Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effects of changing pace on metabolism and stroke characteristics during high-speed breaststroke swimming

Performances often vary between the heats and finals of breaststroke swimming competitions possibly because the swimmers try to conserve their energy, or for other tactical reasons. Additionally, coaches might advise either a ‘positive’ or ‘even’ pace race strategy during the final. The effect of such pacing changes on metabolism (blood lactate, heart rate, ventilation), ratings of perceived exertion, stroke kinematics and turning times have not been investigated. Nine male competitive breaststroke swimmers swam three paced (Aquapacer™) 200-m trials, 48 h apart and in random order, at 98%, 100% and at an attempted 102% of their maximal 200-m time-trial speed. Responses in metabolic variables were similar between the 98% and 100% trials, but higher post-exercise blood lactate concentrations and respiratory exchange ratios were observed following the 102% trial. As the pace of trials increased, stroke rate was found to increase proportionately with stroke count. However, during the latter stages of the 100% trial, a disproportionate increase in the stroke count was observed, which led to a significant pacing error. This feature was more obvious in the 102% trial, where participants demonstrated ‘positive pacing’ and reported higher ratings of perceived exertion than for the 98% trial. During the early stages of the trials, turning times were initially shorter the faster the pace of the trial; however, as the trials progressed, this pattern was found to reverse. We conclude that a slight reduction in pace during near maximal breaststroke swimming altered kinematic but not post-exercise metabolic responses, while an increase in pace led to positive pacing and an increase in both kinematic responses and anaerobic metabolism.
Subclinical Parvovirus B19 Infection in Children With Sickle Cell Anemia

Purpose To investigate the prevalence and clinical consequences of previous parvovirus B19 exposure in a large cohort of pediatric patients with sickle cell anemia (SCA). Methods Prospective serologic testing for previous parvovirus B19 exposure was performed in steady-state pediatric patients with SCA, either prior to starting hydroxyurea therapy or in preparation for transition to the adult service. A retrospective chart review was performed to ascertain whether patients had a documented history of a transient aplastic crisis. Results The prevalence of serologic evidence of previous parvovirus infection increased with age. The overall prevalence in 102 children with SCA was 53%, ranging from 44% between 5 and 9 years of age to 71% between 17 and 21 years of age. Only 27% of patients had a previous clinically recognized transient aplastic crisis. Conclusions By the teenage years, most pediatric patients with SCA have serologic evidence of previous parvovirus B19 exposure. However, subclinical parvovirus infection appears to be common in children with SCA, since most patients have no documented previous transient aplastic crisis.
Intraoperative Use of Bupivacaine for Tumescent Liposuction: The Robert Wood Johnson Experience

Background: Bupivacaine anesthetic is commonly used as a wetting solution additive in tumescent liposuction, but its routine use remains controversial because of a lack of evidence in the current literature. Methods: In accordance with local institutional review board regulations, a retrospective chart review was conducted of liposuction cases performed from 1997 to 2007 at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The primary endpoint was adverse perioperative events. Secondary endpoints included length of postanesthesia care unit stay and length of total postoperative hospital stay. Results: Eighty-seven cases were analyzed and two subsets of patients were identified. In group 1, 24 patients were compared who underwent liposuction as the primary procedure and received bupivacaine, lidocaine, or no additive in their wetting solution. No adverse events were encountered and the average length of stay was not significantly different. In group 2, 20 patients were compared who underwent abdominoplasty and liposuction and received bupivacaine or no additive in their wetting solution. No adverse events occurred and patients receiving bupivacaine had a significantly shorter average length of stay, 19 hours versus 36 hours, compared with controls (p = 0.015). Conclusions: A review of the experience at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital reveals that the intraoperative use of bupivacaine for tumescent liposuction in 27 cases appeared to be as safe as other tumescent additives. There did not appear to be a significant difference in the incidence of adverse events or postoperative length of stay for patients who underwent liposuction with bupivacaine compared with other wetting solutions. Among a subset of patients who underwent concurrent abdominoplasty and liposuction procedures, patients who received bupivacaine spent significantly less time in the hospital postoperatively than those who did not receive it. Conducting future prospective studies involving larger samples among multiple centers is an essential next step to confirm these findings.
Acute non‐lymphocytic leukemia and acute myeloproliferative syndrome following radiation therapy for non‐hodgkin's lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Cytogenetic studies

