUSION Serum FN levels were lower in both acute and chronic hepatitis patients, and an inverse relationship between serum FN and serum AST, ALT, and GGT levels was found. A decrease in serum FN levels may indicate hepatitis severity as AST and ALT represent hepatocyte damage.
Estimación de la interacción genotipo-ambiente en tomate (Solanum lycopersicum L.) con el modelo AMMI

El tomate (Solanum lycopersicum L.) es una hortaliza con un alto valor comercial para su consumo en fresco y en la manufactura de productos procesados. La potencialidad de la zona norte de Mexico en la produccion de esta hortalizas hace necesario la formacion de nuevos genotipos de tomate y por ello es necesario medir la interaccion genotipo-ambiente (IG x A) y asi determinar la estabilidad fenotipica de los genotipos ante las fluctuaciones ambientales, los objetivos del presente trabajo se enfocaron a estimar la interaccion genotipo-ambiente y estabilidad de caracteristicas de rendimiento, fisiologicas y de calidad de 25 genotipos de tomate en tres ambientes a traves del modelo multivariado AMMI. Se encontraron diferencias significativas para las variables de calidad (p< 0.01) en la IG x A, El resultado del analisis AMMI indica que solo dos componentes explicaron 100% de la variacion existente, siendo el hibrido experimental Q3 x R1 el mejor en cuanto a las variables de calidad y rendimiento, los ambientes de evaluacion mostraron ser muy diferentes en su discriminacion de los materiales geneticos. Por lo cual sera necesario seguir evaluando a estos genotipos bajo diferentes formas de produccion y ambientes a fin de que los genes involucrados en la expresion de las variables de rendimiento, fisiologicas y de calidad se vayan fijando y que el efecto del ambiente se minimice y asi logra materiales geneticos que se adapten a diferentes ambientes y con altos contenidos de compuestos nutritivos y alimenticios que permitan a esta hortaliza seguir siendo una de las mas importantes a nivel nacional y mundial.
Efficacy and toxicity of plerixafor for peripheral blood stem cell mobilization in children with high‐risk neuroblastoma

Six patients with high‐risk neuroblastoma underwent the second stem cell collection round with G‐CSF (5 μg/kg/day) + plerixafor (0.24 mg/kg/day) because the amount of CD34+ cells collected during the first collection round with G‐CSF alone was insufficient. The number of CD34+ cells collected in the second collection round was higher in four patients and lower in two patients than in the first collection round. Four of the six patients experienced nightmares, nyctophobia, and visual hallucinations with G‐CSF + plerixafor, which were not observed with G‐CSF alone. Our findings suggest that plerixafor needs to be used with caution in children. Pediatr Blood Cancer 2013;60E57‐E59. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Introduction to the Special Issue Information Technology in Retail: Toward Omnichannel Retailing

The increased deployment of new technologies such as smart mobile devices and social networks and the growing importance of in-store technological solutions create new opportunities and challenges for retailers. As the line between online and physical channels is blurred, a new approach to channel integration is emerging—the omnichannel, which aims to deliver a seamless customer experience regardless of the channel. This introduction presents the results of focus group discussions on the role of information technology in retail, new business models, and the future role of traditional stores as e-commerce advances. Key issues that emerged from the discussion include the need for channel integration, the impact of mobile technologies, the growing role of social media, the changing role of physical brick-and-mortar stores, the need to respond to diverse customer requirements, the balance between personalization and privacy, and, finally, supply chain redesign. The four papers in this Special Issue explore these themes further.
Circadian variation in urinary excretion of bone collagen cross‐links

