Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diagnostic Performance of Low-Dose Computed Tomography Screening for Lung Cancer over Five Years

Introduction: Low-dose computed tomography (LD-CT) screening can reduce lung cancer mortality; however, it is essential to improve nodule management protocols. We analyze the performance of the diagnostic protocol of the Continuous Observation of SMOking Subjects single-center screening study, after long-term follow-up. Methods: Between 2004 and 2005, 5203 asymptomatic high-risk individuals (≥20 pack-years, aged 50 years or older) were enrolled to undergo annual LD-CT for 5 years. Nodules 5 mm or smaller underwent repeat LD-CT a year later. Nodules larger than 5.0 mm and 8.0 mm or smaller received LD-CT 3 to 6 months later. Nodules larger than 8.0 mm or growing underwent CT-positron emission tomography. True positives were any stage prevalent lung cancer, progressing nodules diagnosed at stage 1, localized multifocal cancer, or new nodules diagnosed at any stage. False negatives were progressing nodules diagnosed at stage >1. False positives were benign nodules resected surgically. Results: Compliance was 79% over 5 years; 175 primary lung cancers were detected (0.76% per year), 136 (77.7%) were N0M0 and three were interval cancers. Eleven second primary lung cancers were diagnosed. Resectability was 87.4%; postoperative mortality 0.6%. Recall was 6.4% overall, 10.1% at baseline. False negatives were 14 of 175 (8%). Protocol sensitivity was 158 of 175 (90%); specificity 4994 of 5028 (99.4%); positive predictive value was 158 of 187 (84.5%); and negative predictive value was 4994 of 5016 (99.7%). Twenty-nine of 204 (14.2%) benign lesions were diagnosed surgically. Five-year overall and cancer-specific survival were 78% (95% confidence interval, 72–84) and 82% (95% confidence interval, 76%–88%) respectively. Conclusions: The performance of the CT protocol was satisfactory with an acceptable number of benign lesions biopsied surgically, low recall rate, and good oncological outcomes. However, interval and advanced cancers, and misdiagnoses, need to be reduced, perhaps by risk modeling and use of serum markers.
Fluidized beds as turbulence promoters in the concentration of food liquids by reverse osmosis

Fluidized beds offer a potential improvement of reverse osmosis processes for food liquids, less fouling of the membrane, and reduced energy consumption. Our experiments were concerned with tubular systems in which fluidized beds of glass, steel, and lead beads were used. Glass beads appeared to be preferable, since they caused little damage to the membrane. Only with the larger glass beads (3 mm) did the membrane skin become corrugated, so that the rejection decreased. The permeate flux for Gouda cheese whey was almost equal to that of an empty tube for which the velocity was about thirty times higher. The erosive action of the glass beads on the fouling layer was partially responsible for this effect. For reverse osmosis of skim milk and potato fruit water the bed did not reduce the fouling layer to a sufficient extent and, therefore, had a lower permeate flux than an empty tube.
Risk Factors to Driver Fatalities in Single-Vehicle Crashes: Comparisons between Non-Motorcycle Drivers and Motorcyclists

Single-vehicle crash data for 2000 from Taiwan's Road Accident Investigation & Reporting System were employed to compare fatality risk factors between non-motorcycle drivers and motorcyclists. On average, motorcyclists had approximately a three times higher fatality risk than non-motorcycle drivers after adjusting for the driving mileage. Two respective logistic regression models for these two categories of drivers indicated that some common features, such as being male, a higher age, and crashes occurring between the hours of 2200 and 0600 revealed a greater likelihood of fatality. On the other hand, the risk discrepancies between these two drivers included the restraint-use effect, speeding, and impairment as the main crash cause, roadway class, and vehicle type. To reduce the high risk of fatality sustained by these two classes of drivers, enhancing the driver's seatbelt-use rate, the management of running speed, the rider's risk perceptions, and the road quality and facilities of the lowest roadway class are particularly recommended.
The View from Building 20: Essays in Linguistics in Honor of Sylvain Bromberger

A minimalist programme for linguistic theory, Noam Chomsky on argument structure and the lexical expression of syntactic relations, Kenneth Hale and Samuel Jay Keyser distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection, Morris Halle and Alex Marantz integrity of prosodic constituents and the domain of syllabification rules in Spanish and Catalan, Hames W. Harris interrogatives, James Higginbotham triggering science forming capacity through linguistic inquiry, Maya Honda and Wayne O'Neil evidence for metrical constituency, Michael Kenstowicz.
Reasonable, agonistic, or good?