Seven cases of acute nonlymphocytic leukemia (ANLL) and one of malignant myeloproliferative syndrome were identified from a pool of 189 cases of non‐Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) and CLL treated primarily with extensive radiotherapy at the Clinical Center, the National Institutes of Health. Four patients also received chemotherapy, two for only short periods. The median time interval from the diagnosis of the primary malignancy to the development of leukemia was 61 months (range 33 to 98 months) and the median survival after the diagnosis of leukemia was two months (0 to 9 months). All eight patients were cytogenetically abnormal and serial chromosome studies revealed that hypodiploidy was the most commonly observed chromosomal abnormality. Abnormalities of chromosome #7 were seen in all five patients analyzed by the chromosome banding technique; four of them had monosomy 7. The next most frequently involved chromosome was #5. The complexity, extensive nature, and long duration of the cytogenetic abnormalities prior to the diagnosis of leukemia in these patients may be characteristic of secondary leukemia in radiation‐treated lymphoma and the presence of such anomalies may predict leukemic transformation.
High-Pressure Pulsatile Lavage Propagates Bacteria into Soft Tissue

Initial wound treatment is critical in the treatment of open fractures, contaminated wounds, and abscesses.19 Ample evidence suggests that high-pressure pulsatile lavage damages bone structure and disrupts soft tissue. We compared the depth of penetration and amount of retention of bacteria in contaminated soft tissue subjected to one of two lavage methods: high-pressure pulsatile and low-pressure gravity flow. Fresh ovine muscle was harvested, contaminated with fluorescently stained Staphylococcus aureus, and subjected to lavage treatment. Specimens in each lavage method group were subdivided based on orientation across or in line with the muscle fibers. High-pressure lavage causes increased depth of bacterial penetration (across: 3,835 μm; in line: 4,220 μm) when compared with low-pressure lavage (across: 1,680 μm; in line: 2,095 μm). Furthermore, both high-pressure treatment groups had higher numbers of retained bacteria as counted in 50 μm × 7,500 μm × 5 μm sections of tissue after lavage (across: 197; in line: 188) when compared with the low-pressure groups (across: 94; in line: 40). These results show that high-pressure pulsatile lavage causes deeper penetration of bacteria and results in greater bacterial retention in soft tissue when compared with low-pressure lavage.
The Association between Market-Determined and Accounting-Determined Risk Measures: A Note

Following Beaver, Kettler, and Scholes [1970] (hereafter BKS), Derstine and Huefner [1974] (hereafter DH) studied the question of whether the LIFO versus FIFO inventory alternative affected the association between market-determined and accounting-determined risk measures. Eskew [1975] did a similar study in the context of successful-well-costing versus full-costing accounting methods used in the extractive petroleum industry. One purpose of this note is to discuss a methodological deficiency in DH's study. Another purpose is to suggest a possible extension to the studies of DH and Eskew.
The Effect of Communication Skills and Interpersonal Problem Solving Skills on Social Self-Efficacy.

