Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Immunisation of mares with binding domains of toxins A and B of Clostridium difficile elicits serum and colostral antibodies that block toxin binding.

REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY Enterocolitis caused by Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) is a serious, sometimes fatal, disease of neonatal foals and older horses. Toxins A and B (TcdA and B) produced by C. difficile are important virulence factors. Immunisation of mares with receptor binding domains of toxins may prevent or reduce the severity of C. difficile colitis in foals. OBJECTIVES To determine whether antibodies generated in the pregnant mare to the binding regions of TcdA and B will neutralise TcdA and B toxicity. METHODS Sequences encoding the binding domains of each toxin were isolated by PCR amplification from C. difficile JF09, a foal isolate, and cloned and expressed into pET15b. Thirteen mares were immunised twice 2 weeks apart with 200 μg of each recombinant protein with Quil A 2 months prior to foaling. Antibodies were assayed in the sera and colostrum by ELISA and for ability to block the cytopathic activity of each of toxin for equine endothelial cells. RESULTS All mares produced strong serum antibody responses to the binding domain of each toxin. A high level of toxin-specific antibodies was also detected in colostrum and in most foal sera 2 days after suckling. Diluted sera and colostrum premixed with either TcdA or B had no effect on the morphology of equine endothelial cells. Application of the same concentration of toxins alone or premixed with nonimmune mare/foal serum or colostrum led to an unambiguous cytopathic effect that ranged from complete degradation to varying degrees of cell rounding. CONCLUSIONS Immunisation of pregnant mares with recombinant binding domains of TcdA and B of C. difficile resulted in the production of specific antibodies in serum and colostrum that blocked the cytopathic activity of toxins. POTENTIAL RELEVANCE Results of studies support the feasibility of a prepartum vaccine against C. difficile enterocolitis in foals.
Critical thermal limits in Mediterranean ant species: trade‐off between mortality risk and foraging performance

1. In Mediterranean ant communities, a close relationship has been found between activity rhythm in the period of maximum activity and position in the dominance hierarchy: subordinate species are active during the day, when conditions are more severe, while dominants are active during the afternoon and the night. 2. Results obtained in this study confirmed that the species foraging at higher temperatures were closer to their critical thermal limits than the species foraging at lower temperatures. 3. This enabled two extreme strategies of foraging in relation to temperature to be distinguished: (1) heat-intolerant ant species behaved as risk-averse species, foraging at temperatures very far from their critical thermal limits; and (2) heat-tolerant ant species behaved as risk-prone species, foraging very near their critical thermal limits and running a high heat mortality risk. 4. Heat-tolerant species benefited from this strategy by having better foraging performance at high temperatures. 5. This wide range of thermal niches may be one reason why Mediterranean ant faunas are so diverse in the face of limited diversity in vegetation and habitat structure: the daily range of temperature may be sufficiently great to meet the requirement both of heat-adapted and cold-adapted species as well as a spectrum of intermediate forms.
Carnitine palmitoyltransferase I in human carcinomas: A novel role in histone deacetylation?

Carnitine palmitoyl transferase I (CPT1) catalyzes the transport of long-chain fatty acids into mitochondria for β-oxidation. A link between CPT1 and apoptosis has been suggested on the basis of several experimental data. Nevertheless, results are contradictory about the effective role of CPT1 in cell survival control and cancer development. Conversely, Fatty acid synthase (FAS) enzyme, required for the synthesis of fatty acids, is found over-expressed in tumors and inhibition of FAS triggers apoptosis in human cancer cells. We have studied the tumor-specific modulation of CPT1 and FAS in human colorectal cancer (n=11) and breast carcinomas (n=24). CPT1 was significantly decreased in the cytoplasm of tumoral samples (p≤0.04), whereas FAS was increased (p≤0.04). A striking CPT1 nuclear localization was evident in the tumors (p≤0.04). In the nuclear environment the protein would modulate the levels of acetyl/acyl-CoA implicated in the regulation of gene transcription. At this purpose, we performed in vitro experiments using epithelial neoplastic (MCF-7, Caco-2, HepG2 cells) and non neoplastic cell lines (MCF-12F) confirming a nuclear localization of CPT1 protein exclusively in neoplastic cells. Moreover histone deacetylase (HDAC) activity showed significantly higher levels in nuclear extracts from neoplastic than from control cells. HDAC1 and CPT1 proteins co-immunoprecipitated in nuclear extracts from MCF-7 cells. The treatment with HDAC inhibitors such as trichostatin A and butyrate significantly decreased nuclear expression of CPT1 and its bond to HDAC1. We also identified the existence of CPT1A mRNA transcript variant 2 in MCF-7, beside to the classic isoform 1. The peculiar localization of CPT1 in the nuclei of human carcinomas and the disclosed functional link between nuclear CPT1 and HDAC1 propose a new role of CPT1 in the histonic acetylation level of tumors.
True Filterless Class-D Audio Amplifier

