Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aerobic-Anaerobic Profiles, Heart Rate and Match Analysis in Old Basketball Players

Background: Scientific information on master competitions is mainly in individual sports and there is a lack of information on the senior team sport matches. Objective: To provide aerobic and anaerobic profiles of senior (55 ± 5 years) basketball players (n = 10), and to evaluate the physiological load and the match analysis of a senior basketball match. Methods: Participants were administered a maximal oxygen consumption (VO2 max) and anaerobic tests (jump tests: counter movement jump (CMJ) and bounce jump (BJ), and running tests: 10-m sprint and running 10 m while bouncing the ball (10-mBB)). During a senior basketball match, the players’ heart rate (HR), electrocardiogram (ECG), blood lactate concentration (LA) and motor activities were recorded. Results: The maximal aerobic test values were: HRpeak 149 ± 9 beats·min–1; power 187 ± 23 W; VO2peak 22.9 ± 2.2 ml·kg–1·min–1; LApeak 8.3 ± 1.9 mM. Jump test values were: CMJ = 24.9 ± 6.5 cm and BJ = 20.5 ± 4.75 cm. Running performances were: 10-m sprint in 2.26 ± 0.18 s; 10-mBB in 2.34 ± 0.14 s; 10-mBB/10-m sprint ratio 1.1 ± 0.1. During the match, no adverse event or ST-segment changes or complex arrhythmias occurred. HR exceeded 85% of HRpeak for 59 ± 37%. LA values were 3.7 ± 1.8 mM. Players spent 48% walking, 19% positioning, 17% running, 15% inactive, and 1% jumping. A limited number of fouls (2 ± 1.5) was observed and players performed only 2-point shots. Conclusion: Older basketball players undergoing a training regimen of 1.5 h·week–1 showed good anaerobic characteristics and a moderate aerobic capacity. Although the senior basketball match required high intensities (only 3% of total match time spent at HR <70% of HRmax), the ECG Holter monitoring showed no adverse event, ST-segment changes or complex arrhythmias. Finally, their play did not include the technical skills recently introduced to basketball.
Postnatal Change in Angle between the Tympanic Annulus and Surrounding Structures

Postnatal developmental relationships in human ears were studied by a computer-aided three-dimensional reconstruction and measurement method. We measured the angle, in reference to the horizontal plane, between the tympanic annulus, the oval window, and the internal auditory canal (IAC) in 20 normal temporal bones obtained from individuals between 1 day old and 76 years old. The horizontal plane was defined as the plane sloped 30° infero-anteriorly from the plane of the horizontal canal in each specimen. The plane of the tympanic annulus changed from a nearly horizontal orientation (34.2° from the horizontal plane) in neonates to a more vertical orientation (63.3° from the horizontal plane) in adults. The tympanic annulus and oval window planes remained at the same angle to each other (11.9° ± 5.1°) throughout postnatal development, as did the plane of the tympanic annulus and the LAC (68.6° ± 5.3°). These findings have implications for ear surgeons, especially those operating on young children.
Continuous Outcomes Assessment in an Introduction to Mechanical Engineering Course

Program outcomes are the knowledge, skills, and abilities that students should be able to demonstrate at the end of a degree program. ABET requires that accredited engineering departments must define a set of program outcomes, and then put into place a continuous process to assess the achievement of these outcomes by their students. This assessment can be performed both at the whole program level, as well as at the individual course level. Our group is responsible for the "Introduction to Mechanical Engineering" course in our department. Since Spring 2004, ME outcomes have been promoted in the course, and various classroom assignments and projects have been developed to address specific ME outcomes. Three times during the course (pre, mid, post) an outcomes assessment survey is completed by the students. At the end of the course the students submit a team design project report. This paper presents the class assignments and projects that address specific ME program outcomes. Results of this continuous outcomes assessment process are presented, showing the general trend of outcomes achievement in the course over several years
CENP-U Cooperates with Hec1 to Orchestrate Kinetochore-Microtubule Attachment*

