Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Teaching medical students research while reaching the underserved.

OBJECTIVES This study's objective was to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a 9-week summer training program for teaching medical students research, while performing community-based participatory research in an underserved area. DESCRIPTION Interactive didactic sessions familiarized students with research methods. Concurrently, they designed and completed a participatory project with a community mentor. EVALUATION Questionnaires were used to assess students' experience with the program, their project, and their mentors. Pretests and posttests assessed students self-perceived understanding of research principles. CONCLUSIONS Evaluation indicated that the program increased understanding of the research process and acquainted students with caring for patients in medically underserved communities.
Measurement of Normal Eyeball Position and Its Application for Evaluation of Exophthalmos in Craniofacial Synostosis

The chronologic changes in eyeball position in relation to bony landmarks were studied by CT scans. The results were applied to the preoperative evaluation in 16 craniofacial synostosis patients. Ten subjects from each age group were selected from more than 2000 subjects who underwent CT scanning of the skull without any brain and skull diseases. These age groups ranged from birth to 20 years of age. The following four distances were measured on the CT section incorporating lenses: (1) the distance from the dorsum sellae to the lenses, (2) the distance between the lateral orbital rim and the lenses, (3) the distance from the nasal root to the lenses, and (4) the width between the lenses. These distances also were measured in 16 craniofacial synostosis patients pre-operatively, and the results were compared with those of the healthy individuals in the same age group. The distances of the lenses from the nasal root and from the lateral orbital rim were larger than in the healthy individuals in almost all craniofacial synostosis patients. However, the distance from the dorsum sellae to lenses was the same as that in healthy individuals on the whole. (Plast. Reconstr. Surg. 92: 588, 1993.)
A Method to Separate Process Contributions in Impedance Spectra by Variation of Test Conditions

Many processes contribute to the overall impedance of an electrochemical cell, and these may be difficult to separate in the impedance spectrum. Here, we present an investigation of a solid oxide fuel cell based on differences in impedance spectra due to a change of operating parameters and present the result as the derivative of the impedance with respect to ln(f). The method is used to separate the anode and cathode contributions and to identify various types of processes.
Seasonal cycles of biogenic volatile organic compound fluxes and concentrations in a California citrus orchard

Abstract. Orange trees are widely cultivated in Mediterranean climatic regions where they are an important agricultural crop. Citrus have been characterized as emitters of volatile organic compounds (VOC) in chamber studies under controlled environmental conditions, but an extensive characterization at field scale has never been performed using modern measurement methods, and is particularly needed considering the complex interactions between the orchards and the polluted atmosphere in which Citrus is often cultivated. For one year, in a Valencia orange orchard in Exeter, California, we measured fluxes using PTRMS (Proton Transfer Reaction Mass Spectrometer) and eddy covariance for the most abundant VOC typically emitted from citrus vegetation: methanol, acetone, and isoprenoids. Concentration gradients of additional oxygenated and aromatic compounds from the ground level to above the canopy were also measured. In order to characterize concentrations of speciated biogenic VOC (BVOC) in leaves, we analyzed leaf content by GC-MS (Gas Chromatography – Mass Spectrometery) regularly throughout the year. We also characterized in more detail concentrations of speciated BVOC in the air above the orchard by in-situ GC-MS during a few weeks in spring flowering and summer periods. Here we report concentrations and fluxes of the main VOC species emitted by the orchard, discuss how fluxes measured in the field relate to previous studies made with plant enclosures, and describe how VOC content in leaves and emissions change during the year in response to phenological and environmental parameters. The orchard was a source of monoterpenes and oxygenated VOC. The highest emissions were observed during the springtime flowering period, with mid-day fluxes above 2 nmol m −2 s −1 for methanol and up to 1 nmol m −2 s −1 for acetone and monoterpenes. During hot summer days emissions were not as high as we expected considering the known dependence of biogenic emissions on temperature. We provide evidence that thickening of leaf cuticle wax content limited gaseous emissions during the summer.
Recovery of Influenza B Virus with the H273Y Point Mutation in the Neuraminidase Active Site from a Human Patient

