Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dyslipidemia and Mediator of Inflammation in Diabetic Children of Delhi-NCR

Original Research Article Background: In spite of continuous improvement in database of existing knowledge on T2DM in children from pathologic point of view, the intimate mechanisms involving systemic inflammation, hyperglycemia and dyslipidemia in T2DM young patients. Aim: The present study was designed to determine the extent of systemic inflammation, glycemic and lipid profile in T2DM children and to determine their role in future cardiac complication. Materials & Methods: Fasting blood was collected and serum C – reactive protein (CRP) along with blood glucose, serum total cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL, LDL and VLDL levels were estimated by using standard methods in 20 children of either sex (07-16 years age group) suffering from T2DM (Group II) and in 20 normal healthy individuals, served as healthy controls (Group I). The observed values were expressed as Mean ± SD and data from patients and controls were compared using students„t‟ test. Result: Marked elevated levels of serum CRP (significantly high; p<0.05) was observed in T2DM children as compared to healthy controls. Similarly, blood glucose, serum total cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL and VLDL levels were significantly high (p<0.05) and serum HDL levels were significantly low (p<0.05) in T2DM patients as compared to healthy controls. Due to existence of systemic inflammation in combination with dyslipidemia and hyperglycemia, these metabolic alterations have been implicated in the development of future cardiovascular complication in young T2DM patients. Conclusion: Thus, regular screening of metabolic profiles, cardiac markers and systemic inflammation along with life style modifications are predictive and preventive measures which may help in reduction of T2DM complications and its burden in the growing young population.
Desynchronization for Decentralized Medium Access Control based on Gauss-Seidel Iterations

We address the Desynchronization problem of achieving an equally spaced transmission schedule in a cooperative fashion. This problem arises in a shared medium communication and is of importance to achieve a fair multiple access schedule at the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer in the context of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). In this paper, we investigate the convergence rate of different optimization algorithms and the potential benefits of addressing the problem as a solution of a set of linear equations. Initial results suggest that the Gauss-Seidel method can yield a faster convergence than previously proposed methods that employ a version of the Nesterov's method. Our approach also poses an interesting path for future research given the benefits of using other more advanced methods to solve systems of linear equations. Through simulations, we provide evidence to support future research on optimizing the parameter selection and also on categorizing the conditions under which one solution might be better in detriment of another.
The practice of OTC counseling by community pharmacists in Parana, Brazil

Background: In order to provide appropriate advice to the patient at the time of dispensing and over-the-counter (OTC) medication counseling, community pharmacists need access to current and reliable information about medicines. Brazilian pharmacists have assumed new functions such as prescribing medication, in a dependent model, based in protocols. Objective: To examine the practice of community pharmacists in a Brazilian State, focusing on OTC recommendation. Method: A cross-sectional survey of community pharmacists in a state of Brazil was conducted from October 2013 to January 2014, with data collection through a pre-piloted self-administered anonymous survey via Survey Monkey® platform. Following ethical approval, the online instrument was sent to 8,885 pharmacists registered in Parana State, Brazil, focusing on professionals working in community pharmacies. The questionnaire assessed the community pharmacy setting, the search for information, the knowledge of the evidence-based practice, the important factors to consider when recommending an OTC medicine, and the pharmacist prescribing. Responses were imported into SPSS® (version 22.0) for analysis. Nonparametric tests were used to assess the association between responses and demographic information with a significance level less than 5% (p<0.05). Results: Of the pharmacists, 97.4% dispensed medications and counseled patients for a median of six hours per day. Product’s efficacy (97%) and adverse effects (62.3%) were the most important factors taken into account when counseling a nonprescription medicine. Few pharmacists knew the meaning of terms related to evidence-based health. Most respondents agreed that pharmacists have the necessary training to prescribe. Conclusion: Over-the-counter medication counseling is a daily practice among Brazilian pharmacists. Learning needs exist for community pharmacists in relation to evidence-based practice. Thus, sources of information with good evidence could be used daily by community pharmacists, especially as regards nonprescription medication counseling.
A repetition–prediction study of European parasuicide populations: a summary of the first report from Part II of the WHO/EURO Multicentre Study on Parasuicide in co‐operation with the EC Concerted Action on Attempted Suicide

One of the aims of the European Study on Parasuicide, which was initiated by the Regional Office for the European Region of the World Health Organization in the mid‐1980s, was to try to identify social and personal characteristics that are predictive of future suicidal behaviour. A follow‐up interview study (the Repetition‐Prediction Study) was designed, and to date 1145 first‐wave interviews have been conducted at nine research centres, representing seven European countries. The present paper provides an abridged version of the first report from the study. The design and the instrument used (The European Parasuicide Study Interview Schedules, EPSIS I and II) are described. Some basic characteristics of the samples from the various centres, such as sex, age, method of suicide attempt, and history of previous attempts, are presented and compared. The male/female sex ratio ranged from 0.41 to 0.85; the mean age range for men was 33–45 years and that for women was 29–45 years. At all of the centres, self‐poisoning was the most frequently employed method. On average, more than 50% of all respondents had attempted suicide at least once previously. The representativeness of the samples is discussed. There were differences between the centres in several respects, and also in some cases the representativeness of the different samples varied. Results obtained from analyses based on pooled data should therefore be treated with caution.
Occurrence of fumonisins in Catalonia (Spain) and an exposure assessment of specific population groups