Mitosis is an orchestration of dynamic interaction between chromosomes and spindle microtubules by which genomic materials are equally distributed into two daughter cells. Previous studies showed that CENP-U is a constitutive centromere component essential for proper chromosome segregation. However, the precise molecular mechanism has remained elusive. Here, we identified CENP-U as a novel interacting partner of Hec1, an evolutionarily conserved kinetochore core component essential for chromosome plasticity. Suppression of CENP-U by shRNA resulted in mitotic defects with an impaired kinetochore-microtubule attachment. Interestingly, CENP-U not only binds microtubules directly but also displays a cooperative microtubule binding activity with Hec1 in vitro. Furthermore, we showed that CENP-U is a substrate of Aurora-B. Importantly, phosphorylation of CENP-U leads to reduced kinetochore-microtubule interaction, which contributes to the error-correcting function of Aurora-B. Taken together, our results indicate that CENP-U is a novel microtubule binding protein and plays an important role in kinetochore-microtubule attachment through its interaction with Hec1.
A Distributed Opportunistic scheduling protocol for device-to-device communications

In this paper, we consider the distributed scheduling problem for the OFDM based device-to-device (D2D) communications. In order to fully exploit the spatial diversity of the channel variation as well as provide access fairness for all D2D links, we propose a synchronous Distributed Opportunistic scheduling protocol under Fairness constraints (DO-Fast). DO-Fast incorporates the opportunistic scheduling with a round-robin strategy. By exchanging local Channel State Information (CSI) in a distributed way, the opportunistic scheduling strategy enables the links with better channel conditions to take precedence for higher access priorities. It leads to more concurrent transmissions and higher system throughput than the random scheduling strategy, where links are allocated with priorities in a random manner regardless of channel conditions. Meanwhile, we prompt a round-robin strategy so that the D2D links would take high priorities alternately, which guarantees the short-term fairness requirements of the links with poor channel conditions. We show via simulations that DO-Fast achieves throughput improvement over the existing scheduling protocol from the network perspective with acceptable delay performance.
Prevalence and clinicopathologic findings of antiphospholipid syndrome nephropathy in Thai systemic lupus erythematosus patients who underwent renal biopsies

Aim: To determine the prevalence of antiphospholipid syndrome nephropathy (APSN) in Thai systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients who underwent renal biopsy and to compare the relationship of renal histopathology and other significant clinical parameters between SLE patients with and without APSN.
Recurrent NCOA2 gene rearrangements in congenital/infantile spindle cell rhabdomyosarcoma

Spindle cell rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) is a rare form of RMS with different clinical characteristics between children and adult patients. Its genetic hallmark remains unknown and it remains debatable if there is pathogenetic relationship between the spindle cell and the so‐called sclerosing RMS. We studied two pediatric and one adult spindle cell RMS by next generation RNA sequencing and FusionSeq data analysis to detect novel fusions. An SRF‐NCOA2 fusion was detected in a spindle cell RMS from the posterior neck in a 7‐month‐old child. The fusion matched the tumor karyotype and was confirmed by FISH and RT‐PCR, which showed fusion of SRF exon 6 to NCOA2 exon 12. Additional 14 spindle cell (from 8 children and 6 adults) and 4 sclerosing (from 2 children and 2 adults) RMS were tested by FISH for the presence of abnormalities in NCOA2, SRF, as well as for PAX3 and NCOA1. NCOA2 rearrangements were found in two additional spindle cell RMS from a 3‐month‐old and a 4‐week‐old child. In the latter tumor, TEAD1 was identified by rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) to be the NCOA2 gene fusion partner. None of the adult tumors were positive for NCOA2 rearrangement. Despite similar histomorphology in adults and young children, these results suggest that spindle cell RMS is a heterogeneous disease genetically as well as clinically. Our findings also support a relationship between NCOA2‐rearranged spindle cell RMS occurring in young childhood and the so‐called congenital RMS, which often displays rearrangements at 8q13 locus (NCOA2). © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A comparison of salicylic acid levels in normal subjects after rectal versus oral dosing.