ABSTRACT The H275Y oseltamivir resistance mutation confers high-level resistance to oseltamivir in isolates of human A(H1N1) influenza. We report the recovery and identification of an influenza B virus with the H273Y neuraminidase point mutation directly from a human patient. The H273Y influenza B isolate is resistant to oseltamivir and peramivir but sensitive to zanamivir.
Marital satisfaction and break-ups differ across on-line and off-line meeting venues

Marital discord is costly to children, families, and communities. The advent of the Internet, social networking, and on-line dating has affected how people meet future spouses, but little is known about the prevalence or outcomes of these marriages or the demographics of those involved. We addressed these questions in a nationally representative sample of 19,131 respondents who married between 2005 and 2012. Results indicate that more than one-third of marriages in America now begin on-line. In addition, marriages that began on-line, when compared with those that began through traditional off-line venues, were slightly less likely to result in a marital break-up (separation or divorce) and were associated with slightly higher marital satisfaction among those respondents who remained married. Demographic differences were identified between respondents who met their spouse through on-line vs. traditional off-line venues, but the findings for marital break-up and marital satisfaction remained significant after statistically controlling for these differences. These data suggest that the Internet may be altering the dynamics and outcomes of marriage itself.
Speech Enhancement Using Bayesian Wavenet

In recent years, deep learning has achieved great success in speech enhancement. However, there are two major limitations regarding existing works. First, the Bayesian framework is not adopted in many such deep-learning-based algorithms. In particular, the prior distribution for speech in the Bayesian framework has been shown useful by regularizing the output to be in the speech space, and thus improving the performance. Second, the majority of the existing methods operate on the frequency domain of the noisy speech, such as spectrogram and its variations. The clean speech is then reconstructed using the approach of overlap-add, which is limited by its inherent performance upper bound. This paper presents a Bayesian speech enhancement framework, called BaWN (Bayesian WaveNet), which directly operates on raw audio samples. It adopts the recently announced WaveNet, which is shown to be effective in modeling conditional distributions of speech samples while generating natural speech. Experiments show that BaWN is able to recover clean and natural speech.
Turbidity affects association behaviour in male Poecilia latipinna

Male association preferences in a bisexual-unisexual species complex were studied in clear and turbid environments. In south and central Texas, where the gynogenetic sexual-parasite Poecilia formosa lives syntopically with Poecilia latipinna as its sexual host species, association times of P. latipinna males with conspecific sexual and heterospecific asexual females in clear and turbid water were measured sequentially. Turbidity had an influence on male mate association behaviour. Males spent less time with any kind of female stimulus in turbid water. There was no preference for conspecific sexual females, either in turbid water or under clear conditions. Also, origin of males and acclimatization to turbid water had no effect. How turbidity as a source of visual noise might affect communication among individuals and how this environmental factor might contribute to the stability of this sexual-asexual mating complex in nature are discussed.
Effects of distal jet appliance for the first molar distalization on the second molar eruption

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of distal jet for the first molar distalization on the eruption of maxillary second molar. Materials and Methods: The dental casts and cephalograms of 33 patients with class II malocclusion were analyzed. The group of distal jet appliance consisted of 18 patients with the second molars absent or partly erupted. And 15 patients with conventional orthodontics treatment (non-extraction) were adopted as the control. Nine linear and proportional, angular measurements were made. Statistical evaluation was conducted by Student’s t-test for paired data. Results: There were significant changes in nine linear and proportional angular measurements of two groups (p<0.01). The mean mesiobuccal rotations of the second molars were 4.2°. The changes of m2-SN (before treatment 54.3°, after treatment 48.0°) and m2-Ptv (before treatment 12.8 mm, after treatment 9.7 mm) in the second molar region proved that both expansion and tipping occurred in the second molars. Conclusion: The study proved that both mesiobuccal rotation and vestibular drift happened in the second molars when distal jet was used for first molar distalization. (Int Chin J Dent 2006; 6: 111-114.)
Overexpression of program death‐1 in T cells has mild impact on allograft survival

