Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cardiac screening investigations in adult‐onset progressive external ophthalmoplegia patients

Introduction: Patients with mitochondrial myopathies may develop cardiac complications such as cardiomyopathy and/or cardiac conduction defects. To identify these potentially life‐threatening and treatable conditions, it is common practice to screen patients intermittently with electrocardiography and echocardiography. The optimal time interval for such screening investigations is unknown. We developed this study to review our screening results in adult‐onset patients with progressive external ophthalmoplegia (PEO). Methods: This study was a retrospective review of PEO patients with 5 years or more of cardiac screening investigations who did not have any cardiac symptoms. Results: Fifteen patients were included, and cardiomyopathy was identified on screening echocardiogram in 1 patient. Four patients had other abnormalities identified, which were unrelated to their mitochondrial myopathy. Conclusions: Only 1 patient in 15 developed cardiac complications related to mitochondrial disease during 5 years of follow‐up. We suggest that a screening interval of 3–5 years is probably appropriate for adult‐onset PEO patients who do not have cardiac symptoms. Muscle Nerve 60: 608–611, 2012
Management of lower extremity arterial trauma.

Extremity vascular trauma is common in most urban trauma centers and controversy remains about the optimal management of arterial injuries. We examined the records of 188 patients who had lower extremity arterial trauma from September 1987 to April 1992 to help clarify these issues. There were 142 (75.5%) gunshot wounds, 18 (9.6%) stab wounds, 5 (2.7%) shotgun wounds, and 23 (12.2%) patients with blunt trauma. There were 43 (22.9%) associated venous injuries. There were 10 repair failures in the acute postoperative period. There were no repair failures for the iliac artery. Three failures involved the superficial femoral artery (SFA), six were popliteal, and one tibial. Vein and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) grafts were used to repair the SFA with equal success. Repair of the popliteal artery with PTFE failed in four of five cases, while vein grafts failed in only 2 of 19 cases (p < 0.01). Graft failure was associated with blunt trauma in 8 of 23 patients (35%), and always resulted in amputation. Penetrating injuries accounted for only 2 of 165 (1.2%) failures and were successfully redone with no amputations. Venous injury was present in all SFA failures. Popliteal vein injury was present in two PTFE and two vein grafts that failed. There were no infections of vein or PTFE grafts. In conclusion, PTFE and vein have equal graft patency for the repair of the iliac and femoral arteries. However, the patency of PTFE was significantly worse in the popliteal location. Vein grafts should be used for repair of this vessel. Graft failure and amputation were more common with popliteal and tibial injuries from blunt mechanisms. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
CD73-generated adenosine facilitates Toxoplasma gondii differentiation to long-lived tissue cysts in the central nervous system

Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular protozoan pathogen that traffics to the central nervous system (CNS) following invasion of its host. In the CNS, T. gondii undergoes transformation from a rapidly dividing tachyzoite to a long-lived, slow-dividing bradyzoite contained within cysts. The role of extracellular adenosine in T. gondii pathogenesis has not been previously investigated. T. gondii uses host purines such as adenosine for its energy needs, as it is unable to make its own. Here, we show that CD73−/− mice, which lack the ability to generate extracellular adenosine, are protected from T. gondii chronic infection, with significantly fewer cysts and reduced susceptibility to reactivation of infection in the CNS independent of host effector function. Parasite dissemination to the brain was unimpaired in CD73−/− hosts, suggesting that the reduced cyst number is due to impaired parasite differentiation in the CNS. Confirming this, T. gondii tachyzoites formed fewer cysts following alkaline pH stress in astrocytes isolated from CD73−/− mice compared with wild type, and in fibroblasts treated with a CD73 inhibitor. Cyst formation was rescued in CD73−/− astrocytes supplemented with adenosine, but not with adenosine receptor agonist 5′-N-ethylcarboxamidoadenosine. Furthermore, mice lacking adenosine receptors had no defect in cyst formation. Based on these findings, we conclude that CD73 expression promotes Toxoplasma bradyzoite differentiation and cyst formation by a mechanism dependent on the generation of adenosine, but independent of adenosine receptor signaling. Overall, these findings suggest that modulators of extracellular adenosine may be used to develop therapies aimed at defending against human toxoplasmosis.
Myosin Adenosine Triphosphatase Activity in the Volume‐Overloaded Hypertrophied Feline Right Ventricle

