Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enlargement of the common bile duct in patients with acute graft-versus-host disease: what does it mean?

OBJECTIVE The aim of the study was to assess variations in the diameter of the common bile duct in patients with gastrointestinal graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) undergoing abdominal CT after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and to correlate the findings with laboratory results on cholestasis. MATERIALS AND METHODS We performed a retrospective analysis of the caliber of the common bile duct in 27 adult patients with histologically validated gastrointestinal GVHD who underwent two or more follow-up abdominal CT examinations. Another 25 patients who underwent allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation during the same period at our institution but who did not have GVHD constituted the control group. The diameters of the common bile duct were correlated with cholestasis values. RESULTS A pathologic diameter of the common bile duct was defined as greater than 7 mm (48 patients) in patients who had not undergone cholecystectomy and greater than 8 mm in those who had (four patients). The median diameter of the common bile duct was 7 mm (range, 4-14.8 mm) in the GVHD group and 5.8 mm (range, 3.9-10.2 mm) in the control group. Pathologic diameters of the common bile duct were found in 67% of the patients in the GVHD group and in 12% of the control group (p < 0.0001). The variation coefficient of the diameter of the common bile duct was 12.4% in the GVHD group (83 examinations) and 6.4% in the control group (92 examinations) (p < 0.0001). Ninety-six percent of the patients in the GVHD group had elevated cholestasis values with a significant positive correlation between bilirubin concentration and diameter of the common bile duct (r = 0.421; p = 0.032). Enhancement of the common bile duct and gallbladder wall was seen in the majority of GVHD patients but no controls (p < 0.0001). CONCLUSION Temporary dilatation of the common bile duct seems to be a common finding in gastrointestinal GVHD after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and correlates with bilirubin concentration. This knowledge of fluctuation in bile duct diameter can help to avoid unnecessary tests to evaluate for pathologic causes of biliary dilatation.
Brain communication in a completely locked-in patient using bedside near-infrared spectroscopy

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) can result in the locked-in state (LIS), characterized by paralysis, and eventual respiratory failure, compensated by artificial ventilation,1 or the completely LIS (CLIS), with additional total paralysis of eye muscles. Brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) have been used to allow paralyzed people to regain basic communication,2 although current EEG-based BCIs have not succeeded with CLIS patients.3 We present Class IV case evidence to establish that communication in the CLIS is possible with a metabolic BCI based on near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS).
Transduction of a Mesenchyme-specific Gene Periostin into 293T Cells Induces Cell Invasive Activity through Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transformation*

Tumor metastasis is a multistep pathological process involved in the final phase of tumor development. During this process, epithelium-derived tumor cells undergo fibroblast-like transformation, referred to as epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), which contributes to aggressive behavior of tumors. We identify periostin, a mesenchyme-specific gene product, as a contributor to EMT and metastatic potential. Stable expression of a periostin transgene in tumorigenic but non-metastatic 293T cells caused cells to undergo fibroblast-like transformation accompanied by increased expressions of vimentin, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), and matrix metalloproteinase-9. The cells expressing ectopic periostin increased cell migration, invasion, and adhesion by 2-9-fold. Invasive characteristics required signaling through integrin αvβ5 and EGFR. In addition, periostin-engineered 293T cells formed metastases in immunodeficient mice following either cardiac inoculation or injection into mammary fat pad. These data demonstrate an active role for periostin in EMT and metastasis that requires cross-talk between integrin and EGFR signaling pathways.
Illuminating the Monuments: Observation and Speculation on the Structure and Function of the Cairns at Balnuaran of Clava

The cairns at Balnuaran of Clava show a structural relationship to the annual cycle, most clearly in their alignment on Midwinter sunset. The stones used in their construction fall into simple colour classes: ‘red’, ‘white’ and ‘black’. All three, but especially the black, appear to show selective arrangement in the cairns. A preliminary study of the relationships between the position of coloured stones and certain solar alignments, using both direct opposition and shadow casting, indicates that choice of colour may have been a significant factor in the positioning of stones within the monuments. Moreover the three colours seem to show a consistent pattern of meaning across a wide spectrum of cultures, which may imply a universal psychological factor in their symbolic use.
Pure representational neglect and navigational deficits in a case with preserved visuo-spatial working memory