Program death‐1 (PD‐1), an inhibitory receptor upregulated on T cells upon TCR stimulation, has been shown to attenuate a number of immune responses in vivo, including acute allograft rejection. We tested whether constitutive expression of PD‐1 would further inhibit allograft rejection. To this end, we generated transgenic mice expressing T‐cell‐restricted PD‐1 under the control of the Lck proximal promoter and CD2 locus control. PD‐1 transgenic (PD‐1‐Tg) mice did not develop gross abnormalities of thymic development and displayed normal numbers of thymocyte subsets and peripheral T cells. In vitro, PD‐1‐Tg T cells had reduced proliferative and cytokine secretion capacity upon TCR stimulation and cross‐linking of PD‐1 resulted in diminished phosphorylation of protein kinase C‐θ and Akt, as well as increased activation of the phosphate and tensin homolog. However, only T‐cell responses to minor but not major mismatches were reduced in vitro. Similarly, PD‐1‐Tg mice exhibited prolonged survival of cardiac allografts only in mice transplanted with heart allografts expressing multiple minor mismatches and treated with suboptimal doses of cyclosporine A. We conclude that genetic engineering of T cells to express PD‐1 constitutively has only a mild impact on allograft survival.
12 Force mapping of Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells with Atomic Force Microscopy : influence of norepinephrine on local stiffness distribution

Mechanical properties of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) obtained from a rabbit thoracic aorta were studied using the force mapping technique available on an atomic force microscope (AFM). Correlation of higher stiffness structures with fibrous protrusions apparent in topographical images was evaluated and the influence of adding a contractile agent to the cells was investigated. Furthermore, parameter b and c were used as main indices of mechanical properties, being the rate of stiffness change and initial stiffness, respectively. VSMCs showed a stiffness at the highest point of the cell close to that of endothelial cells in the medial wall of aortic bifurcations, being about 1.2 nN/μm, but parameter b was much lower than in endothelial cells. Moreover, the forceindentation curves of the VSMCs showed a wider scattering pattern. Parameter c seemed to decrease after addition of norepinephrine (NE), while parameter b remained constant. Also, the distribution of both parameters appeared more homogenous. This may indicate a more deformable state and thus a lower stiffness to facilitate contraction, but an unequivocal conclusion could not be agreed upon, due also to the low number of samples. The results however, encourage the progress of experiments in this area to further elucidate this remarkable behaviour.
Autonomic nervous system and blood pressure regulation in RGS 2-deficient mice

Volkmar Gross, Jens Tank, Michael Obst, Ralph Plehm, Kendall J. Blumer, Andrè Diedrich, Jens Jordan, and Friedrich C. Luft Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin; and Medical Faculty of the Charité, Franz Volhard Clinic, HELIOS Klinikum-Berlin, Berlin, Germany; Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri; and Autonomic Dysfunction Service, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee
Non-chemotherapy drug-induced agranulocytosis in a tertiary hospital

Drug-induced agranulocytosis is a rare haematological disorder considered as severe adverse drug reaction. Due to its low incidence, the number of studies are low and the variability of clinical features and presentation in hospitalized patients is rarely described. Awe performed an observational, transversal and retrospective study in the haematology and toxicology unit in a tertiary hospital located in Spain (Valencia) (1996–2010) in order to assess its incidence, the drugs involved, the management and outcomes of drug-induced agranulocytosis. Twenty-one cases of agranulocytosis were retrieved. All of them presented severe and symptomatic agranulocytosis (fever and infection). The most common drug associated with drug-induced agranulocytosis was metamizole administration but other drugs belonging to different pharmacological classes as well (carbimazol, sulfasalazine, bisoprolol, itraconazole, amitryptiline, ketorolac and claritomicine+cefuroxime). No differences between sex and age were found in relationship with the manifestations or course of agranulocytosis. In contrast, a significantly negative association was found between age of patients and the percentage of increase in neutrophil count. Administration of human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor did not significantly enhance the recovery of the process or the restoration of leucocytes count, suggesting a limited utility in this type of agranulocytosis.
Idiopathic Myelofibrosis: a Possible Role for Immune‐Complexes in the Pathogenesis of Bone Marrow Fibrosis

