Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of a Closed Femur Fracture Model in Mice

Objectives: The goal of this study was to develop and characterize a closed femur fracture model for mice that can be used for the molecular and genetic analysis of fracture healing. Study Design: Longitudinal time study of species-specific fracture healing. Methods: A protocol was developed for creating reproducible, closed femur fractures in mice. Impending fractures were stabilized by retrograde insertion of a 0.01-inch-diameter, stainless steel wire into the intramedullary canal. The intramedullary wire was held in place with a wedge made from the first 2 mm of a 30-gauge needle. Fractures were produced by 3-point bending. Fracture healing was assessed by radiography, histology, and torsional mechanical testing. Results: The mouse femur fracture technique produced good results with minimal loss of animals. Of the 246 mice used in the study, 22 mice were excluded due to poor fracture quality (8), loss of fracture stabilization (6), or to anesthesia death (8). Radiography showed a consistent pattern of fracture healing between mice with peak fracture callus volume evident at 10 (15 mice) to 14 days (18 mice) after fracture. Fracture bridging was apparent in all 3-week postfracture radiographs (35 mice). Histologic examination of 117 specimens at 9 time points showed chondrocyte differentiation within the fracture callus by 7 days after fracture, endochondral ossification occurring by 10 days after fracture, and bone remodeling evident as early as 3 weeks after fracture. Despite radiologic and histologic evidence of fracture bridging after 3 weeks, torsional mechanical testing of 68 mice at 3, 4, 6, and 12 weeks after fracture (group size of 15 to 18 mice at each time point) indicated that significant increases in structural or material strength did not occur until 6 to 12 weeks after fracture. Conclusions: Femur fracture healing in mice follows a typical endochondral ossification pathway with fracture bridging occurring approximately 1 week faster in mice than rats. This fracture model is amenable to the molecular and genetic analysis of fracture healing using different inbred, transgenic, and knockout strains of mice.
SA-4-1BBL as a novel adjuvant for the development of therapeutic cancer vaccines

Tumor associated antigen (TAA)-based therapeutic vaccines have great potential as a safe, practical, and cost-efficient alternative to standard treatments for cancer. Clinical efficacy of TAA-based vaccines, however, has yet to be realized and will require adjuvants with pleiotropic functions on immune cells. Such adjuvants need not only to generate/boost T cell responses, but also reverse intrinsic/extrinsic tumor immune evasion mechanisms for therapeutic efficacy. This review focuses on a novel agonistic ligand, SA-4-1BBL, for 4-1BB costimulatory receptor as an adjuvant of choice because of its ability to: i) serve as a vehicle to deliver TAAs to dendritic cells (DCs) for antigen uptake and cross-presentation to CD8+ T cells; ii) augment adaptive Th1 and innate immune responses; and iii) overcome various immune evasion mechanisms, cumulatively translating into therapeutic efficacy in preclinical tumor models.
Reduction in transforming growth factor‐β type II receptor in mouse lung carcinogenesis

Transforming growth factor‐β (TGF‐β) is a growth modulator that inhibits the proliferation of many epithelial cells through interaction with its receptors, the type I and type II receptors (TGF‐β RI and RII) by activating their serine/threonine kinase activities. Loss of growth inhibition by TGF‐β is thought to contribute to the development of many types of tumors. To examine the roles of TGF‐β1, ‐β2, and ‐β3 and TGF‐β RI and RII in chemically induced mouse lung tumorigenesis, we used immunohistochemical and in situ hybridization analyses to measure the expression of their proteins and mRNAs in A/J mice treated with the carcinogen urethane to induce lung adenomas. Immunostaining for the TGF‐β ligands and receptors was detected in the epithelia of the bronchioles of untreated and treated A/J mice at similar levels. Immunostaining for the TGF‐β ligands and receptors was also detected in adenomas by 2 mo. While immunostaining for TGF‐β1, ‐β2, and ‐β3 and TGF‐β RI in adenomas was detected at levels comparable to those in bronchioles, immunostaining for TGF‐β RII was less intense in adenomas than in bronchioles. Decreased immunostaining for TGF‐β RII in adenomas persisted for at least 8 mo after exposure to urethane, whereas immunostaining for TGF‐β1, ‐β2, and ‐β3 and TGF‐β RI persisted at levels comparable to those in normal bronchioles. In situ hybridization studies conducted with TGF‐β receptor riboprobes showed a corresponding reduction in expression of TGF‐β RII mRNA but not of TGF‐β RI mRNA in adenomas compared with expression in bronchioles. Expression of TGF‐β RII mRNA was also examined in non‐tumorigenic and tumorigenic mouse lung cells; expression of TGF‐β RII mRNA was lower in the tumorigenic cells derived from urethane‐induced lung tumors. These data suggest that a decrease in expression of TGF‐β RII may contribute to autonomous cell growth and may play an important role in mouse lung carcinogenesis induced by urethane. Mol. Carcinog. 22:46–56, 1998. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc. This article is a US Government work and, as such, is in the public domain in the United States of America.
On identification of doping profile in semiconductors