Chronic pressure overload leads to hypertrophy, depressed mechanical function, and reduced myosin ATPase activity. However, it is not known whether the lowered myosin ATPase activity results from the hypertrophic process per se or whether the elevated afterload is required for the depressed myosin ATPase activity. Further, a causal relationship between lowered myosin ATPase and weakened mechanical function in pressure overload has not been established. Chronic volume overload on the myocardium, leading to hypertrophy equivalent to that in pressure overload, allows the effects of pressure overload to be separated from the effects of hypertrophy and provides insight into the association between myosin ATPase and mechanical function. We produced large atrial septal defects (ASD) with a transvenous biopsy catheter in six adult cats. This resulted in 63% right ventricular hypertrophy, normal (P > 0.05) papillary muscle mechanical function (velocity at 0.5-g/mm2 load: control-1.01 ± 0.05 muscle lengths per second; ASD-1.02 + 0.26 muscle lengths per second), and normal (P > 0.05) myosin ATPase activity in three activating mediums (actin: C-0.20 ± 0.02, ASD «· 0.21 ± 0.03; Ca1+: C - 0.41 ± 0.03, ASD - 0.38 ± 0.02; K-EDTA: C - 1.67 ± 0.05, ASD - 1.69 ± 0.07 pmol Pi/min · ing). We concluded that pressure overload is required for depression of myosin ATPase activity. Our study supports the concept that depression of myosin ATPase is causally related to depressed mechanical function in chronic pressure overload. Circ Res 46: 81-87, 1979
Lateral hypothalamic area deep brain stimulation for refractory obesity: a pilot study with preliminary data on safety, body weight, and energy metabolism.

OBJECT Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the lateral hypothalamic area (LHA) has been suggested as a potential treatment for intractable obesity. The authors present the 2-year safety results as well as early efficacy and metabolic effects in 3 patients undergoing bilateral LHA DBS in the first study of this approach in humans. METHODS Three patients meeting strict criteria for intractable obesity, including failed bariatric surgery, underwent bilateral implantation of LHA DBS electrodes as part of an institutional review board- and FDA-approved pilot study. The primary focus of the study was safety; however, the authors also received approval to collect data on early efficacy including weight change and energy metabolism. RESULTS No serious adverse effects, including detrimental psychological consequences, were observed with continuous LHA DBS after a mean follow-up of 35 months (range 30-39 months). Three-dimensional nonlinear transformation of postoperative imaging superimposed onto brain atlas anatomy was used to confirm and study DBS contact proximity to the LHA. No significant weight loss trends were seen when DBS was programmed using standard settings derived from movement disorder DBS surgery. However, promising weight loss trends have been observed when monopolar DBS stimulation has been applied via specific contacts found to increase the resting metabolic rate measured in a respiratory chamber. CONCLUSIONS Deep brain stimulation of the LHA may be applied safely to humans with intractable obesity. Early evidence for some weight loss under metabolically optimized settings provides the first "proof of principle" for this novel antiobesity strategy. A larger follow-up study focused on efficacy along with a more rigorous metabolic analysis is planned to further explore the benefits and therapeutic mechanism behind this investigational therapy.
The systematic pricing of market sentiment shock

ABSTRACT We show that market sentiment shocks create demand shocks for risky assets and a systematic risk for assets. We measure a market sentiment shock as the unexpected portion of the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index’s growth. This shock prices stock returns in arbitrage pricing theory framework at 1% after controlling for market, size, value, momentum, and liquidity risk factors. Its premium lowered the implied risk aversion by 97.9% to 11.46 between 1978 and 2009 in our sentiment consumption-based capital-asset-pricing model. Merton’s [1973. “An Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model. ” Econometrica 41: 867–887]. intertemporal capital-asset-pricing model reconfirms our finding that this market sentiment shock is a systematic risk factor that provides investment opportunities.
Mycosubtilin Overproduction by Bacillus subtilis BBG100 Enhances the Organism's Antagonistic and Biocontrol Activities

ABSTRACT A Bacillus subtilis derivative was obtained from strain ATCC 6633 by replacement of the native promoter of the mycosubtilin operon by a constitutive promoter originating from the replication gene repU of the Staphylococcus aureus plasmid pUB110. The recombinant strain, designated BBG100, produced up to 15-fold more mycosubtilin than the wild type produced. The overproducing phenotype was related to enhancement of the antagonistic activities against several yeasts and pathogenic fungi. Hemolytic activities were also clearly increased in the modified strain. Mass spectrometry analyses of enriched mycosubtilin extracts showed similar patterns of lipopeptides for BBG100 and the wild type. Interestingly, these analyses also revealed a new form of mycosubtilin which was more easily detected in the BBG100 sample. When tested for its biocontrol potential, wild-type strain ATCC 6633 was almost ineffective for reducing a Pythium infection of tomato seedlings. However, treatment of seeds with the BBG100 overproducing strain resulted in a marked increase in the germination rate of seeds. This protective effect afforded by mycosubtilin overproduction was also visualized by the significantly greater fresh weight of emerging seedlings treated with BBG100 compared to controls or seedlings inoculated with the wild-type strain.
Metal object detection and discrimination using Sinc signal

The paper shows application of nontraditional excitation signal Sinc for metal detection and discrimination of detected objects. It also briefly describes characterization of Sinc signal. Head of the All Terrain Mine Detector is used for experiment. Various spheres from different materials and with different diameters were placed in non-magnetic platform in the open air as a test target. Signal was processed in frequency domain. Spectra graphs are presented to differentiate between the different objects. On the basis of these graphs, better identification and discrimination between these objects (i.e. Anti-Personnel mines or UXO) could be done.
The reproducibility of TW2 skeletal age assessments by a self-taught assessor.