Postmodernists reject what they call the universalist-rationalist framework of liberalism. When they do defend liberal democracy, they do so in a contextualist manner (within a ‘form of life’) and on the basis of contestation (‘agonism’). Liberals are right to charge postmodernism with self-contradiction, relativism, and immoralism. It is also argued in this article that liberalism and postmodernism are incompatible, and therefore, they cannot be joined together in response to the hegemonic construction of democratic debate. However, liberals are caught in a bind as they insist on impartiality but also believe the exercise of virtue (reasonableness, mutual respect) is a requirement of rational dialogue. This article argues that perfectionism (objectivism) in value judgements is required both to insist that virtuousity is a requirement of rationality and to reject postmodernism. However, it must be possible to separate perfectionism from two features of Alasdair MacIntyre’s Aristotelianism: he is hostile to liberal rights and his contextualism results in relativism.
Observer variation in plain radiography of the lumbosacral spine.

In this study, interobserver and intraobserver variations in the interpretation of plain radiographs of the lumbosacral spine were evaluated. Three radiologists independently interpreted the radiographs from 200 consecutive outpatients, aged 13-93 years, mostly referred from general practitioners. Interobserver agreement was best for vertebral fractures, osteopenia, spondylolisthesis at L5-S1, lumbosacral junctional vertebra, reduced disc height at L4-S1 and osteophytes at L2-S1 (kappa 0.61-0.95), and poorest for spina bifida of S1, degenerative spondylolisthesis and facet joint arthrosis at T12-L4, sacroiliac joint arthrosis, narrow central spinal canal, film quality, and for decisions concerning evaluation of facet joints and spinal canal (kappa < 0.34). For several diagnoses, the number of abnormal findings differed significantly between observers (p < 0.05, McNemar's test), indicating different diagnostic thresholds. Intraobserver agreement in 36 reevaluated patients was fair to excellent for almost all variables (kappa > 0.46). Although some diagnoses related to low back pain were quite consistently evaluated, the substantial disagreement on many findings should alert clinicians and radiologists against overestimating the validity and usefulness of the examinations. To improve diagnostic consistency, it is important to reduce variation caused by different thresholds for abnormality.
Direct gravity estimation and compensation in strapdown INS applications

This paper proposes a novel algorithm for estimating the changes of gravity and compensating its effects on acceleration measurements in inertial navigation system (INS) based applications. Gravity is a critical factor and its effects are usually included in the measurements obtained from accelerometers. This results in a need to eliminate gravity effects from the measurements in order to accurately determine the true acceleration of a moving object. In the present study, a new method has been proposed to estimate the gravity using the measurements from the existing INS sensors without employing any additional sensors. This significantly reduces the complexity of INS based system design. Two different types of models have been developed based on the proposed gravity compensation method to be used in Gyro-Based and Gyro-Free INS applications. The performance of both these models is illustrated by simulations and experiments. Results of simulations demonstrate that by including the proposed gravity compensation model, the errors in the acceleration measurements reduces significantly.
Early renal injury after myeloablative cord blood transplantation in adults

We report a retrospective analysis of acute renal failure (ARF) in a group of 54 adult patients with hematological malignancies treated with unrelated cord blood transplantation (CBT) after myeloablative conditioning. All patients received four fractionated 12 Gy total body irradiation and chemotherapy as myeloablative conditioning. ARF was defined as the doubling serum creatinine occurring within the first 100 days after CBT. A statistically significant decrement of renal function from baseline was observed in days between 11 and 20. ARF occurred in 27.8% of patients. Although no difference was seen in maximum cyclosporine trough levels, the maximum of vancomycin (VCM) trough levels were significantly higher in patients with ARF (p = 0.01). Our result suggests that it is important to monitor VCM dosing more strictly with pharmacokinetic assessment, especially in days 11 – 20, when the most frequently observed declining renal function.
The administration of metoclopramide with atropine A drug interaction effect on the gastro–oesophageal sphincter in man