OBJECTIVES The common practice is to use 162 mg of aspirin orally in the emergency department (ED) for patients presenting with myocardial infarction. If the patient cannot take aspirin orally in the authors' facility, then 600 mg of aspirin is given rectally. However, no strong evidence exists as to whether the oral and rectal doses provide equivalent risk protection. The authors hypothesized that the salicylic acid levels for orally and rectally administered aspirin will not be similar, because of the different dosages used and the different routes of administration. METHODS The study sample consisted of healthy, nonpregnant, adult volunteers without active illness, who did not take any medication regularly. Each subject served as his or her own control to account for any confounding factors. The study was conducted on 2 days, separated by a 1-week washout period. On the first day, 162 mg of oral aspirin was chewed and swallowed. Salicylic acid levels were obtained at baseline (i.e., before taking the aspirin) and then 30, 60, and 90 minutes after dosing. The 600-mg aspirin suppository was self-administered 1 week later with a sample for laboratory measures again drawn at baseline and then 30, 60, and 90 minutes after dosing. RESULTS Twenty-four subjects completed the study. The rectal suppository provided significantly more salicylic acid into the blood than the oral tablets over 90 minutes (p < 0.001). No statistical difference was noted between oral and rectal administration from baseline to 30 minutes (p > 0.05). However, mean salicylic acid levels from the rectal suppository were statistically higher than from the oral tablets from 30 to 60 minutes (p < 0.001) and from 60 to 90 minutes (p = 0.002). More than 60% of the subjects had an increasing salicylic acid level response over time to the rectal suppository. The salicylic acid level response to the oral administration was more evenly divided between those subjects whose salicylic acid levels peaked quickly and then fell or held steady (33%), those whose salicylic acid levels increased over time (29%), and those whose salicylic acid levels were measureable only after 60 minutes (25%). Although not statistically significant, these differences in group distributions for the type of salicylic acid level response between oral and rectal doses suggested the possibility of a rectal advantage. CONCLUSIONS Whether the higher salicylic acid levels and faster absorption of the rectal aspirin translate into better clinical outcomes is unknown and cannot be concluded from our study. Previous evidence, however, has shown that 162 mg of aspirin chewed and swallowed provided lower mortality in patients presenting with myocardial infarction. Our results suggested the rectal administration of a 600-mg suppository provides sufficient levels of salicylic acid within 90 minutes to meet or exceed that of oral aspirin.
Urban-Area Extraction From Polarimetric SAR Images Using Polarization Orientation Angle

In this letter, an algorithm is proposed that robustly extracts urban areas from polarimetric synthetic aperture radar images. Polarization orientation angle (POA), volume scattering power (Pv) derived by four-component decomposition, and total power (TP) are utilized in the proposed algorithm. The dependence of the four decomposition components on POA can be lessened by rotating the elements of the coherency matrix by the POA. However, a level of POA dependence remains even after the correction. The proposed algorithm utilizes POA-corrected components, but pixels are grouped into several categories according to POA. First, urban and farmland training data are selected for each category in a study area. Then, urban and mountain areas are separated from farmland, bare ground, and sea by utilizing the Pv-TP scattergram. Finally, a measure of the POA randomness between neighboring pixels is used to discriminate between urban areas with nearly homogeneous POA and mountain areas with randomly distributed POAs. When performing classification on more than one study area, thresholds manually selected for one of the study areas are used to automatically estimate thresholds for the other areas. An accuracy assessment demonstrates that POA-based categorization and utilization of POA randomness contribute to improving classification accuracy.
Managing hypertension in pregnancy.

OBSTETRICIANS and internists have resolved a long-standing disagreement about managing the hypertensive pregnant patient. Traditionally, obstetricians have been cautious about taking steps to reduce blood pressures in pregnancy for fear of compromising the circulation to the fetus, except in certain circumstances. On the other hand, "we internists have tended to throw up our hands whenever obstetricians say 'don't treat'," says Ray Gifford, MD, Cleveland Clinic Foundation. Gifford chaired a nine-member working group, sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, to resolve these differences. The report has the approval of
Preferences as expectation-driven inferences: effects of affective expectations on affective experience.