We describe a patient who, after right hemisphere damage, showed severe, persistent, pure representational neglect but no evidence of perceptual neglect and no deficits in spatial working memory when evaluated with a traditional clinical test (Corsi Block Tapping test). This finding provides evidence against a full explanation of representational neglect within the context of visuo-spatial working memory. Indeed, this patient showed a peculiar deficit in navigational tasks requiring re-orientation in a novel environment by means of his mental representation of the environment. Since no representational neglect was observed in tests requiring mental representation of single or multiple objects (i.e., o'clock test) we suggest that in our patient representational neglect is caused by damage to the cognitive system involved in coding and storing environmental information to be used during navigation.
Os Navios do Mar Oceano. Teoria e Empiria na Arquitectura Naval Portuguesa dos séculos XVI e XVII by Francisco Contente Domingues

construction method; or, a conceptually skeleton-first ship, with ribbands used to determine the shape of the secondary frames. Put this way, one can see the appeal of such a layered metaphysic for categorising some examples. However, the ‘conceptual principles’ in this book are further extended, not only to include ‘Bottom-based’, but also ‘Intermediate categories which may emerge’. These last presumably include ‘Mixed construction principles’—for, at p.182, we read that the Byzantine wreck of Yassı Ada ‘bears all the signs of a mixed construction principle’. It is hard to accept that this flowering of abstractions, which must surely transgress Ockham’s Razor, is really going to help the ordinary reader gain a clearer view of the history of shipbuilding. Surely it is better to adopt a single-layer phenomenological approach, making the maximum possible use of coding features and shapes, and, if necessary, inventing one’s own terms to explain the interest of each new discovery? In the present context, of course, the authors have every right, and, indeed, obligation, to set out some theoretical scheme for their subject, and it will do students of nautical archaeology no harm to wrestle with such issues. On the whole a greater problem for nautical archaeology theory seems to lie in the distinction between boats, where the whole craft can be turned over during construction, and timbers can be shaped by being lifted in and out of the hull for trimming and fitting; and, on the other hand, ships, where the size of components or of the rising hull means that much work has to be done by design, rather than by trial-and-error. The uncertainty of how to distinguish these categories, especially in the field, makes a single theory of ship construction probably unattainable in the long run. In the short term, however, the present book gives plenty of scope for thinking about the issue, and is a stimulating and attractive introduction to the subject.
Linguistic Features of Writing Quality

In this study, a corpus of expert-graded essays, based on a standardized scoring rubric, is computationally evaluated so as to distinguish the differences between those essays that were rated as high and those rated as low. The automated tool, Coh-Metrix, is used to examine the degree to which high- and low-proficiency essays can be predicted by linguistic indices of cohesion (i.e., coreference and connectives), syntactic complexity (e.g., number of words before the main verb, sentence structure overlap), the diversity of words used by the writer, and characteristics of words (e.g., frequency, concreteness, imagability). The three most predictive indices of essay quality in this study were syntactic complexity (as measured by number of words before the main verb), lexical diversity (as measured by the Measure of Textual Lexical Diversity), and word frequency (as measured by Celex, logarithm for all words). Using 26 validated indices of cohesion from Coh-Metrix, none showed differences between high- and low-proficiency essays and no indices of cohesion correlated with essay ratings. These results indicate that the textual features that characterize good student writing are not aligned with those features that facilitate reading comprehension. Rather, essays judged to be of higher quality were more likely to contain linguistic features associated with text difficulty and sophisticated language.
Conjugated linoleic acid rapidly reduces body fat content in mice without affecting energy intake

DeLany, James P., Fawn Blohm, Alycia A. Truett, Joseph A. Scimeca, and David B. West. Conjugated linoleic acid rapidly reduces body fat content in mice without affecting energy intake. Am. J. Physiol. 276 (Regulatory Integrative Comp. Physiol. 45): R1172–R1179, 1999. —Recent reports have demonstrated that conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) has effects on body fat accumulation. In our previous work, CLA reduced body fat accumulation in mice fed either a high-fat or low-fat diet. Although CLA feeding reduced energy intake, the results suggested that some of the metabolic effects were not a consequence of the reduced food intake. We therefore undertook a study to determine a dose of CLA that would have effects on body composition without affecting energy intake. Five doses of CLA (0.0, 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, and 1.0% by weight) were studied in AKR/J male mice (n 5 12/group; age, 39 days) maintained on a high-fat diet (%fat 45 kcal). Energy intake was not suppressed by any CLA dose. Body fat was significantly lower in the 0.50, 0.75, and 1.0% CLA groups compared with controls. The retroperitoneal depot was most sensitive to the effects of CLA, whereas the epididymal depot was relatively resistant. Higher doses of CLA also significantly increased carcass protein content. A time-course study of the effects of 1% CLA on body composition showed reductions in fat pad weights within 2 wk and continued throughout 12 wk of CLA feeding. In conclusion, CLAfeeding produces a rapid, marked decrease in fat accumulation, and an increase in protein accumulation, at relatively low doses without any major effects on food intake.
Screening for Traumatic Brain Injury in an Offender Sample: A First Look at the Reliability and Validity of the Traumatic Brain Injury Questionnaire