This paper concerns the identification of a so-called doping profile (source term) in the system of elliptic equations modeling a semiconductor device. We give several simplification of the model and find useful adjoint problems and asymptotics motivated by applications to inverse problems and by a presence of certain small physical parameters As a result we obtain first uniqueness results for the so-called p − n junction in a realistic industrial situation. Proofs use potential theory, energy estimates, and the Novikov’s method for the inverse problem of gravimetry.
Attention-Based LSTM with Multi-Task Learning for Distant Speech Recognition

Distant speech recognition is a highly challenging task due to background noise, reverberation, and speech overlap. Recently, there has been an increasing focus on attention mechanism. In this paper, we explore the attention mechanism embedded within the long short-term memory (LSTM) based acoustic model for large vocabulary distant speech recognition, trained using speech recorded from a single distant microphone (SDM) and multiple distant microphones (MDM). Furthermore, multi-task learning architecture is incorporated to improve robustness in which the network is trained to perform both a primary senone classification task and a secondary feature enhancement task. Experiments were conducted on the AMI meeting corpus. On average our model achieved 3.3% and 5.0% relative improvements in word error rate (WER) over the LSTM baseline model in the SDM and MDM cases, respectively. In addition, the model provided between a 2-4% absolute WER reduction compared to a conventional pipeline of independent processing stage on the MDM task.
Clinical backgrounds and the time course of sleep-disordered breathing in patients after myocardial infarction.

INTRODUCTION Previous studies have suggested that sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) frequently develops after myocardial infarction (MI) and leads to a poor prognosis. However, the details remain unclear. Therefore, we examined the clinical backgrounds and the time course of SDB in patients after MI. METHODS The subjects were 92 consecutive patients (mean age, 65 ± 12 years) who had MI without decompensated heart failure or uncontrolled myocardial ischemia. All subjects underwent overnight sleep studies, and we investigated baseline clinical characteristics. Among the patients with confirmed SDB, the 38 patients who agreed underwent nighttime multichannel respiratory monitoring at both 14 days and 2 months after the onset of MI, and we investigated their clinical features. RESULTS The percentage of patients with SDB 14 days after MI was high (93.5%). Among all patients, 6.5% had no SDB, 39.1% had mild SDB, 29.3% had moderate SDB, and 25.0% had severe SDB. The clinical features of patients with moderate-to-severe SDB (apnea-hypopnea index [AHI] ≥15 times/hour) did not differ significantly from those of patients with mild SDB or patients without SDB (AHI <15 times/hour). In patients with central SDB and AHI ≥10 times/hour, there was a significant improvement in AHI from 14 days to 2 months after MI. Multiple regression analysis showed that central SDB and nighttime onset of MI were associated with a decrease in AHI. CONCLUSION These findings suggest that SDB after MI should be managed on the basis of the type of SDB and the time of MI onset.
Total Variation Approximation for Quasi-Stationary Distributions