Presents a model arguing that affect and emotion are often formed in an expectation-driven fashion. A pilot study and 2 experiments manipulated undergraduate Ss' affective expectations (e.g., how funny they expected a set of cartoons to be) and whether Ss' expectations were confirmed (e.g., whether the cartoons really were funny). When the value of a stimulus was consistent with an affective expectation, people formed evaluations relatively quickly. Even when the value of a stimulus was discrepant from an affective expectation, people sometimes assimilated the value of the stimulus to their expectations. Other times, such as when making a more fine-grained evaluation of the cartoons, people noticed that they were discrepant from their affective expectations. Under these conditions, people appeared to have more difficulty forming preferences. They took longer to evaluate and spent more time thinking about the cartoons.
Risk factors for periodontitis in HIV patients.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to identify risk factors for periodontitis associated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. METHODS A total of 152 HIV(+) patients were recruited from the CARE clinic at the University of the Pacific School of Dentistry. Clinical measurements (gingival index, plaque index, bleeding index, probing depth, and attachment loss), gingival crevicular fluid (GCF) and subgingival plaque samples were taken from eight sites of each patient at baseline and 6-month visits. GCF neutrophil elastase was determined by measurement of p-nitroanalide resulting from hydrolysis of an elastase-specific peptide. GCF beta-glucuronidase was determined by release of 4-methylumbelliferone from hydrolysis of a specific substrate. A bacterial concentration fluorescence immunoassay was used to detect periodontopathic bacteria in subgingival plaque samples. RESULTS Viral load, age, smoking pack-years, Fusobacterium nucleatum, Prevotella intermedia, Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans, Porphyromonas gingivalis, neutrophil elastase, and beta-glucuronidase were significantly correlated with clinical measurements (0.0001 < p < 0.05). Significantly higher levels of elastase, beta-glucuronidase, F. nucleatum, P. intermedia, and A. actinomycetemcomitans were found at progressing sites than in non-progressing sites (0.001 < p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS These data indicate that age, smoking pack-years, viral load, F. nucleatum, P. intermedia, A. actinomycetemcomitans, elastase, and beta-glucuronidase are risk factors for periodontitis in HIV(+) patients.
S-adenosyl-L-methionine for treatment of depression, osteoarthritis, and liver disease.

Outcomes assessed in the review The inclusion criteria for the outcomes were not specified a priori. For each of the four conditions (depression osteoarthritis, cholestasis of pregnancy, and intrahepatic cholestasis associated with liver disease), the reviewers chose the clinically relevant outcomes and clinically comparable follow-up times that were reported most often. These included both dichotomous and continuous outcome measures. The outcome measures used in the review were the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD) for depression, pain for osteoarthritis, and pruritis and bilirubin for the analysis of liver disease studies.
Frequent ventricular ectopy after exercise as a predictor of death.

BACKGROUND Exercise-induced ventricular ectopy predicts an increased risk of death in population-based cohorts. We sought to examine in a clinical cohort the prognostic importance of ventricular ectopy immediately after exercise, when reactivation of parasympathetic activity occurs. We hypothesized that ventricular ectopy after exercise (i.e., during the recovery phase) would predict an increased risk of death better than ventricular ectopy during exercise. METHODS We studied 29,244 patients (mean [+/-SD] age, 56+/-11 years; 70 percent men) who had been referred for symptom-limited exercise testing without a history of heart failure, valve disease, or arrhythmia. Frequent ventricular ectopy was defined by the presence of seven or more ventricular premature beats per minute, ventricular bigeminy or trigeminy, ventricular couplets or triplets, ventricular tachycardia, ventricular flutter, torsade de pointes, or ventricular fibrillation. RESULTS Frequent ventricular ectopy occurred only during exercise in 945 patients (3 percent), only during recovery in 589 (2 percent), and during both exercise and recovery in 491 (2 percent). There were 1862 deaths during a mean of 5.3 years of follow-up. Frequent ventricular ectopy during exercise predicted an increased risk of death (five-year death rate, 9 percent, vs. 5 percent among patients without frequent ventricular ectopy during exercise; hazard ratio, 1.8; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.5 to 2.1; P<0.001), but frequent ventricular ectopy during recovery was a stronger predictor (11 percent vs. 5 percent; hazard ratio, 2.4; 95 percent confidence interval, 2.0 to 2.9; P<0.001). After propensity matching for confounding variables, frequent ventricular ectopy during recovery predicted an increased risk of death (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.5; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.1 to 1.9; P=0.003), but frequent ventricular ectopy during exercise did not (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.1; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.9 to 1.3; P=0.53). CONCLUSIONS Frequent ventricular ectopy during recovery after exercise is a better predictor of an increased risk of death than ventricular ectopy occurring only during exercise.
Isolation, molecular identification, and antifungal susceptibility profiles of vaginal isolates of Candida species