An investigation into the reproducibility of TW2 skeletal age assessments was carried out using three observers. The first, G.B. , had learned the technique without expert advice, while the second, R.H. W. , was one of the originators of the technique. The third, N.C. , was an experienced rater orginally trained by R.H. W. G.B. and R.H. W. were compared using a standard set of 112 X-rays arranged in a random order. G.B. was compared to N.C. using a random sample of 50 X-rays from the Leuven Growth Study of Belgian Boys. The percentage agreement in rating all 20 bones was just over 83% in both analyses. Higher percentage agreements were found in both analyses for the round bones (88% and 85.1% respectively) as opposed to the radius, ulna and short bones (81.3% 82.1% respectively). Significant differences were found in mean bone-age between G.B. and R.H. W. and between G.B. and N.C. for TW220 and carpal bone ages. No significant differences in mean bone-ages were found for RUS bone-ages. The reproducibility of the self-taught assessor was found to be as good as that of assessors trained by the originators of the technique or experienced raters.
Extending Inferential Group Analysis in Type 2 Diabetic Patients with Multivariate GLM Implemented in SPM8

Background: Although voxel based morphometry studies are still the standard for analyzing brain structure, their dependence on massive univariate inferential methods is a limiting factor. A better understanding of brain pathologies can be achieved by applying inferential multivariate methods, which allow the study of multiple dependent variables, e.g. different imaging modalities of the same subject. Objective: Given the widespread use of SPM software in the brain imaging community, the main aim of this work is the implementation of massive multivariate inferential analysis as a toolbox in this software package. applied to the use of T1 and T2 structural data from diabetic patients and controls. This implementation was compared with the traditional ANCOVA in SPM and a similar multivariate GLM toolbox (MRM). Method: We implemented the new toolbox and tested it by investigating brain alterations on a cohort of twenty-eight type 2 diabetes patients and twenty-six matched healthy controls, using information from both T1 and T2 weighted structural MRI scans, both separately – using standard univariate VBM - and simultaneously, with multivariate analyses. Results: Univariate VBM replicated predominantly bilateral changes in basal ganglia and insular regions in type 2 diabetes patients. On the other hand, multivariate analyses replicated key findings of univariate results, while also revealing the thalami as additional foci of pathology. Conclusion: While the presented algorithm must be further optimized, the proposed toolbox is the first implementation of multivariate statistics in SPM8 as a user-friendly toolbox, which shows great potential and is ready to be validated in other clinical cohorts and modalities.
A Rotation and a Translation Suffice: Fooling CNNs with Simple Transformations

Recent work has shown that neural network-based vision classifiers exhibit a significant vulnerability to misclassifications caused by imperceptible but adversarial perturbations of their inputs. These perturbations, however, are purely pixel-wise and built out of loss function gradients of either the attacked model or its surrogate. As a result, they tend to look pretty artificial and contrived. This might suggest that vulnerability to misclassification of slight input perturbations can only arise in a truly adversarial setting and thus is unlikely to be a problem in more benign contexts. In this paper, we provide evidence that such a belief might be incorrect. To this end, we show that neural networks are already vulnerable to significantly simpler - and more likely to occur naturally - transformations of the inputs. Specifically, we demonstrate that rotations and translations alone suffice to significantly degrade the classification performance of neural network-based vision models across a spectrum of datasets. This remains to be the case even when these models are trained using appropriate data augmentation and are already robust against the canonical, pixel-wise perturbations. Also, finding such "fooling" transformation does not even require having any special access to the model or its surrogate - just trying out a small number of random rotation and translation combinations already has a significant effect. These findings suggest that our current neural network-based vision models might not be as reliable as we tend to assume.
Mobile Banking Operation in Bangladesh: Prediction of Future

Banks are playing very vital role for the economic development of a country. In this paper the picture of existing operation of mobile banking service as well as the future of this has been depicted. This is almost a descriptive study that has used both primary and secondary data. The result is showing that almost all the banks are trying to adopt mobile banking to make their customers satisfied and be advance in their world where the common services are account opening, account balance query, fund transfer and PIN related service. All the operators of mobile phone in Bangladesh have started to be involved at a greater extent in this regard. And from the viewpoint of the customers the study has inferred they are satisfied with the very few services that new banking system is giving and as a consequence the future of banking business will be brighter day by day. This paper will contribute a lot to the banks of Bangladesh for better service giving and make customers more concern to avail mobile banking service.
Cidofovir treatment of human polyomavirus‐associated acute haemorrhagic cystitis