Summary. Sixteen patients with idiopathic myelofibrosis (IM) have been investigated with respect to the possibility that immune mechanisms may be of importance in the pathogenesis of bone marrow fibrosis. The following points appear relevant: (1) immune‐complexes (IC) are detectable with different techniques in a high percentage of patients with IM. Their presence is associated with evidence of bone‐marrow histological markers of immune activity. (2) IgG is the main Ig class in the composition of IM IC. The results obtained favour the hypothesis that autoimmune mechanisms are involved in IM patients.
Local and Systemic Induction of Two Defense-Related Subtilisin-Like Protease Promoters in Transgenic Arabidopsis Plants . Luciferin Induction of PR Gene Expression 1

Following a pathogenic attack, plants are able to mount a defense response with the coordinated activation of a battery of defense-related genes. In this study we have characterized the mode of expression of the P69B and P69C genes from tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.), which encodes two closely related subtilisin-like proteases associated with the defense response. We have compared the mode of gene regulation in heterologous transgenic Arabidopsis plants harboring promoter-b-glucuronidase (GUS) and promoter-luciferase (LUC) gene fusions for these two genes. These studies revealed that the P69B and P69C promoters are induced by salicylic acid as well as during the course of both a compatible and an incompatible interaction with Pseudomonas syringae. Furthermore, P69B and P69C expression takes place in both the local and the distal (noninoculated) leaves upon inoculation with bacteria but following different and unique tissue-specific patterns of expression that are also different to that described for most other classical PR genes. Also, we report that luciferin, the substrate for the reporter luciferase (LUC) gene, is able to activate expression of PR genes, and this may pose a problem when using this gene reporter system in studies related to plant defense.
Consumer preferences and implicit prices of smartphone characteristics

This paper applies the hedonic pricing approach to study the implicit prices of smartphone characteristics and consumer preferences. Currently, mobile phones are the most widespread technological product worldwide and their performance and technical characteristics have changed dramatically over a short period. The development of smartphones has been a revolution in itself in the mobile telecommunication industry, expanding the capabilities of handsets beyond those of a simple mobile phone. Competition between smartphone producers is erce and knowledge concerning consumers' preferences regarding smartphone features is vital to survival in this fast-changing market. This paper uses a hedonic pricing model to estimate the implicit prices of smartphone characteristics. A large set of characteristics are analysed including design, communication, connectivity, camera, display, hardware, multimedia, and power. The characteristics most valued by consumers are the screen, followed by memory, battery capacity, and weight. Consumers are willing to pay up to a 95% premium for an Apple smartphone.
BTN1A1, the Mammary Gland Butyrophilin, and BTN2A2 Are Both Inhibitors of T Cell Activation

Butyrophilin (BTN) genes encode a set of related proteins. Studies in mice have shown that one of these, BTN1A1, is required for milk lipid secretion in lactation, whereas butyrophilin-like 2 is a coinhibitor of T cell activation. To understand these disparate roles of BTNs, we first compared the expression and functions of mouse Btn1a1 and Btn2a2. Btn1a1 transcripts were not restricted to lactating mammary tissue but were also found in virgin mammary tissue and, interestingly, spleen and thymus. In confirmation of this, BTN1A1 protein was detected in thymic epithelial cells. By contrast, Btn2a2 transcripts and protein were broadly expressed. Cell surface BTN2A2 protein, such as the B7 family molecule programmed death ligand 1, was upregulated upon activation of T cells. We next examined the potential of both BTN1A1 and BTN2A2 to interact with T cells. Recombinant Fc fusion proteins of murine BTN2A2 and, surprisingly BTN1A1, bound to activated T cells, suggesting the presence of one or more receptors on these cells. Immobilized BTN-Fc fusion proteins, but not MOG-Fc protein, inhibited the proliferation of CD4 and CD8 T cells activated by anti-CD3. BTN1A1 and BTN2A2 also inhibited T cell metabolism, IL-2, and IFN-γ secretion. Inhibition of proliferation was not abrogated by exogenous IL-2 but could be overcome following costimulation with high levels of anti-CD28 Ab. These data are consistent with a coinhibitory role for mouse BTNs, including BTN1A1, the BTN expressed in the lactating mammary gland and on milk lipid droplets.
Serological and clinical aspects of granulocyte antibodies leading to alloimmune neonatal neutropenia