The purpose of this study was to examine communication skills, interpersonal problem solving skills, and social self-efficacy perception of adolescents and the predictive role of communication skills and interpersonal problem solving skills on social self-efficacy. This study is a quantitative and relational study aimed at examining the relationships among communication skills, interpersonal problem solving skills, and social self-efficacy. The study group was comprised of 494 (226 females; 268 males) randomly selected high school students studying in different high schools in Mugla, Turkey. The data were collected using the Communication Skills Inventory, Interpersonal Problem Solving Inventory, and Social Self-Efficacy Expectation Scale for Adolescents. Pearson Product-Moment Correlation analysis was employed to search for relationships among communication skills, interpersonal problem solving skills, and social self-efficacy; multiple hierarchical regression analysis was also used for explaining social self-efficacy. The findings showed that the communication skills and interpersonal problem solving skills were found to be significantly correlated to social self-efficacy and communication skills and interpersonal problem solving skills important predictors of social self-efficacy.
Contactless fall detection by means of CW bioradar

Falls are one of the major risks for seniors living alone at home. This paper presents the results of studies carried out to confirm the possibility of using bioradar for the fall detection. 213 records of various basic movements were recorded by continuous wave radar: BioRASCAN-4 with probing frequencies in range 3.6 to 4.0 GHz. Obtained data was used for the development threshold classifier with the following parameters - length of event and variation of signal amplitude. The results of data analysis by suggested algorithm demonstrated a sufficient level of accuracy.
Continuous game dynamics on populations with a cycle structure under weak selection

Understanding the emergence of cooperation among selfish individuals is an enduring conundrum in evolutionary biology, which has been studied using a variety of game theoretical models. Most of the previous studies presumed that interactions between individuals are discrete, but behavior in real systems can hardly be expected to have this dramatically discrete nature. In addition, existing research on continuous strategy games mostly focus on infinite well-mixed populations. Especially, there is few theoretical work on their evolutionary dynamics in structured populations. In the previous work [1], we theoretically studied the game dynamics of continuous strategies in a spatially structured population with its average degree k ≥ 3 under weak selection. Here, we study their evolutionary dynamics under weak selection on a cycle (k = 2), where each individual only interacts with its two immediate neighbors. Using the concept of fixation probability, we derive exact conditions for natural selection favoring one strategy over another for three update rules, called `birth-death', `death-birth', and `imitation'. It shows that for continuous strategy games, the same conditions are derived; especially, the simple rule b/c >; k is valid as well, where b/c is the benefit-to-cost ratio of an altruistic act. In addition, we present a network gain decomposition of the game equilibrium, which might provide a new view of network reciprocity, one of five mechanisms for evolution of cooperation.
Outcomes of Adults with Cystic Fibrosis Infected with Antibiotic-Resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Background: Although Pseudomonas aeruginosa is the most common bacterial infection in adults with cystic fibrosis and frequently develops resistance to multiple classes of antibiotics, it has not been determined whether patients with multiple antibiotic-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa have worse clinical outcomes than patients with more susceptible strains. Objectives: This study assessed the impact of multiply-resistant P. aeruginosa on lung function, hospitalizations, antibiotic use, lung transplantation and survival in adults with cystic fibrosis. Methods: In a cohort study at a university-based adult cystic fibrosis program, 75 consecutive adult cystic fibrosis patients who had P. aeruginosa isolated from sputum cultures were studied over a 4-year period. Outcomes included decline in FEV1, clinic visits, hospitalizations, courses and days of intravenous antibiotics, and lung transplantation. Multiple linear and Poisson regression for repeated measures were used to assess the outcomes. Results: In comparison to patients with susceptible strains, patients with resistant P. aeruginosa had more severe baseline lung disease, more rapid decline in FEV1 (160 ml/year, p = 0.003) and were significantly more likely to undergo lung transplantation (17.6 vs. 0%, p = 0.005). Conclusions: Infection with multiple-antibiotic-resistant P. aeruginosa is associated with accelerated progression of cystic fibrosis, and has important implications for infection control strategies, antibiotic use and lung transplantation.
Swing-Pay: One Card Meets All User Payment and Identity Needs: A Digital Card Module using NFC and Biometric Authentication for Peer-to-Peer Payment

