Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A study of the natural history of diabetic kidney disease (DKD).

BACKGROUND In view of the alarming increase in the number of people with diabetes mellitus (DM), a rising number of patients with diabetic kidney disease (DKD), end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) is forecasted. It is therefore imperative to re-visit the natural history of DKD and to identify potential risk factors, which may enhance the progression of the disease and its complications. METHODS The medical records of 270 Type 2 diabetic chronic kidney disease patients followed up at the Sheffield Kidney Institute between 2000 and 2008 were reviewed. Various socio-demographic, clinical and biochemical parameters (baseline and follow-up parameters) were retrospectively collected from the patients' database. Progression of DKD was evaluated by evaluation of the rate of decline of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) as calculated from the simplified Modification of Diet in Renal Disease formula [progressors: loss of glomerular filtration rate (GFR) >2 mL/min/1.73m(2)/year] as well as by the progression pattern based on the slope of GFR changes. Variables associated with progression in univariate analysis were examined by multivariate analysis to determine the factors independently associated with DKD progression. RESULTS The majority of the study populations were males (66.7%) and Caucasians (88%). Ninety-four patients (34.8%) had progressive, whereas 176 (65.2%) had non-progressive DKD. The rate of eGFR decline in progressors was -3.57 ± 1.45 mL/min/1.73m(2)/year compared to -1.31 ± 0.23 mL/min/1.73m(2)/year in non-progressors. The following parameters discriminated progressors from non-progressors by univariate analysis: baseline-blood pressure (BP) parameters, eGFR and proteinuria as well as serum uric acid. We also observed that area under the curve for follow-up systolic blood pressure (SBP), glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c) and proteinuria were significantly higher among the progressors (P = 0.043, P = 0.02 and P = 0.001, respectively). Independent determinants of DKD progression in this study in an adjusted logistic regression model were baseline HbA1c [odds ratio (OR), 2.27; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.14-4.54], baseline SBP (OR, 1.23; 95% CI, 1.06-1.41), baseline proteinuria (OR, 3.24; 95% CI, 2.1-5.38), baseline serum uric acid (OR, 1.16; 95% CI, 1.09-1.39) and vascular co-morbidities (OR, 1.61; 95% CI, 1.02-2.54). Percentage changes in the key parameters (BP, HbA1c and proteinuria) during the first year of the study did not affect the rate of eGFR decline. CONCLUSIONS Baseline HbA1c, SBP, proteinuria and serum uric acid together with the presence of vascular co-morbidities are strongly and independently associated with faster DKD progression. A further prospective observational study is currently undertaken to evaluate these findings and to determine the predictive value of other biochemical peptides and cellular markers on DKD outcome.
Photodynamic therapy of human squamous cell carcinoma in vitro and in xenografts in nude mice

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) of cancer is an experimental tumor therapy which is based on the combined use of a systemically administered photo‐sensitizer to a tumor‐bearing host and local illumination of the lesion by a high‐intensity visible light source, typically a tunable argon dye laser. Human squamous cell carcinoma (HSCC) is the most frequently encountered malignancy of the head and neck. In this study, responses of HSCC cells to PDT were examined in in vitro and in vivo systems. In in vitro studies, the HSCC cells showed a positive photodynamic response with Photofrin‐II® (Pf‐II), chloroaluminum phthalocyanine tetrasulfonate (AIPcTS), and a newly synthesized silicon phthalocyanine (SiPc IV). Single cell suspension of HSCC injected subcutaneously on the back of athymic nude mice resulted in a well‐circumscribed tumor mass. The animals required a low tumor dose for the successful establishment of a tumor. The tumor was minimally immunogenic and showed neither macroscopic signs of early metastasis to lung, kidney, liver, or spleen nor evidence of surrounding erythema, fluctuation, or tenderness until the late stages of necrosis. Intraperitoneal administration of AlPcTS or SiPc IV to tumor‐bearing mice resulted in rapid uptake of the photosensitizers in liver, skin, and tumor tissue. Twenty‐four hours following the intraperitoneal administration of AlPcTS or SiPc IV to tumor‐bearing animals, the tumor to normal skin ratio of the photo‐sensitizer was 1.6 or 1.5, respectively. Administration of Pf‐H (5 mg/kg) to tumor‐bearing animals followed 24 hours later by irradiation of the tumor (135 J/cm2, 630 nm light from an argon pumped‐dye laser) resulted in greater than 80% ablation in tumor volume 24 hours post‐PDT. These characteristics make this tumor model system suitable for PDT studies of human tumor cells in vitro as well as in vivo.
Infants′ Detection of the Sound Patterns of Words in Fluent Speech