Quasi-stationary distributions, as discussed in Darroch and Seneta (1965), have been used in biology to describe the steady state behaviour of population models which, while eventually certain to become extinct, nevertheless maintain an apparent stochastic equilibrium for long periods. These distributions have some drawbacks: they need not exist, nor be unique, and their calculation can present problems. In this paper, we give biologically plausible conditions under which the quasi-stationary distribution is unique, and can be closely approximated by distributions that are simple to compute.
Adolescent Depression: Diagnosis, Treatment, and Educational Attainment

In this paper, I use nationally representative longitudinal data to examine adolescent depression and educational attainment. First, I examine the individual, family, and community-level determinants of adolescent depression, diagnosis, and treatment. I find that male and minority adolescents who score high on depression scales are less likely to be diagnosed as depressed or receive treatment than female and non-Hispanic white adolescents. Additionally, I find several community-level variables to be important determinants of depression, diagnosis, and treatment. Second, I examine the importance of adolescent depression for educational attainment. Although it is uncontroversial to expect a negative relationship, most previous research uses cross-sectional data, making it difficult to adequately determine the magnitude of the effect. I find that depressive symptoms are related to educational attainment along multiple margins: dropping out of high school, college enrollment, and college type. These relationships are only found for adolescent females, and there are several interesting results across income groups. Overall, these findings suggest that further attempts to diagnose and treat adolescents with depressive symptoms are needed and that additional treatment options may be required to combat the important relationship between adolescent depression and human capital accumulation for females.
Acute respiratory infections: can a non-physician practitioner triage and treat patients by using an algorithm? Experience in a military primary care clinic.

BACKGROUND Acute respiratory viral infections are minor self-limited diseases. Studies have shown that patients with ARVI can be treated as effectively by non-physician practitioners as by physicians. OBJECTIVES To examine whether a military medic, using a structured questionnaire and an algorithm, can appropriately triage patients to receive over-the-counter medications and refer more complicated cases to a physician. METHODS The study group comprised 190 consecutive soldiers who presented to a military primary care clinic with symptoms of ARVI. Using a questionnaire, a medic recorded the patient's history and measured oral temperature, pulse rate and blood pressure. All patients were referred to a doctor. Physicians were "blind" to the medic's anamnesis and to the algorithm diagnosis. We compared the medic's anamnesis and therapeutic decisions with those of the doctors. RESULTS Patients were young (21.1 +/- 3.7 years) and generally healthy (93% without background illness). They usually had a minor disease (64% without fever) that was mostly diagnosed as viral ARVI (83% of cases). Ninety-nine percent were also examined by a physician. According to the patients' data, the medics showed high overall agreement with the doctors (83-97.9%). The proposed algorithm could have saved 37% of referrals to physicians, with a sensitivity of 95.2%. Had the medics been allowed to examine the pharynx for an exudate, the sensitivity might have been 97.6%. CONCLUSIONS Medics, equipped with a questionnaire and algorithm but without special training and without performing a physical examination, can appropriately triage patients and thereby reduce the number of referrals to physicians.
Digit-sucking: a review of the literature, clinical observations and treatment recommendations.