ObjectiveTo assess the reliability and validity of the Traumatic Brain Injury Questionnaire (TBIQ) for assessing history of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in an offender population. Setting/ParticipantsOffenders (118 women and 107 men) from 6 federal prison facilities in 3 geographic regions. MeasuresTBIQ and multiple measures of cognitive and behavioral functioning. ResultsPreliminary results indicated good test-retest reliability for lifetime history of head injury, good internal consistency for symptom severity and frequency scales, and good criterion validity for frequency of head injury and frequency and severity of symptoms. ConclusionThe TBIQ holds promise as an instrument for the assessment of TBI history in offender populations.
Second-first language acquisition: analysis of expressive language skills in a sample of girls adopted from China

ABSTRACT In this study we investigated adopted Chinese girls' expressive English language outcomes in relation to their age at adoption, chronological age, length of exposure to English and developmental risk status at the time of adoption. Vocabulary and phrase utterance data on 318 girls were collected from the adoptive mothers using the Language Development Survey (LDS) (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000). The girls, aged 18–35 months (M=26·2 months, SD=4·9 months), were adopted at ages ranging from 6·8 to 24 months (M=12·6 months, SD=3·1 months), and had been exposed to English for periods ranging from 1·6 to 27·6 months (M=13·7, SD=5·7). Findings suggest that vocabulary and mean length of phrase scores were negatively correlated with age at adoption but positively correlated with chronological age and length of exposure to English. Developmental risk status at the time of adoption was not correlated with language outcomes. The gap between their expressive language and that of same-age girls from the US normative sample was wider for children aged 18–23 months but was closed for children aged 30–35 months. About 16% of the children met the LDS criteria for delays in vocabulary and 17% met the LDS criteria for delays in mean length of phrase. Speech/language interventions were received by 33·3% of the children with delays in vocabulary and 25% with delays in phrase.
European Society of Hypertension Scientific Newsletter : Update on Hypertension Management 2006 ; 7 : No . 27 PREVENTION OF TYPE 2 DIABETES MELLITUS WITH ANTIHYPERTENSIVE DRUGS

Introduction Type 2 diabetes is a prevalent and important cardiovascular risk factor [1], and it is well known that patients with established diabetes run a cardiovascular risk between two and four times greater than that run by non-diabetics. It is therefore of importance to prevent the development of type 2 diabetes if possible by an appropriate lifestyle and by a careful selection of antihypertensive drugs in patients at risk, such as those with the metabolic syndrome and hypertension. Observational studies have shown that the risk of drug-induced hyperglycaemia is in fact equal to already existing hyperglycaemia and overt type 2 diabetes during follow-up [2]. Data from the Framingham cohort have also shown that approximately 15–18% of hypertensive patients were “glucose intolerant” and that this may contribute to the increased cardiovascular risk in hypertensive patients [3]. It is therefore of interest to investigate the issue of whether different antihypertensive treatment regimens have different effects on glucose metabolism and the development of diabetes mellitus.
End-of-life Care for Hematological Malignancies: The ‘Technological Imperative’ and Palliative Care

Recent research indicates that hospice/ palliative care practices have not yet been integrated into the care of patients with hematological malignancies. As research in relation to palliative care and hematological malignancies is in its infancy, many of the end-of-life care practices with these diagnostic groups are based on unexamined ideas. The findings presented in this article, which are taken from recent post-doctoral research on hematological malignancies and palliative care, make a contribution to documenting information on what is happening to patients and their families in this area. In particular, the findings provide insights on issues associated with the patient and carer awareness that the patient is dying, understanding of prognosis, and the desire to die at home. Such insights are placed in the context of descriptions of the patients’ experience with treatment during the terminal stage.
A linear lower bound on the unbounded error probabilistic communication complexity

We prove a general lower bound on the complexity of unbounded error probabilistic communication protocols. This result improves on a lower bound for bounded error protocols from Krause (1996). As a simple consequence we get the, to our knowledge, first linear lower bound on the complexity of unbounded error probabilistic communication protocols for the functions defined by Hadamard matrices. We also give an upper bound on the margin of any embedding of a concept class in half spaces.
Substitutions at Auxiliary Operator O3 Enhance Repression by Nitrate-Responsive Regulator NarL at Synthetic lac Control Regions in Escherichia coli K-12

ABSTRACT We constructed monocopy lac operon control regions in which the operators O1-lac and O3-lac were replaced by NarL and NarP binding sites from the nirB or napF operon control regions. The results support the hypothesis that DNA-bound dimers of phospho-NarL can participate in higher-order cooperative interactions.
Aquaporin 9 inhibits hepatocellular carcinoma through up-regulating FOXO1 expression