Advancement in payment technologies has an important impact on one's quality of life. Emerging payment technologies create both opportunities and challenges for the future. Being a quick and convenient process, contactless payment gained momentum, especially with merchants, with throughput being the main parameter. However, it poses risks to issuers, as no robust customer verification method is available. Thus, efforts have been underway to evolve and sustain a well-organized, efficient, reliable, and secure unified payment system, which may contribute to the smooth functioning of the market by eliminating obstacles in business.
PCA-Based Edge-Preserving Features for Hyperspectral Image Classification

Edge-preserving features (EPFs) obtained by the application of edge-preserving filters to hyperspectral images (HSIs) have been found very effective in characterizing significant spectral and spatial structures of objects in a scene. However, a direct use of the EPFs can be insufficient to provide a complete characterization of spatial information when objects of different scales are present in the considered images. Furthermore, the edge-preserving smoothing operation unavoidably decreases the spectral differences among objects of different classes, which may affect the following classification. To overcome these problems, in this paper, a novel principal component analysis (PCA)-based EPFs (PCA-EPFs) method for HSI classification is proposed, which consists of the following steps. First, the standard EPFs are constructed by applying edge-preserving filters with different parameter settings to the considered image, and the resulting EPFs are stacked together. Next, the spectral dimension of the stacked EPFs is reduced with the PCA, which not only can represent the EPFs in the mean square sense but also highlight the separability of pixels in the EPFs. Finally, the resulting PCA-EPFs are classified by a support vector machine (SVM) classifier. Experiments performed on several real hyperspectral data sets show the effectiveness of the proposed PCA-EPFs, which sharply improves the accuracy of the SVM classifier with respect to the standard edge-preserving filtering-based feature extraction method, and other widely used spectral-spatial classifiers.
Human papillomavirus prevalence and genotypes in an opportunistically screened Irish female population

Abstract This study aims to evaluate human papillomavirus (HPV) prevalence and predominating genotypes in liquid-based cervical cytology samples from an Irish urban female population. In addition to use of routine cervical cytology testing, women are screened for HPV using the MY09/11 primers for the HPV L1 gene and primers for β-globin amplification in a multiplex format. Overall, 996 women between the ages of 16 and 72 years (average age: 35) are included in the study and HPV prevalence was 19.8%. Cytology results showed that 88.9% were normal, 9% borderline or mild dyskaryosis, 1.1% moderate dyskaryosis and 0.9% severe dyskaryosis. Human papillomavirus prevalence in women under 25 was 31%, reducing to 23% in women in the 25–35 age group and to 11% in women over 35. Human papillomavirus prevalence increased with grade of cytology from 11.4% (normal) through 85.4% (borderline), 84% (mild), 100% (moderate) to 100% (severe dyskaryosis). HPV 16 (20%) and 18 (12%) were the most common high-risk types detected in the study. Other common high-risk types were (in descending order) HPV 66, 33, 53, 31 and 58. HPV 66 was associated with the detection of borderline abnormalities by cytology. This is the first population-based study of HPV prevalence in the normal healthy cervical screening population in the Republic of Ireland.
Distinct Clinical Course of EGFR-Mutant Resected Lung Cancers: Results of Testing of 1118 Surgical Specimens and Effects of Adjuvant Gefitinib and Erlotinib