A series of four experiments examined infants' capacities to detect repeated words in fluent speech. In Experiment 1, 7 1/2-month old American infants were familiarized with two different monosyllabic words and subsequently were presented with passages which either included or did not include the familiar target words embedded in sentences. The infants listened significantly longer to the passages containing the familiar target words than to passages containing unfamiliar words. A comparable experiment with 6-month-olds provided no indication that infants at this age detected the target words in the passages. In Experiment 3, a group of 7 1/2-month-olds was familiarized with two different non-word targets which differed in their initial phonetic segment by only one or two phonetic features from words presented in two of the passages. These infants showed no tendency to listen significantly longer to the passages with the similar sounding words, suggesting that the infants may be matching rather detailed information about the items in the familiarization period to words in the test passages. Finally, Experiment 4 demonstrated that even when the 7 1/2-month-olds were initially familiarized with target words in sentential contexts rather than in isolation, they still showed reliable evidence of recognizing these words during the test phase. Taken together, the results of these studies suggest that some ability to detect words in fluent speech contexts is present by 7 1/2 months of age.
Partitioning sexual selection into its mating success and fertilization success components

Postcopulatory sexual selection due to sperm competition and/or cryptic female choice has been documented in a diversity of taxonomic groups and is considered a pivotal component of sexual selection. Despite this apparent importance, the relative contribution of postcopulatory fertilization success to overall sexual selection has not yet been measured in any species. Here, we used a laboratory-adapted population of the promiscuous fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to partition the variance in male reproductive success into mating success (a major component of precopulatory sexual selection) and fertilization success (a major component of postcopulatory sexual selection). We found that fertilization success contributed nearly as strongly as mating success to a male's net performance in sexual selection, but that most of this postcopulatory component was attributable to variation in male mating order (the tendency to be the last male to mate a female). After adjusting for mating order, only ≈2% of the residual variation in male reproductive success was attributable to differential fertilization success. We found no correlation between male mating success and fertilization success in this system. Unlike natural populations of Drosophila, our laboratory population is adapted to a semelparous lifecycle, so our findings will be most applicable to other promiscuous species with strong sperm precedence and one short breeding period per year or lifetime. In these species, fertilization success may have as much influence on male reproductive success as mating success, but the timing of mating (mating order) may be the predominant factor contributing to variation in fertilization success.
Effects of age on distally and proximally generated drawing movements: a kinematic analysis of school children and adults