The effects of intravenous atropine 0-6 mg alone, metoclopramide (Maxolon) 10mg alone and atropine 0-6 mg and metoclopramide 10 mg in combination, on the lower oesophageal sphincter (LOS) were studied in three groups of normal human volunteers. Atropine decreased the LOS pressure by an average of 8 cm H2O (P less than 0-001), whereas metoclopramide increased the LOS pressure by a mean of 29 cmH2O compared to basal values (P less than 0-001). In contrast, no change in sphincter tone was noted following injection of atropine-metaclopramide mixture. These findings are relevant to the pre-operative preparation of patients presenting for emergency anaesthesia, since gasgro-oesophageal reflux and pulmonary aspiration of acid gastric content continues to be a significant cause of morbidity and mortality.
"#D%LI() #* "+LTI-WI(DI() /HA2% 2HI*TI() TRA(2*#R"%R2 A//LICATI#(2 T# DC A(D "+LTI-L%5%L 52I 2+//LI%2

This paper deals with the modeling of multi-winding transformers. Based on the real example of a railway DC supply, a modeling methodology is presented as the original part of the paper. Afterwards two application examples of multi-winding phase shifting transformers (18 and 24 pulse) are described, these applications have been simulated using the SIMSEN simulation software package [1,2]. Harmonics analysis of simulation results (elimination of low order harmonics 5, 7, 11, 13) has validated the proposed methodology.
[Erythropoietin concentrations in the vitreous body from patients with proliferative diabetic retinopathy].

OBJECTIVE To measure erythropoietin (Epo) levels in the vitreous body from patients with proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR). PATIENTS AND METHODS Undiluted vitreous samples were obtained from 44 patients who had not undergone prior vitreous or intraocular surgery. Patients were divided into two groups: A (n= 24) patients with PDR and B (n= 20) patients with retinal detachment, preretinal macular membranes and macular holes. Epo was determined using radioimmunoassay. RESULTS Epo vitreous concentration in group A was 512 mU/mL (range 120-880) and in group B was 25.1 mU/mL (range 5.2-201) (p< 0.001). CONCLUSIONS These results show that the concentration of Epo in the vitreous body was significantly higher in patients with PDR than in the control group.
Carbon dioxide dissociation curve and buffer capacity of dog heart muscle.

The carbon dioxide dissociation curve of dog heart muscle was found to be higher than of dog skeletal muscle. The slope of this dissociation curve in the range of Pco2 20–55 and the buffer capacity of dog heart muscle with respect to Pco2 appear to be approximately equal to those of dog skeletal muscle. Seemingly, in the dog, heart muscle is at least as well buffered against the pH-lowering effect of increasing CO2 tension as is skeletal muscle and is more effectively buffered than has previously been realized.
The Surgical Management of Primary Tumorsof the Spine: Initial Results of an Ongoing Prospective Cohort Study

Study Design. Prospective cohort study. Objectives. To prospectively validate the application of appendicular surgical oncology principles to the treatment of primary bone tumors of the spine at a quaternary care spine center using local recurrence, survival, and health-related quality of life as outcome measures. Summary of Background Data. There is clear evidence that violating the margins of a sarcoma or other malignancy during surgical resection will risk local recurrence and diminish overall survival. Previous publications have retrospectively demonstrated this oncologically sound approach to spine tumor management to be internally valid. The external validity or limited generalizability has not been assessed. Methods. Included were all patients who underwent en bloc surgical resection of a primary tumor of the spine between January 1994 and November 2003, at the authors’ institution. Patients were uniformly staged before surgery and baseline demographic and surgical variables were recorded, as well as a cross-sectional evaluation of generic health-related quality of life. Results. Twenty-six patients (12 males and 14 females) were eligible for the study. Average age was 42 (range 16 to 70). There were 19 malignant tumors and 7 benign. There are 20 surviving patients with an average follow-up of 41.5 months (range 6 to 111 months), 15 of whom had malignant tumors. None of these patients have evidence of local recurrence, and one has evidence of systemic disease. The health-related quality of life, using the SF-36, shows acceptable morbidity of these procedures (physical component summary = 37.73 ± 11.52, MCS = 51.69 ± 9.54). Conclusions. Principles of wide surgical resection, commonly applied in appendicular oncology, can and should be used for the treatment of primary bone tumors of the spine with anticipated acceptable morbidity and satisfactory survival.
Characterization of Ypr1p from Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a 2‐methylbutyraldehyde reductase