Fumonisin B1 (FB1) and B2 (FB2) are mycotoxins produced by Fusarium verticillioides and F. proliferatum and common contaminants of cereal crops. The objectives of this study were to (1) study the occurrence of fumonisins in Catalonia (north-eastern region of Spain) and (2) assess the exposure of the Catalonian population to these mycotoxins. Contamination data was provided by a wide survey where 928 individual samples were pooled to analyse 370 composite samples. Fumonisins were extracted and purified using immunoaffinity columns and determined by HPLC with fluorescence detection. The raw consumption data came from a nutritional study specifically designed to assess the dietary intake of the main foodstuffs related to fumonisin contamination for all population age groups. In addition, two specific groups were selected with respect to maize consumption: immigrants and celiac sufferers. Contamination and consumption data were combined by simulation using an essentially parametric–parametric (P-P) method. The P-P method draws sampling values from distribution functions fitted to consumption and contamination datasets. Moreover, to quantify the accuracy and reliability of the statistical estimates, we built related confidence intervals using a Pseudo-Parametric bootstrap method. The results of this study show that fumonisins are commonly found in some commodities on the Catalonian market, such as beer, corn snacks and ethnic foods; however, the values were well below the permitted maximum EU levels. The most exposed group were infants followed by immigrants but, in all cases, they were below the TDI of 2 µg/kg bw/day.
In vitro activities of two glycylcyclines against gram-positive bacteria

The glycylcyclines designated CL 329,998 and CL 331,002 are N,N-dimethylglycylamido derivatives of minocycline and 6-demethyl-6-deoxytetracycline, respectively. In vitro activities of these two antimicrobial agents were compared with those of tetracycline, minocycline, and seven other antimicrobial agents against 412 gram-positive organisms. Both new drugs were significantly more active than minocycline against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MICs for 90% of isolates tested, 0.25 and 0.5 microgram/ml versus 4 micrograms/ml). CL 329,998 inhibited all streptococci, lactobacilli, and Leuconostoc spp. at concentrations of < or = 0.5 microgram/ml, with CL 331,002 slightly less active against some species. All enterococci, including minocycline-resistant and multidrug-resistant isolates, were inhibited at < or = 0.5- and < or = 1.0-microgram/ml concentrations of the new drugs, respectively. Only bacteriostatic activity was evident by time-kill curves. The two glycylcyclines demonstrated activities in vitro that were superior to those of minocycline against several gram-positive bacterial species, and at relatively low concentrations, they inhibited isolates resistant to both tetracycline and minocycline.
From Off-line to On-line Geocoding : the Evolution of Sensor Orientation

This paper addresses the evolution of sensor orientation and calibration over the past forty years with emphasis on their applications to the acquisition of primary data for further mapping and geoinformation generation. The paper identifies some limitations of the current assumptions and illustrates how to overcome them with an example and several ideas that the author and his colleagues at the Institute of Geomatics have developed and published recently. The current performance of direct and integrated sensor orientation is briefly discussed as well as the evolution of the Global Positioning System and Galileo and their impact.
Randomised phase II study of axitinib or bevacizumab combined with paclitaxel / carboplatin as fi rst-line therapy for patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer

Randomised phase II study of axitinib or bevacizumab combined with paclitaxel/carboplatin as first-line therapy for patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer C. Twelves1*, E. Chmielowska2, L. Havel3, S. Popat4, A. Swieboda-Sadlej5, P. Sawrycki6, P. Bycott7, A. Ingrosso8, S. Kim7,, J. A. Williams7, C. Chen9, A. J. Olszanski10, P. de Besi8 & J. H. Schiller11 Cancer Research UK Clinical Centre, St James’s University Hospital, Leeds, UK; Department of Clinical Oncology, Bydgoszcz Cancer Center, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland; Department of Pneumology and Thoracic Surgery, University Hospital Bulovka, Praha, Czech Republic; Medical Oncology, Royal Marsden Hospital, London, UK; Department of Internal Medicine Hematology and Oncology, Independent Public Central Clinical Hospital, Warsaw; Department of Oncology and Chemotherapy, L. Rydygiera District Hospital, Torun, Poland; Pfizer Oncology, Pfizer Inc., San Diego, USA; Pfizer Oncology, Pfizer Italia Srl, Milan, Italy; Pfizer Oncology, Pfizer Inc., New York; Department of Medical Oncology, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia; Division of Hematology-Oncology, Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, USA
Are the Pure In Situ Breast Ductal Carcinomas and Those Associated With Invasive Carcinoma the Same?