The effects of age on basic fine motor functions were assessed using a kinematic analysis of simple repetitive drawing movements in a sample of 53 right‐handed children aged 7 to 14 years 11 months and 16 adults aged 27 to 54 years with no detectable abnormality with neurological examination. Lines, circles, and half‐circles were drawn at a self‐chosen and maximum velocity with a pressure‐sensitive pen on a computer graphics tablet. Patterns generated by finger, wrist, and arm movements, and those generated by combined finger‐wrist movements with and without a change in the drawing direction were analysed. The frequencies of all movement patterns increased until adulthood: 0.1 Hz per year for half‐circles, 0.15 to 0.2 Hz per year for circles and lines generated by arm and wrist movements. The greatest increase (0.35 Hz per year) was observed for lines produced by finger movements. Differences in movement frequencies between finger versus wrist or arm movements when drawing lines decreased from about 3 Hz in 7– to 8‐year‐olds to 0.5 to 1 Hz in adolescents. In adults the difference between maximum finger, wrist, and arm movement frequencies decreased to almost zero. In contrast, the differences in movement patterns with and without change in direction remained stable until adulthood. Based on these results it is hypothesized that the differential effects of finger and more proximally generated movements on age reflect maturation of distinct neuronal sites of the cortico‐striatal‐cerebellar circuit rather than acquisition of motor skills or myelinization of corticospinal pathways.
Investigating Relationships Between Supply Chain Capabilities, Competitive Advantage, and Business Performance: A Comparative Study between Thai and Vietnamese Food Industries

Growing in the competitive environment, organizations need to find ways to improve their performance even better by ensuring that all key drivers are being developed and utilized effectively. Thai and Vietnamese food industries are rapidly growing sectors. This study investigates the relationships between supply chain capabilities and competitive advantages towards business performance, and compares the above mentioned relationships between Thai and Vietnamese food industries. The data were gathered from conducted surveys with the food manufacturing companies in both countries, and tested by Structural Equation Modeling. The empirical results show that supply chain capabilities play an important role in business improvement in both countries. While, supply chain integration is considered as a critical factor for the Vietnamese food industry, human resource management is much regarded as important for the Thai food industry. These findings help companies in each country decide the best strategy for differentiating themselves in their business environment.
Teachers and trainee teachers’ beliefs about family-school relationships

espanolEn las ultimas decadas, los investigadores han estudiado las creencias de los docentes en ejercicio y en formacion, pero se han ocupado menos de las creencias sobre la relacion familia-escuela. El objetivo de este trabajo era comparar las creencias sobre la relacion familiaescuela y la auto-eficacia para relacionarse. Participaron 133 profesores y 194 futuros docentes. Se uso el Cuestionario de Creencias sobre las Relaciones Familia-Escuela, que consta de 22 items que exploran las creencias sobre colaboracion, subordinacion (las familias deberian aceptar la autoridad del docente), delegacion (las familias se despreocupan de la educacion), y la auto-eficacia para relacionarse con las familias. Los participantes se sentian altamente capaces y apoyaban la colaboracion, pero los futuros docentes creian mas en la colaboracion que los docentes en ejercicio. Los profesores y los futuros docentes de educacion infantil creian mas en la colaboracion y menos en la subordinacion y la delegacion, comparados con los profesores y futuros docentes de educacion primaria. Estos resultados tienen implicaciones para la formacion inicial y continua de los docentes con respecto a la colaboracion familia-escuela EnglishTeachers’ and trainee teachers’ beliefs have been capturing the attention of researchers for the last few decades but beliefs about family-school relationships are not often addressed. Our aim was to compare teachers and trainee teachers’ beliefs about familyschool relationships and their self-efficacy to relate with families. Participants were 133 teachers and 194 trainee teachers. We used the Beliefs about Family-School Relationships questionnaire comprised of 22 items that explore beliefs about collaboration, subordination (families should accept the teacher’s authority), delegation (families leaving education to the professionals), and self-efficacy to relate with families. Participants felt highly able to relate with families and support collaboration beliefs, but trainee teachers believed more in collaboration than qualified teachers did. Preschool teachers and trainee teachers believed more in collaboration and less in subordination and delegation compared to primary teachers and trainee teachers. These results have implications for teachers’ undergraduate training and lifelong learning about family-school collaboration.
Functional imaging and circulating biomarkers of response to regorafenib in treatment-refractory metastatic colorectal cancer patients in a prospective phase II study