SUMMARY. Eighteen cases of alloimmune neonatal neutropenia (ANN) were analysed for their clinical and serological properties. Pregnancy was normal in all cases, but a 50% incidence of abortion is recorded. With the exception of two premature babies, all newborns were delivered at term. Omphalitis and mild infections of the skin were predominantly present. None of the new‐borns died by overwhelming sepsis. The average duration of neutropenia was 11 weeks (range 3–28 weeks). Intravenous IgG therapy was followed by transient remission in 2 of 4 affected newborns. Antibody differentiation revealed in five sera NA1‐, in four sera NA2‐ and in two sera NB1‐specific antibodies. In two sera only HLA antibodies were detectable. Complement activating antibodies were determined in 72% of the sera. Screening for granulocyte‐specific antibodies in 1016 postpartum sera of unselected women revealed a total of 11 sera (1.1%) reacting selectively with granulocytes, but only four (0.4%) were directed against a known granulocyte‐specific antigen. None of the new‐born of mothers alloimmunized to granulocyte antigens developed neutropenia, which suggests an incidence of ANN below 0.1%.
Identification of the G Protein-activating Domain of the Natriuretic Peptide Clearance Receptor (NPR-C)*

We have shown recently that the 37-amino acid intracellular domain of the single-transmembrane, natriuretic peptide clearance receptor, NPR-C, which is devoid of kinase and guanylyl cyclase activities, activates selectively Gi1 and Gi2 in gastric and tenia coli smooth muscle. In this study, we have used synthetic peptide fragments of the N-terminal, C-terminal, and middle regions of the cytoplasmic domain of NPR-C to identify the G protein-activating sequence. A 17-amino acid peptide of the middle region (Arg469–Arg485), denoted Peptide 4, which possesses two N-terminal arginine residues and a C-terminalB-B-X-X-Bmotif (where B and X are basic and non-basic residues, respectively) bound selectively to Gi1 and Gi2, activated phospholipase C-β3 via the βγ subunits, inhibited adenylyl cyclase, and induced smooth muscle contraction, in similar fashion to the selective NPR-C ligand, cANP4–23. A similar sequence (Peptide 3), but with a partial C-terminal motif, had minimal activity. Sequences which possessed either the N-terminal basic residues (Peptide 1) or the C-terminalB-B-X-X-Bmotif (Peptide 2) were inactive. Peptide 2, however, inhibited G protein activation and cellular responses mediated by the stimulatory Peptide 4 and by cANP4–23, suggesting that theB-B-X-X-Bmotif mediated binding but not activation of G protein, thus causing Peptide 2 to act as a competitive inhibitor of G protein activation.
Monetary freedom and economic growth in New European Union Member States

Abstract This paper analyses the relationship between monetary freedom (index measured by the Heritage Foundation) and real economic growth of 11 new member states of the European Union. 19-year panel data regression with fixed effects over the period of 1997–2015 reveals that the real GDP growth of the selected countries is positively affected by the degree of monetary freedom. However, the relationship between monetary freedom and real GDP growth has weakened after the global recession of 2008. Monetary freedom was not jeopardized during the crisis, while real GDP growth declined significantly in most of economies studied.