Bone resorption can be evaluated by measuring the urinary excretion of collagen type I cross‐linked N telopeptides (NTx). Since it is difficult to obtain (and verify) 24 h urine collections from patients, untimed spot urines are more practical. Such measurements, however, need correction for urine dilution and potentially may vary with collection time since a circadian rhythm in bone metabolism has been reported. This study examined cross‐link excretion in urine voids serially collected during a 24 h period from subjects living their normal daily routine (as opposed to a controlled hospital setting). This mimics the situation for walk‐in patients visiting a clinician and providing a spot urine. A total of 35 dentists (20 males, 15 females) collected all urine voids separately over a 24 h period. Urines were analyzed for creatinine and NTx. The effects of time of day on the excretion rates of these metabolites (in nmol/h) and on the cross‐link:creatinine ratio were assessed. A circadian rhythm was evident in the excretion rate of creatinine with a peak in the late afternoon (18% higher than the 24 h mean, p = 0.0004). The NTx excretion rate peaked in the morning (9% higher than the 24 h mean) but this latter rhythm was not statistically significant (p = 0.31). The NTx:creatinine ratio fell during the day from a high (122% of the 24 h mean) in the early morning to a low in the early evening. This rhythm in the NTx:creatinine ratio in untimed spot urines was statistically significant (p < 0.0001). In conclusion, the NTx:creatinine ratio in spot urines from adult outpatient subjects showed a significant circadian rhythm. Variations in creatinine excretion were the primary cause. Time of day should, therefore, be taken into account when comparing test results of spot urines with normal ranges or with other samples from the same subject.
Autophagy is required for glucose homeostasis and lung tumor maintenance.

UNLABELLED Macroautophagy (autophagy hereafter) recycles intracellular components to sustain mitochondrial metabolism that promotes the growth, stress tolerance, and malignancy of lung cancers, suggesting that autophagy inhibition may have antitumor activity. To assess the functional significance of autophagy in both normal and tumor tissue, we conditionally deleted the essential autophagy gene, autophagy related 7 (Atg7), throughout adult mice. Here, we report that systemic ATG7 ablation caused susceptibility to infection and neurodegeneration that limited survival to 2 to 3 months. Moreover, upon fasting, autophagy-deficient mice suffered fatal hypoglycemia. Prior autophagy ablation did not alter the efficiency of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) initiation by activation of oncogenic Kras(G12D) and deletion of the Trp53 tumor suppressor. Acute autophagy ablation in mice with preexisting NSCLC, however, blocked tumor growth, promoted tumor cell death, and generated more benign disease (oncocytomas). This antitumor activity occurred before destruction of normal tissues, suggesting that acute autophagy inhibition may be therapeutically beneficial in cancer. SIGNIFICANCE We systemically ablated cellular self-cannibalization by autophagy in adult mice and determined that it is dispensable for short-term survival, but required to prevent fatal hypoglycemia and cachexia during fasting, delineating a new role for autophagy in metabolism. Importantly, acute, systemic autophagy ablation was selectively destructive to established tumors compared with normal tissues, thereby providing the preclinical evidence that strategies to inhibit autophagy may be therapeutically advantageous for RAS-driven cancers.
An open-label long-term phase III extension trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of pregabalin in Japanese patients with fibromyalgia

ObjectivesTo assess the long-term safety and efficacy of pregabalin for the treatment of Japanese patients with fibromyalgia (FM). MethodsThis 53-week, open-label extension study was conducted at 20 study sites in Japan in patients with FM who had completed a preceding 16-week, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial. Patients received pregabalin, starting at 150 mg/day and increasing to a maintenance dose of 300 or 450 mg/day. The primary endpoint was safety, and secondary endpoints included measures of pain, sleep, and physical functioning.Results106 patients entered the trial and received at least one dose of the study drug. The most common treatment-related adverse events were somnolence, dizziness, increased weight, and constipation. There were no treatment-related serious or severe adverse events. There were five (4.7 %) discontinuations due to adverse events, of which three (2.8 %) were considered related to the study drug. Most adverse events resolved over time and could be managed without dose reduction or treatment discontinuation. Improvements in secondary efficacy endpoints of pain, sleep, and physical functioning emerged early in the study and were maintained for the duration of treatment.ConclusionsThese data indicate that the long-term treatment of Japanese FM patients with pregabalin may be both safe and effective.
Role of Peer Coaching in Transmitting the Benefits of Leader Coaching

Drawing on social information processing theory, the present study examines how and when leader coaching can be beneficial for team performance. Based on a sample of 58 teams from a sanitary product company in China, we found that peer coaching served as a mediator linking leader coaching and team performance. Moreover, the team individualistic/collectivism value moderated the first-stage relationship that the relationship between leader coaching and peer coaching was more positive when the team individualism value was low, but not significant when the team individualism value was high; while team task interdependence moderated the second-stage relationship that the relationship between peer coaching and team performance was more positive when the team task interdependence was high, but not significant when it was low. The findings enrich our understandings of the effectiveness of leader coaching behavior by uncovering the theoretical mechanism and boundary conditions. The study also provides important implications for coaching practice in organizations.