Objective Regorafenib demonstrated efficacy in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). Lack of predictive biomarkers, potential toxicities and cost-effectiveness concerns highlight the unmet need for better patient selection. Design Patients with RAS mutant mCRC with biopsiable metastases were enrolled in this phase II trial. Dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI was acquired pretreatment and at day 15 post-treatment. Median values of volume transfer constant (Ktrans), enhancing fraction (EF) and their product KEF (summarised median values of Ktrans× EF) were generated. Circulating tumour (ct) DNA was collected monthly until progressive disease and tested for clonal RAS mutations by digital-droplet PCR. Tumour vasculature (CD-31) was scored by immunohistochemistry on 70 sequential tissue biopsies. Results Twenty-seven patients with paired DCE-MRI scans were analysed. Median KEF decrease was 58.2%. Of the 23 patients with outcome data, >70% drop in KEF (6/23) was associated with higher disease control rate (p=0.048) measured by RECIST V. 1.1 at 2 months, improved progression-free survival (PFS) (HR 0.16 (95% CI 0.04 to 0.72), p=0.02), 4-month PFS (66.7% vs 23.5%) and overall survival (OS) (HR 0.08 (95% CI 0.01 to 0.63), p=0.02). KEF drop correlated with CD-31 reduction in sequential tissue biopsies (p=0.04). RAS mutant clones decay in ctDNA after 8 weeks of treatment was associated with better PFS (HR 0.21 (95% CI 0.06 to 0.71), p=0.01) and OS (HR 0.28 (95% CI 0.07–1.04), p=0.06). Conclusions Combining DCE-MRI and ctDNA predicts duration of anti-angiogenic response to regorafenib and may improve patient management with potential health/economic implications.
Prioritizing manual test cases in rapid release environments

Test case prioritization is an important testing activity, in practice, specially for large scale systems. The goal is to rank the existing test cases in a way that they detect faults as soon as possible, so that any partial execution of the test suite detects the maximum number of defects for the given budget. Test prioritization becomes even more important when the test execution is time consuming, for example, manual system tests versus automated unit tests. Most existing test case prioritization techniques are based on code coverage, which requires access to source code. However, manual testing is mainly performed in a black‐box manner (manual testers do not have access to the source code). Therefore, in this paper, the existing test case prioritization techniques (e.g. diversity‐based and history‐based techniques) are examined and modified to be applicable on manual black‐box system testing. An empirical study on four older releases of desktop Firefox showed that none of the techniques were strongly dominating the others in all releases. However, when nine more recent releases of desktop Firefox, where the development has been moved from a traditional to a more agile and rapid release environment, were studied, a very significant difference between the history‐based approach and its alternatives was observed. The higher effectiveness of the history‐based approach compared with alternatives also held on 28 additional rapid releases of other Firefox projects – mobile Firefox and tablet Firefox. The conclusion of the paper is that test cases in rapid release environments can be very effectively prioritized for execution, based on their historical failure knowledge. In particular, it is the recency of historical knowledge that explains its effectiveness in rapid release environments rather than other changes in the process. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A Study on the Effects of Glass Ceiling & Organizational Commitment on Corporate Women's Turnover Intentions

This study explores how gender discrimination can be turned into a lack of organizational commitment & high turnover intentions among Indian working women in corporate settings. Result from the survey indicates that there is positive & significant relationship between the mentioned variables, but all such issues could be sorted out with proper imprecision of women empowerment supportive environment. The result also suggests that there is an effect of glass ceiling over the organizational commitment in terms of loyalty towards the employer. Women are found to be efficient at their positions, either being on superior position or medium level position, but perceived as an inefficient employee who is burdened with lot of responsibilities other than workplace. This kind of notion results in an environment which makes workplace male dominated surrounding in which women develop their intentions to quit with weak commitment towards their organization.
Antimicrobial and antiquorum-sensing activity of Ricinus communis extracts and ricinine derivatives