It has been reported that pure ductal carcinoma in situ of the breast has morphologic differences from the in situ component of the invasive ductal carcinoma, as well estrogen and progesterone receptors expression according to their cytokeratin expression. However, there is no data comparing other tumor markers without using the cytokeratin expression. The objective of this study is to compare the expression of estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor (PR), HER-2/neu, p53, and Ki67 between pure ductal in situ carcinoma (pDCIS) and the in situ component of the invasive ductal carcinoma (DCIS+IDC) of the breast, and the in situ component to the invasive component of the same tumor (DCIS+IDC). The immunohistochemistry expression of the tumor markers was performed in 45 cases of pDCIS and DCIS+IDC, yielding a total of 90 cases. Statistical analysis was carried out using Fisher exact test, having a P<0.05, and Kappa index (κ) to assess intratumoral concordance. In DCIS+IDC, the in situ and invasive components did not show a significant difference and Kappa index (κ) was high (0.7-1) for positive and negative expression. ER and PR were significantly different between the pDCIS and DCIS+IDC (ER: 86.7 vs. 66.7% P=0.04; PR: 80% vs. 55.6% P=0.02). These findings suggest that in situ component of DCIS+IDC and pDCIS are distinct conditions.
Roles of an anti-tuberculosis medication and surgery in patients with tuberculous otitis media

Conclusion: The standard treatment for tuberculous otitis media (TOM) without complications consists of anti-tuberculosis (anti-TB) medication, with which we experienced good treatment outcomes. However, surgery is required for recovery of anatomy and hearing function. Objective: To determine the clinical characteristics of TOM that might optimize diagnosis and to evaluate the differences in clinical courses between patients treated with and without surgery. Methods: We analyzed 14 patients (16 ears) who had been diagnosed and treated for TOM. Radiologic findings, laboratory data, and audiometry results were also evaluated. Patients were divided into a chemotherapy group and a surgery group according to treatment modality. Results: Temporal bone CT (TBCT) showed total occupation of the tympanic cavity by soft tissue and little evidence of ossicular erosion. In the chemotherapy group, dry ears were obtained in all but one patient (14 ears) after treatment. Normalized tympanic membrane (TM) was found in 50% in the chemotherapy group and in 75% in the surgery group. The air–bone gap (ABG) changed from 40.3 ± 2.5 dB to 47.0 ± 19.2 dB in the chemotherapy group and from 35.2 ± 7.6 dB to 30.2 ± 11.4 dB in the surgery group. After treatment, ABG improved by > 10 dB in one ear in the chemotherapy group and in four ears in the surgery group.
The Inhomogeneous Dirichlet Problem for the Stokes System in Lipschitz Domains with Unit Normals Close to VMO

The goal of this work is to treat the inhomogeneous Dirichlet problem for the Stokes system in a Lipschitz domain Ω ⊆ R, n ≥ 2. Our main result is a well-posedness result formulated on the scales of Besov-Triebel-Lizorkin spaces, in the case in which the outward unit normal ν to Ω has small mean oscillation.
Semantics-Aware Hidden Markov Model for Human Mobility

Understanding human mobility benefits numerous applications such as urban planning, traffic control, and city management. Previous work mainly focuses on modeling spatial and temporal patterns of human mobility. However, the semantics of trajectory are ignored, thus failing to model people's motivation behind mobility. In this paper, we propose a novel semantics-aware mobility model that captures human mobility motivation using large-scale semantic-rich spatial-temporal data from location-based social networks. In our system, we first develop a multimodal embedding method to project user, location, time, and activity on the same embedding space in an unsupervised way while preserving original trajectory semantics. Then, we use hidden Markov model to learn latent states and transitions between them in the embedding space, which is the location embedding vector, to jointly consider spatial, temporal, and user motivations. In order to tackle the sparsity of individual mobility data, we further propose a von Mises-Fisher mixture clustering for user grouping so as to learn a reliable and fine-grained model for groups of users sharing mobility similarity. We evaluate our proposed method on two large-scale real-world datasets, where we validate the ability of our method to produce high-quality mobility models. We also conduct extensive experiments on the specific task of location prediction. The results show that our model outperforms state-of-the-art mobility models with higher prediction accuracy and much higher efficiency.
Dynamic Versus Static Wavelength-Routed Optical Networks