The metabolism of aldehydes and ketones in yeast is important for biosynthetic, catabolic and detoxication processes. Aldo‐keto reductases are a family of enzymes that are able to reduce aldehydes and ketones. The roles of individual aldo‐keto reductases in yeast has been difficult to determine because of overlapping substrate specificities of these enzymes. In this study, we have cloned, expressed and characterized the aldo‐keto reductase Ypr1p from the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and we describe its substrate specificity. The enzyme displays high specific activity towards 2‐methylbutyraldehyde, as well as other aldehydes such as hexanal. It exhibits extremely low activity as a glycerol dehydrogenase. The enzyme functions over a wide pH range and uses NADPH as co‐factor. In comparison to other mammalian and yeast aldo‐keto reductases, Ypr1p has relatively high affinity for D,L‐glyceraldehyde (1.08 mM) and hexanal (0.39 mM), but relatively low affinity for 4‐nitrobenzaldehyde (1.07 mM). It displays higher specific activity for 2‐methylbutyraldehyde than does yeast alcohol dehydrogenase and has a Km for 2‐methyl butyraldehyde of 1.09 mM. The enzyme is expressed during growth on glucose, but its levels are rapidly induced by osmotic and oxidative stress. Yeast in which the YPR1 gene has been deleted possess 50% lower 2‐methylbutyraldehyde reductase activity than the wild‐type strain. This suggests that the enzyme may contribute to 2‐methyl butyraldehyde reduction in vivo. It may therefore play a role in isoleucine catabolism and fusel alcohol formation and may influence flavour formation by strains of brewing yeast. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Health Profiles of Clients in Substance Abuse Treatment: A Comparison of Clients Dependent on Alcohol or Cocaine With Those Concurrently Dependent

The purpose of this study was to assess whether, among clients receiving substance abuse treatment (n = 616), those dependent on alcohol or cocaine differed significantly from those concurrently dependent on both drugs in terms of physical, mental, social, and economic harms as well as substance use behaviors. Methods: Clients from five substance abuse treatment agencies presenting with a primary problem of cocaine or alcohol were classified into three groups as dependent on: (1) alcohol alone, (2) cocaine alone, or (3) both cocaine and alcohol (i.e. concurrent dependence). Participants completed a self-administered questionnaire that included details of their drug and alcohol use, physical health, mental health, social health, economic health, and demographic characteristics. Results: The concurrent group drank similar amounts of alcohol as those in the alcohol group and used similar amounts of cocaine as the cocaine group. The alcohol group had significantly (p < .05) poorer health profiles than the concurrent group across most variables of the four health domains. An exception was significantly more accidental injuries (p < .05) in the alcohol group. In both bivariate and multivariate analyses, the concurrent group had significantly (p < .05) more accidental injuries, violence, and overdoses than the cocaine group. As well, the concurrent group had significantly (p < .05) higher scores on the anxiety and sexual compulsion scales than the cocaine group, controlling for demographic variables. Conclusion: These findings can aid health care professionals to better respond to issues related to concurrent dependence of cocaine and alcohol.
Multiobjective Design Optimization of High-Power Circular Winding Brushless DC Motor