Abstract Ricinine (1), a known major alkaloid in Ricinus communis plant, was used as a starting compound for the synthesis of six ricinine derivatives; two new and four known compounds. The new derivatives; 3-amino-5-methyl-1H-pyrazolo[4,3-c]pyridin-4(5H)-one (2), and 3-amino-5-methyl-1-(phenylsulfonyl)-1H-pyrazolo[4,3-c]pyridin-4(5H)-one (3), as well as the previously prepared derivatives (4–7) were subjected for antimicrobial and antiquorum-sensing evaluation in comparison to different R. communis extracts. Acetyl ricininic acid derivative (5) showed the highest antimicrobial activity among all tested derivatives against Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeuroginosa and Candida albicans. However, compound 7 (4-methoxy-1-methyl-2-oxo-1,2-dihydropyridine-3-carboxamide) showed the highest antiquorum-sensing activity among all tested compounds and extracts. These findings proved the usefulness of ricinine as a good scaffold for the synthesis of new antimicrobial and antiquorum-sensing derivatives in spite of its poor contribution to the antimicrobial activity of the plant extracts.
A recent local sweep at the PHYA locus in the Northern European Spiterstulen population of Arabidopsis lyrata

Northern and central European Arabidopsis lyrata ssp. petraea populations are locally adapted to prevailing climatic conditions through differences in timing of life history events. The timing of flowering and, in perennials, the timing of growth cessation influence fitness. Phytochrome A may have an important role in regulating these life history traits as it perceives changes in daylength. We asked whether PHYA has contributed to local adaptation to the northern conditions in A. l. petraea. To search for signals of directional selection at the PHYA locus, we resequenced PHYA and 9 short fragments around PHYA from a 57‐kb region from a German (Plech) and a Norwegian (Spiterstulen) population and compared patterns of differentiation and diversity to a set of 19 reference loci around the genome. First, we found that the populations were highly differentiated: there were three nonsynonymous fixed differences at the PHYA locus, which was in stark contrast with the total four fixed differences in the 19 reference loci. Compatible with a sweep hypothesis, variation was almost completely removed from the 9.4‐kb region around PHYA in the northern Spiterstulen population. The overall level of linkage disequilibrium (LD) was higher in Spiterstulen, but there was no LD across the PHYA locus in the population, which is also a known consequence of a selective sweep. The sweep has likely occurred after the last glacial maximum, which suggests that it has contributed to adaptation to the northern conditions.
Hypersensitivity reaction in the US Food and Drug Administration-approved second-generation drug-eluting stents: histopathological assessment with ex vivo optical coherence tomography.

A 55-year-old white man received 4 coronary stents, 3 Resolute zotarolimus-eluting stents (R-ZES; Medtronic, Santa Rosa, CA) and 1 XIENCE Xpedition (CoCr-EES; Abbott Vascular, Santa Clara, CA), for unstable angina pectoris 238 days antemortem. The patient was found dead and had recently been seen without any complaints. The patient had a history of hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and smoking. At the time of stent placement, coronary angiography revealed diffuse disease in the left anterior descending artery (LAD) with severe stenosis of the proximal LAD and moderate to severe stenosis of the mid LAD. Percutaneous coronary intervention was carried out, and 4 overlapping drug-eluting stents (DES) were implanted in the proximal-to-distal LAD with the following stent types and sizes used from proximal to distal: R-ZES (2.25×22 mm), CoCr-EES (2.25×28 mm), R-ZES (2.25×26 mm), and R-ZES (2.25×12 mm). Before the histopathological assessment, postmortem coronary angiography and optical coherence tomography were performed that showed patent stented segments in the LAD (Figure 1). Histological examination of the LAD stented segments revealed the presence of persistent fibrin deposition and extensive circumferential inflammation consisting of palisading macrophages, T lymphocytes, eosinophils, and multinucleated giant cells, with focal luminal smooth muscle and the presence of focal endothelial cells in both CoCr-EES and R-ZES, consistent with hypersensitivity reaction (Figures 1 and 2). Figure 1. Hypersensitivity reaction in …