Background: EGFR and KRAS mutations are mutually exclusive and predict outcomes with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) treatment in patients with stage IV lung cancers. The clinical significance of these mutations in patients with resected stage I–III lung cancers is unclear. Methods: At our institution, resection specimens from patients with stage I–III lung adenocarcinomas are tested for the presence of EGFR or KRAS mutations during routine pathology analysis such that the results are available before consideration of adjuvant therapy. In a cohort of 1118 patients tested over 8 years, overall survival was analyzed using multivariate analysis to control for potential confounders, including age, sex, stage, and smoking history. The impact of adjuvant erlotinib or gefitinib was examined in an independent data set of patients exclusively with EGFR mutation, in which date of recurrence was recorded. Results: In the overall population, we identified 227 KRAS (25%) and 222 EGFR (20%) mutations. Patients with EGFR-mutant lung cancers had a lower risk of death compared with those without EGFR mutations, overall survival (OS) HR 0.51 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.34–0.76, p < 0.001). Patients with KRAS-mutant lung cancers had similar outcomes compared with individuals with KRAS wild-type tumors, OS HR 1.17 (95% CI: 0.87–1.57, p = 0.30). A separate data set includes only patients with EGFR-mutant lung cancers identified over 10 years (n = 286). In patients with resected lung cancers and EGFR mutation, treatment with adjuvant erlotinib or gefitinib was associated with a lower risk of recurrence or death, disease-free survival HR 0.43 (95% CI: 0.26–0.72, p = 0.001), and a trend toward improved OS. Conclusions: Patients with resected stage I–III lung cancers and EGFR mutation have a lower risk of death compared with patients without EGFR mutation. This may be because of treatment with EGFR TKIs. Patients with, and without KRAS mutation have similar OS. These data support reflex testing of resected lung adenocarcinomas for EGFR mutation to provide prognostic information and identify patients for enrollment on prospective clinical trials of adjuvant EGFR TKIs.
Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Tumor Necrosis Factor-α and IL-10 Production by Lung Macrophages from Preterm and Term Neonates

Lung injury in preterm neonates with respiratory failure has been attributed to persistent inflammation, which is likely to involve lung macrophages (LM). The study objective was to investigate LM during the first 8 d of life from preterm infants (n = 19), using term infants (n = 11) with respiratory failure as control subjects. LM percentages from mixed-cell suspensions produced from tracheobronchial lavage were calculated. A postnatal increase in the mean LM concentration was demonstrated within the preterm group (p = 0.01), which was greater in comparison to that from the term group (p < 0.01). Regression analyses were significant for direct relationships between LM concentrations and ex vivo lipopolysaccharide-induced tumor necrosis factor-α and IL-10 production (r = 0.93 and r = 0.63, respectively), establishing LM as the source of these cytokines. Comparative analyses demonstrated that the ability of preterm versus term LM to produce tumor necrosis factor-α was nearly identical; in contrast, a trend toward diminished levels of IL-10 expression in the preterm group was observed (p = 0.06). Thus, although studies have shown that LM precursors (i.e. cord blood monocytes) produce less tumor necrosis factor-α in preterm versus term infants, the present data strongly suggest that this relationship does not hold postnatally with respect to terminally differentiated LM in sick neonates. Overall, the data are consistent with a pro-versus antiinflammatory imbalance that may bear functional significance on the pathogenesis of chronic lung disease.
Transgenic Fv-4 mice resistant to Friend virus

Fv-4 is a mouse gene that confers resistance to infection with ecotropic retroviruses. A candidate Fv-4 gene was cloned previously and found to resemble the 3' half of a murine leukemia virus (MuLV). To study the effect of this gene in vivo, we generated two transgenic mouse strains carrying the Fv-4 env gene under control of its presumed natural promoter, a cellular sequence unrelated to retroviruses. Transgenic progeny expressed a 3-kb Fv-4 env RNA in all of the organs and tissues examined, as well as an Fv-4 envelope antigen on the surface of thymocytes and spleen cells, similar to mice carrying the natural Fv-4 gene. One of the two transgenic strains (designated Fv4-2) expressed three to nine times as much transgene RNA and protein as the other strain (Fv4-11). When challenged with a Friend virus complex containing up to 10(4) XC PFU of Friend MuLV, Fv4-2 mice were completely resistant to development of splenomegaly and had no detectable ecotropic virus in the spleen or blood, confirming that the cloned Fv-4 gene is responsible for resistance to ecotropic MuLV in vivo. In contrast, Fv4-11 mice were only partially resistant, developing viremia and splenomegaly at the highest inoculum dose but recovering from viremia several weeks after inoculation with 10-fold less virus. The phenotype of recovery from viremia in Fv4-11 mice was unexpected and suggests that low levels of expression of the Fv-4 gene enhance the effectiveness of the immune response.