It is widely believed that dynamic operation of wavelength-routed optical networks will help overcome the inefficiencies of static allocation in terms of wavelength utilization. In this paper, this hypothesis is reviewed. The wavelength requirements of dynamic wavelength-routed optical networks are quantified and compared to static routing. To do so, new analytical and algorithmic lower bounds for the wavelength requirements of dynamic networks are proposed. They are used to evaluate the optimality of the already proposed algorithms whose wavelength requirements are quantified - by means of simulation- with and without the wavelength continuity constraint, as well as for uniform and nonuniform traffic demand. Results show that, without wavelength conversion capability, the benefit of dynamic wavelength-routed optical networks is not significant: lower wavelengths requirements than static networks are achieved only at low traffic loads (< 0.3 - 0.4). In wavelength convertible networks instead, dynamic operation leads to lower wavelength requirements than static operation over a wide traffic load range (< 0.7 - 0.8), making dynamic operation attractive in this type of network. Under nonuniform traffic it was found that dynamic operation achieves slightly higher wavelength savings than in the uniform traffic case. But the savings were not high enough as to impact on results of the uniform traffic case. These results can aid network operators in the design and optimization of optical WDM networks.
Charting molecular composition of phosphatidylcholines by fatty acid scanning and ion trap MS3 fragmentation Published, JLR Papers in Press, August 16, 2003. DOI 10.1194/jlr.D300020-JLR200

The molecular composition of phosphatidylcholines (PCs) in total lipid extracts was characterized by a combination of multiple precursor ion scanning on a hybrid quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometer and MS3 fragmentation on an ion trap mass spectrometer. Precursor ion spectra for 50 acyl anion fragments of fatty acids (fatty acid scanning) acquired in parallel increased the specificity and the dynamic range of the detection of PCs and identified the fatty acid moieties in individual PC species. Subsequent analysis of detected PC peaks by MS3 fragmentation on an ion trap mass spectrometer quantified the relative amount of their positional isomers, thus providing the most detailed and comprehensive characterization of the molecular composition of the pool of PCs at the low-picomole level. The method is vastly simplified, compared with conventional approaches, and does not require preliminary separation of lipid classes or of individual molecular species, enzymatic digestion, or chemical derivatization. The approach was validated by the comparative analysis of the molecular composition of PCs from human red blood cells. In the total lipid extract of Madin-Darby canine kidney II cells, we detected 46 PC species with unique fatty acid composition and demonstrated that the presence of positional isomers almost doubled the total number of individual molecular species.
Involvement of Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor-Linked Signaling Responses in Pseudomonas fluorescens-Infected Alveolar Epithelial Cells

ABSTRACT Pseudomonas fluorescens is an opportunistic indoor pathogen that can cause severe airway proinflammatory responses. Pulmonary epithelium, like other mucosal epithelial linings of the body, constitutes the first line of defense against airway microbial pathogens. Mucosal epithelial cells can be a sentinel of pathogenic bacteria via stimulation of specific cell surface receptors, including the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and Toll-like receptor (TLR). This study addressed the involvement of EGFR in airway epithelial pathogenesis by P. fluorescens. Human A549 pneumocytes showed prolonged production of proinflammatory interleukin-8 (IL-8) in response to infection with P. fluorescens, which was via the nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) signaling pathway. Production of proinflammatory cytokine IL-8 was not mediated by P. fluorescens lipopolysaccharide, a representative TLR4 agonist, but was mediated through EGFR-linked signals activated by the opportunistic bacteria. Moreover, EGFR signals were involved in NF-κB signal-mediated production of proinflammatory cytokines. Along with persistent NF-κB activation, P. fluorescens enhanced the EGFR phosphorylation and subsequent activation of downstream mediators, including protein kinase B or extracellular-signal-regulated kinases 1/2. Blocking of EGFR-linked signals increased epithelial susceptibility to pathogen-induced epithelial cell death, suggesting protective roles of EGFR signals. Thus, airway epithelial exposure to P. fluorescens can trigger antiapoptotic responses via EGFR and proinflammatory responses via TLR4-independent NF-κB signaling pathway in human pneumocytes.
How Symptom Manifestations Affect Help Seeking for Mental Health Problems Among Chinese Americans

This study aims to examine how help-seeking behaviors of Chinese Americans are associated with the types of mental disorder, the tendency to somatize symptoms, social disruptiveness of symptoms, and comorbidity. Based on data from the Chinese American Psychiatric Epidemiological Study, we examined 246 Chinese Americans with a diagnosable major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, or somatoform disorder, using hierarchical logistic regression analyses. Compared with respondents with somatoform disorder, those with anxiety or depressive disorder were 94% and 87% less likely to seek professional help. The tendency to somatize distress is positively related to soliciting help, especially medical help. Social disruptiveness had a very potent positive association with help seeking whereas comorbidity is nonsignificant when the symptom severity is controlled. The overall picture indicates that somatic expression of distress is a major impetus to help seeking, which happens to concur with the cultural conceptualization and subjective embodied experience of mental disorders among Chinese.