Prolonged digit-sucking habits can have a negative impact on dental, speech, physical and emotional development. Children can be helped to eliminate their sucking habits quickly, without coercion, and in a positive way. Admittedly, most of my data is based purely on clinical observation. However, clinical observation is the basis for classical scientific investigation. I welcome this investigation; it is long overdue. Much of the literature available to parents appears to take a rather cavalier attitude with regard to the dental consequences of sucking habits. Parents are frequently left with the impression that no harm is done to the teeth. This perspective is based on the assumption that most children stop the sucking behavior before permanent teeth erupt into the mouth. Therefore, any dental malocclusion in the primary teeth will often be transitional or will spontaneously self-correct. However, as demonstrated by Kelly, et al (1973), millions of children do not discontinue their sucking habits before permanent teeth erupt. In addition, stress levels in today's world are probably significantly greater than when this study was done. Because stress is a powerful stimulus for the sucking activity, it is highly probable that if a similar study were done today, it would produce a substantially greater number of individuals with prolonged sucking habits. The active pursuit of insurance benefits for the Certified Orofacial Myologist providing therapy for the elimination of these habits will be germane to prevention. Research is needed to accomplish this goal including: investigation of the incidence of prolonged digit-sucking habits; the impact of these habits on the entire stomatognathic system, speech development and emotional health; efficacy of treatment (including psychological response) both through the utilization of habit appliances and motivational therapy. The Certified Orofacial Myologist provides many valuable therapeutic programs to enhance dental and speech development. In the words of our president, Marge Snow at the 25th Anniversary of the founding of The International Association of Orofacial Myology, "we are morally and ethically challenged with making this treatment available to everyone". Roberta Pierce (1988) in her paper, "Treatment For The Young Child" wrote, "The overall goal is to create as normal an environment as possible so as to facilitate normal growth and development. " The early elimination of digit-sucking habits is one of the most important therapeutic services offered by the Certified Orofacial Myologist because it provides the most benefit toward prevention and the well-being of the whole person. Treatment after the pathology is fully developed is invasive, not cost-effective and does not provide as good a clinical result. Little mouths deserve a big chance to grow healthy and straight.
Association between annoyance and individuals’ values of nitrogen dioxide in a European setting

Introduction: Annoyance caused by air pollution has been proposed as an indicator of exposure to air pollution. The aim of this study was to assess the geographical homogeneity of the relationship between annoyance and modelled home-based nitrogen dioxide (NO2) measurements. Methods: The European Community Respiratory Health Survey II was conducted in 2000–1, in 25 European centres in 12 countries. This analysis included 4753 subjects (from 37 in Tartu, Estonia, to 532 in Antwerp, Belgium) who answered the annoyance question and with available outdoor residential NO2 (4399 modelled and 354 measured) including 20 cities from 10 countries. Annoyance as a result of air pollution was self-reported on an 11-point scale (0, no disturbance at all; 10, intolerable disturbance). Demographic and socioeconomic factors, smoking status and the presence of respiratory symptoms or disease were measured through a standard questionnaire. Negative binomial regression was used. Results: The median NO2 concentration was 27 μg. m−3 (from 10 in Umeå, Sweden, to 57 in Barcelona, Spain). The mean of annoyance was 2.5 (from 0.7 in Reykjavik, Iceland, to 4.4 in Huelva, Spain). NO2 was associated with annoyance (ratio of the mean score 1.26 per 10 μg.m−3, 95% CI 1.19 to 1.34). The association between NO2 and annoyance was heterogeneous among cities (p for heterogeneity <0.001). Conclusions: Annoyance is associated with home outdoor air pollution but with a different strength by city. This indicates that annoyance is not a valid surrogate for air pollution exposure. Nevertheless, it may be a useful measure of perceived ambient air quality and could be considered a complementary tool for health surveillance.
Beliefs and attitudes of older adults and carers about deprescribing of medications: a qualitative focus group study.

BACKGROUND Deprescribing describes the complex process that is required for the safe and effective cessation of medications that are likely to cause more harm than benefit. Knowledgeof older adults' and carers' attitudes towards deprescribing will enhance shared decision making in medication optimisation. AIM To explore the views, beliefs, and attitudes of older adults and carers on deprescribing. DESIGN AND SETTING Qualitative focus group study in New South Wales, Australia. METHOD Four focus groups with 14 older adults and 14 carers were conducted. Results were analysed using a previously developed framework (directed content analysis) with additional conventional content analysis. RESULTS The willingness of both older adults and carers to have one or more medications deprescribed was influenced by the following main themes: their perception of the appropriateness of that medication; fear of outcomes of withdrawal; dislike of taking medications; and the availability of a process for withdrawal (including a discussion with a healthcare professional and knowing that the medication could be restarted if necessary). A patient's regular GP was identified as a strong influence both for and against medication withdrawal. The identified themes supported the previously developed framework. An additional theme unique to the carers was the complexity involved in making decisions about medications for their care recipients. CONCLUSION This study highlights that discussions between the healthcare professional and the olderadult or carer about withdrawing medications should address reasons for deprescribing. GPs should be aware of their major influence on patients and regularly discuss appropriateness of current medication use with older adults and their carers.
Urologic diseases in america project: trends in resource use for urinary tract infections in men.