Aquaporin 9 (AQP9) is the main aquaglyceroporin in the liver. Few studies have been performed regarding the role of AQP9 in liver cancer. Here we report AQP9 expression and function in liver cancer. We found that AQP9 mRNA and protein levels were reduced in human hepatocellular cancer compared to the para-tumor normal liver tissues. Human hepatoma cell line SMMC7721 expressed low basal levels of AQP9. When AQP9 was overexpressed in SMMC7721 cell line, cell proliferation was inhibited due to cell cycle arrest at G1 phase and increased apoptosis. At the molecular level, AQP9 overexpression decreased the protein levels of phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K), leading to reduced phosphorylation of Akt. Subsequently, the protein levels of forkhead box protein O1 (FOXO1) were increased, resulting in down-regulation of proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) expression and up-regulation of caspase-3 expression. AQP9 overexpression inhibited growth of subcutaneously xenografted liver tumors in nude mice. These findings suggest that AQP9 expression is down-regulated in liver cancer compared to the normal liver tissue and restoration of AQP9 expression can inhibit development of liver cancer.
Environmental benefits of biochar.

Understanding and improving environmental quality by reducing soil nutrient leaching losses, reducing bioavailability of environmental contaminants, sequestering C, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and enhancing crop productivity in highly weathered or degraded soils, has been the goal of agroecosystem researchers and producers for years. Biochar, produced by pyrolysis of biomass, may help attain these goals. The desire to advance understanding of the environmental and agronomic implication of biochar utilization led to the organization of the 2010 American Society of Agronomy-Soil Science Society of America Environmental Quality Division session titled "Biochar Effects on the Environment and Agricultural Productivity. " This specialized session and sessions from other biochar conferences, such as the 2010 U.S. Biochar Initiative and the Biochar Symposium 2010 are the sources for this special manuscript collection. Individual contributions address improvement of the biochar knowledge base, current information gaps, and future biochar research needs. The prospect of biochar utilization is promising, as biochars may be customized for specific environmental applications.
Monitoring of endocrine disruptors in surface waters by the yeast recombinant assay

Endocrine disruptors exert physiological effects at very low concentrations. Surface waters present often a mixture of high concentrations of low‐potency disruptors and low amounts of very powerful ones, making their chemical analysis complicated and expensive. We developed a recombinant yeast assay (RYA) for estrogenic compounds using 96‐well microtiter plates. This assay is based on three yeast strains, transformed with self‐propagating plasmids. One strain contains an expression plasmid for the human estrogen hormone recéptor and an appropriate reporter; it detects estrogenic and antiestrogenic activities. The two other yeast strains, one expressing the human progesterone receptor and a second based on the yeast activator Gal4p, served to analyze the nature of antiestrogenic activities. We applied this technique to water samples from two tributaries of the Llobregat river (NE Spain) as well as from four sewage treatment plants discharging on them. Our results indicate that the efficiency of sewage treatment plants for eliminating estrogenic compounds varied notably, being in at least one case completely inefficient. We also observed a prevalence of an inhibitory activity all through the two rivers; this inhibition was hormone specific. These results were consistent to previously obtained chemical analyses of the same samples, although chemical and in vivo analyses showed rather different levels of sensitivity for some compounds. Our findings demonstrate the utility of the yeast recombinant assay for analyzing complex natural samples; at the same time, they stress the necessity of a panel of different yeast systems to adequately describe endocrine‐disruptor activities.
Prevalence of Atrial Fibrillation and Relation to Echocardiographic Parameters in a Healthy Asymptomatic Rural Korean Population

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia worldwide and a potent independent risk factor for stroke. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of AF in a population-based sample of adults in a rural region of Korea. Between January 2005 and December 2009, 4,067 individuals (60.2 ± 11.2 yr old, M: F = 1,582:2,485) over 21 who were residents of the county of Yangpyeong, Korea, participated in the study. AF was assessed on a resting 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) in 4,053 of the participants. Blood tests and transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) were also performed to investigate the relationship between left ventricular mass and AF in the study group. Fifty-four cases (32 men) were diagnosed as AF among the 4,053 subjects. The crude prevalence of AF was 1.3%. It was highest (2.3%) among sixty- and seventy- year olds, and higher in men than women in all age groups over 50. The prevalence in men was 2.0%, and in women 0.9%. In univariate analysis, age, male gender, body mass index, total serum cholesterol, alanine transaminase, serum creatinine, adiponectin level, and ischemic heart disease were associated with AF. Among the TTE parameters, systolic and diastolic left ventricular systolic internal dimension (LVID), and LV ejection fraction were associated with AF. In this relatively healthy population in a rural area of Korea, the prevalence of AF is 1.3%, and increases with age. Of the TTE parameters, systolic and diastolic LVID and left atrial diameter are related to prevalence of AF. Graphical Abstract