This paper proposes a novel circular winding brushless dc (CWBLDC) motor, which offers high torque density as BLDC motors and low-torque ripple as permanent-magnet synchronous machines (PMSMs). The novelty of the proposed machine is the circularly connected windings and its way of commutation, which make it suitable for high-power high-performance marine propulsion applications. First, the structure and the operation principle of CWBLDC are described. The method for calculating phase current of CWBLDC is subsequently introduced and validated by prototype experiment. Then, the multiobjective optimization problem for designing a high-power low-speed CWBLDC is formulated. Through large-scale design parameter sweeping, the best type of slot–pole combination and the best design scheme is selected and validated by finite element method (FEM) simulation. Finally, a multifactor regression analysis is performed to establish the relationship between performance objectives and design variables.
Role of arachidonic acid and other free fatty acids in mitochondrial dysfunction in brain ischemia

The aim of the present investigation was to evaluate the possible role of arachidonic acid and other free fatty acids in ischemia‐induced mitochondrial dysfunction. Respiratory activities were measured in mitochondria isolated from rat brains subjected to 15–30 min of decapitation ischemia. Addition of bovine serum albumin (BSA) to the mitochondria, isolated in BSA‐free media, abolished an ischemia‐induced increase in substrate‐stimulated (state 4) respiration but only partly reversed a marked inhibition of substrate‐, phosphate‐, and ADP‐stimulated (state 3) respiration caused by the ischemia. Individual free fatty acids were measured in aliquots of the same mitochondrial preparations before and after treatment with BSA. There was a significant increase in arachidonic (20:4), stearic (18:0), palmitic (16:0), and docosahexaenoic (22:6) acid during ischemia. BSA treatment removed all 20:4 and reduced the amount of 18:0 and 16:0, but had no significant effect on 22:6. The main conclusions were (1) that 20:4, 18:0, and 16.0 were responsible for the partial uncoupling (increase in state 4 respiration) of mitochondrial respiration during ischemia, (2) that the inhibition of state 3 respiration caused by ischemia could only partly be attributed to an effect of FFAs, and (3) that the ischemia‐induced mitochondrial dysfunction was caused by a combination of factors including 20:4.
Smoking and plasma lipoproteins in man: effects on low density lipoprotein cholesterol levels and high density lipoprotein subfraction distribution

Abstract. In a survey of a healthy population (n = 197), LDL cholesterol, plasma triglycerides and VLDL triglycerides were found to be substantially increased and plasma HDL cholesterol decreased in smokers. The lipid‐associated atherogenic risk in smokers as assessed by the LDL/HDL ratio was significantly higher [2.89 (SD 1.18, n= 63)] than in non‐smokers [2.38 (SD 0.98, n= 86) P < 0.01]. The lower HDL level found in smokers was explained by a lower HDL‐2 subfraction as determined by analytical ultracentrifugation. HDL 2b, 2a and 3a, measured by gradient gel electrophoresis, were all lower in the smokers but this was only significant for HDL 2a. Smoking had no effect on Lp(a) levels. HDL cholesterol and HDL‐2 were strongly negatively correlated whereas LDL cholesterol and LDL/HDL ratio were strongly positively correlated with the plasma triglyceride concentration. There was a small but significant reduction in plasma CETP activity [non‐smokers 49%t/μl (SD 17, n= 90), smokers 43%t/μl (SD 17, n= 66) P < 0.05] but CETP activity was not correlated with any measure of HDL in this population. Smoking was found to be an important independent contributor to the variation in plasma triglyceride, HDL, HDL‐2 and LDL/HDL ratio. After correcting for sex, age, BMI, alcohol consumption, oral contraceptive use and plasma triglycerides smoking was still found to be significantly associated with HDL and the LDL/HDL ratio. Upon adjustment for covariant factors the mean differences between smokers and non‐smokers for HDL cholesterol, HDL‐2 and LDL/HDL were 0.15 mM, 16 mg dl‐1 and 0.39 respectively. There appeared to be important sex differences in the influence of smoking on plasma lipoproteins. In women the main impact of smoking was on triglyceride levels and they in turn affected LDL and HDL. In contrast, in men, smoking had little impact on triglycerides and affected HDL more directly. We conclude that smoking cigarettes has an important effect on plasma lipoprotein metabolism through multiple mechanisms.