PURPOSE Various types of urinary tract infection (UTI) occur in men. In this study we examined health care use trends, including epidemiological and economic factors, for UTI in men in the United States. MATERIALS AND METHODS The analytical methods used to generate these results have been described previously. RESULTS Approximately 20% of all UTIs occur in men. Between 1988 and 1994 the overall lifetime prevalence of UTI was estimated to be 13,689/100,000 men. Orchitis rates, particularly in older men, are generally higher than those of cystitis or pyelonephritis. Approximately 10% of all inpatient care of men with UTI is for orchitis (12 to 14/100,000 population). Rates of outpatient hospital and physician office care for male UTI have increased in the last decade. Rates for emergency room care for UTI in elderly men (85 to 94 years old) were almost twice those in men younger than 85 years. The adjusted mean health care expenditure for privately insured men with UTI was 5,544 dollars in 1999 compared to 2,715 dollars for men without UTI. Total annual health care expenditures for men and women with UTI were 5,544 dollars and 5,407 dollars, respectively. Mean time lost from work was slightly higher for men. Based on composite data overall medical expenditures for men with UTI in the United States were estimated to be approximately 1.028 billion dollars in 2000. CONCLUSIONS Health care use and economic data on UTIs in men revealed a number of intriguing trends. These results raise various important questions for future research.
New-onset psychiatric disorders in individuals with autism

A follow-up study to at least the age of 21 years of 135 individuals with an autism spectrum disorder diagnosed in childhood and an IQ of over 30 was conducted. The study is distinctive in its large size, low attrition rate and use of systematic interviews to obtain clinical information. Questionnaires completed by caregivers asked about the development of new psychiatric disorders. For the 39 individuals with a possible new disorder, a detailed psychiatric assessment was undertaken through parental interview. Of all participants, 16 percent developed a definite new psychiatric disorder. A further 6 percent developed a possible new disorder. Five individuals developed an obsessive-compulsive disorder and/or catatonia; eight an affective disorder with marked obsessional features; three complex affective disorders; four more straightforward affective disorders; one a bipolar disorder; and one an acute anxiety state complicated by alcohol excess. There was no case of schizophrenia.
Successful repair of Bismuth type 2 bile duct stricture by T-tube stented omentoplasty: 19 years follow-up.

BACKGROUND The 'gold standard' of surgical repair of extrahepatic bile duct strictures is hepaticojejunostomy (HJ). This is a proven procedure with the drawback of a nonanatomic bile duct drainage by passing the ampullary sphincter system. On theoretical grounds an anatomical reconstruction would be desirable. CASE OUTLINE This case demonstrates the possibility of repairing a Bismuth type 2 stricture with a longitudinal incision and a T-tube stented omentoplasty. After a follow-up of 19 years, the reconstruction rendered an anatomically and physiologically normal repair. DISCUSSION Stented omentoplasty may be an alternative to HJ in Bismuth type 1 and 2 lesions.The success of this unorthodox repair technique does not warrant a general recommendation at this stage, however. Pertinent analogous literature reports are scarce, and the evidence base is very limited.The case report is rather intended as an incentive for further research outlining the possibilities and limitations of this technique.
Application of Kvaal's Technique of Age Estimation on Digital Panoramic Radiographs

Different types of radiographs of dental structures undoubtedly offer a least destructive approach to age estimation of individuals, but most of these methods are based on the calcification stages of the developing teeth. Very limited studies have been carried out in India using Kvaal’s technique based on pulp changes on radiographs as a tool for age estimation. Further, only few studies have been reported so far, applying Kvaal’s technique on orthopantomograph. The present study has been carried out using Kvaal’s technique of age estimation from dental pulp size on digital orthopantomograph of Indian population.