Abstract: We report the case of an 18‐year‐old patient who received an allogeneic bone marrow transplant from an HLA‐identical unrelated donor for a Ph+ acute lymphoblastic leukemia, in his third complete remission. Cyclophosphamide and busulfan were used as conditioning treatment. Acute graft‐versus‐host disease developed on day +9, and the response to adequate treatment (steroids) was favourable. On day +45 the patient developed an acute severe haemorhragic cystitis, and BK polyomavirus was demonstrated in urine samples using electron microscopy and polymerase chain reaction. Urinary symptoms did not improve in spite of palliative treatment, but a response was evident after 2 weeks of cidofovir treatment.
Clinical evidence for genomic imprinting in bipolar I disorder

The phenotypic indicators of the genomic imprinting model were applied to clinical psychopathology data on 100 bipolar (BP) I probands and their families. The paternal transmission was associated with a significantly younger age of onset of the BP illness in probands and a higher rate of affective disorders in first‐ and second‐degree relatives. The effect of the sex of the transmitting parent on age of onset in probands decreased but remained significant when controlling for the effect of the probands' age at investigation. Probands' sex had no significant influence on their age of onset. The severity of the BP illness in probands in terms of number of illness episodes and annual frequency was not influenced by the sex of the transmitting parent.
Posttraumatic stress disorder and its comorbidity with depression and somatisation in the elderly – A German community-based study

Objectives: Even 60 years after World War II, the German elderly population is significantly more often affected by posttraumatic symptomatology compared to the younger cohorts. This study is addressing prevalence rates of posttraumatic symptomatology and its comorbidity with depression and somatisation. Methods: This study examines posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) according to DSM-IV, partial PTSD, depression and somatisation in a randomly selected sample of the German general population aged 60–85 years (N = 1.659) using self-rating instruments (Patient Health Questionnaire, PHQ; Post Traumatic Diagnostic Scale, PTDS). Results: One-month prevalence rate was 4.0% for DSM-IV PTSD; another 12.2% fulfilled the criteria of partial PTSD. A significant increase across the age groups was found for partial PTSD. 11.5% of the persons affected by posttraumatic symptomatology fulfil the criteria of a somatoform syndrome, 8.6% fulfil the criteria of major depression and 10.4% fulfil the criteria of other depressive syndromes according to the PHQ. A current posttraumatic symptomatology is associated with increased prevalence rates of somatoform and depressive disorders. Moreover, traumatic experiences without a current PTSD are associated with increased rates of somatoform disorders. Conclusion: Posttraumatic symptomatology is a common phenomenon in the German elderly population. Especially, subsyndromal disorders are very common and increasing across the age groups. Posttraumatic symptomatology is associated with an increased risk of depressive and somatoform disorders. As posttraumatic symptoms are often neglected in geriatric health care, future effort should address the recognition and treatment of posttraumatic symptoms in elderly patients.
Effect of Exercise on Mental Health in the Physical Dimension, Anxiety and Mental Disorder, Social Dysfunction and Depression

In the last twenty years, a lot of attention to issues of psychology and psychotherapy are associated with physical activity. Due to the increasing rate of mental disorders in country, this study attempts to compare the health of athletes and non-athletes in Beheshti University. Mental Health in schools will also compare. In this study, the health measured using the General Health Questionnaire GHQ-28 has performed. University students participated in this study of 260 patients who were randomly selected to represent the school. Statistical methods are used for the analysis and comparison of two sample t-test. The results show that the significant differences of symptoms of physical, anxiety, sleep disorder, social dysfunction and depression in the two groups were observed between athletes and non-athletes. The college student mental health and physical education than other students in four scales were much more favorable situation.
The dose-response of time served in prison on mortality: New York State, 1989-2003.

OBJECTIVES I investigated the differential impact of the dose-response of length of stay on postprison mortality among parolees. METHODS Using 1989-2003 New York State parole administrative data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics on state correctional facilities, I employed multinomial logistic regression analyses and formal demographic techniques that used the life table of the populations to deduce changes in life expectancy. RESULTS Each additional year in prison produced a 15.6% increase in the odds of death for parolees, which translated to a 2-year decline in life expectancy for each year served in prison. The risk was highest upon release from prison and declined over time. The time to recovery, or the lowest risk level, was approximately two thirds of the time served in prison. CONCLUSIONS Incarceration reduces life span. Future research should investigate the pathways to this higher mortality and the possibilities of recovery.