Background and Objectives: Vulvovaginal candidiasis is a common fungal infection among women during reproductive ages. Although, Candida albicans is accounted as the main etiologic agent of vaginitis, non-albicans species have arisen during last years. Resistant to antifungal drugs especially, fluconazole has been more reported by researchers from around the World. The aims of this study were to determine the prevalence of vulvovaginal candidiasis among suspected patients with vaginitis, the frequency of Candida species, and the susceptibility profiles of isolates to caspofungin, fluconazole and clotrimazole. Materials and Methods: One hundred and twenty suspected women with vaginitis were examined by specialist physician and sampled using moisture swabs. Swabs were inoculated on CHROMagar Candida plates, incubated at 35°C and detected all isolated Candida species using morphological, microcopy and molecular methods. The antifungal susceptibility tests with caspofungin, fluconazole and clotrimazole were applied using microdilution and Resazurin dye methods against all isolated yeasts. Results: The cultures were positive for 34(28.3%) samples and three Candida species including; C. albicans (88.2%), C. glabrata (8.8%) and C. kefyr (2.9%). Our study shows that only one isolate of C. albicans was resistant to caspofungin at the concentration of 2 μg/ml after 24h incubation that increased to 2 isolates after 48h incubation. All isolates were sensitive to fluconazole at the MIC ranges of 1-0.25 μg/ml, while 88.2% of them were inhibited at 0.25 μg/mL of clotrimazole. Candida albicans remains the most common agent of fungal vaginitis. Conclusion: Although all of Candida isolates were susceptible to fluconazole in vitro, it should be used with caution for empirical therapy due to more resistant rates in clinic. In addition, due to valuable sensitivity of all tested strains to caspofungin, it potentially can be presented as the first line therapy for Candida vaginitis.
Comparative in vitro study of interactions between particles and respiratory surface macrophages, erythrocytes, and epithelial cells of the chicken and the rat

In mammals, surface macrophages (SMs) play a foremost role in protecting the respiratory system by engulfing and destroying inhaled pathogens and harmful particulates. However, in birds, the direct defense role(s) that SMs perform remains ambiguous. Paucity and even lack of SMs have been reported in the avian respiratory system. It has been speculated that the pulmonary defenses in birds are inadequate and that birds are exceptionally susceptible to pulmonary diseases. In an endeavour to resolve the existing controversy, the phagocytic capacities of the respiratory SMs of the domestic fowl and the rat were compared under similar experimental conditions by exposure to polystyrene particles. In cells of equivalent diameters (8.5 µm in the chicken and 9.0 µm in the rat) and hence volumes, with the volume density of the engulfed polystyrene particles, i.e. the volume of the particles per unit volume of the cell (SM) of 23% in the chicken and 5% in the rat cells, the avian cells engulfed substantially more particles. Furthermore, the avian SMs phagocytized the particles more efficiently, i.e. at a faster rate. The chicken erythrocytes and the epithelial cells of the airways showed noteworthy phagocytic activity. In contrast to the rat cells that did not, 22% of the chicken erythrocytes phagocytized one to six particles. In birds, the phagocytic efficiencies of the SMs, erythrocytes, and epithelial cells may consolidate pulmonary defense. The assorted cellular defenses may explain how and why scarcity of SMs may not directly lead to a weak pulmonary defense. The perceived susceptibility of birds to respiratory diseases may stem from the human interventions that have included extreme genetic manipulation and intensive management for maximum productivity. The stress involved and the structural–functional disequilibria that have occurred from a ‘directed evolutionary process’, rather than weak immunological and cellular immunity, may explain the alleged vulnerability of the avian gas exchanger to diseases.