The design of a fully integrated, filterless, class-D audio amplifier in standard 0.25- CMOS technology is described: a novel class-D amplifier architecture, where uniform pulsewidth modulation is introduced. The architecture attenuates residual clock signals around the loop allowing very low harmonic distortion, , to be achieved in conjunction with high PSRR, at 217 Hz. When driving 1.2 W into an 8- load, it achieves an SNR of 103 dB (A-weighted) with an efficiency of . The maximum output power at 1% THD is 3.1 W. Figures of merit are defined to establish that the amplifier exceeds the performance of alternative designs. The amplifier occupied a chip area 1.44 and was packaged as a WLCSP.
An update to the methods in Endangered Species Research 2011 paper "Estimating North Pacific right whale Eubalaena japonica density using passive acoustic cue counting"

We present a method for estimating animal density from fixed passive acoustic detec- tors, and illustrate it by estimating the density of North Pacific right whales Eubalaena japonica in the areas surrounding 3 hydrophones deployed in the southeastern Bering Sea in 2001 to 2002 and 2005 to 2006. Input data were the distances to detected right whale calls, estimated using a normal mode sound propagation model, and call production rate, estimated from encounters by survey vessels with right whale groups. Given the scarcity of information about this highly endangered species, we also extrapolate our results to provide a tentative estimate of the total population size in shelf waters of the eastern Bering Sea. This gives a point estimate of 25 animals (CV 29.1%; 95% confidence interval 13-47), which agrees well with what little is known for this species. We discuss the assumptions underlying the method. Obtaining more reliable values requires a larger sample of randomly located hydrophones, together with improved estimates of call rate.
Organochlorine Pesticides and Polychlorinated Biphenyl Congeners in Ooligan Grease: A Traditional Food Fat of British Columbia First Nations

Levels of persistent organic pollutants including dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, hexachlorobenzene, hexachlorohexanes, dieldrin, chlordane, mirex, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) were measured in ooligan fish (Thaleichthys pacificus) prepared in the way usually consumed and in ooligan grease collected from five communities (Nass River, Kitimaat, Bella Coola, Kingcome Inlet, and Knights Inlet) in the coastal area of British Columbia, Canada. Levels of chlorinated pesticides and PCB increased from the north to the south, with the lowest from Nass River and highest from Knights Inlet. Average levels of persistent organic pollutants (110 ng/g lipid of total chlorinated pesticide and 30 ng/g lipid of PCB) were lower than those reported in fish from the Great Lakes and similar to those from the Arctic and were below the regulation limits established by Health Canada. Therefore, consumption of ooligan grease presents minimal health risk from organochlorine exposure.
New approaches to manipulator arm solutions via unconstrained optimization theory

SUMMARY In this study, highly practical and reliable methods are proposed to determine arm solutions for a six-link robot manipulator. Based on a typical mathematical structure of minimizing an objective function, the optimization theory is applied to solve a reduced system of kinematic equations. The performance tests show that three different approaches are superior to a conventional method and of sufficiently practical use. Especially, the use of an algorithm presented in a linear search is promising.
Aortic stiffness and carotid intima‐media thickness: two independent markers of subclinical vascular damage in young adults?

Background Previous reports have shown that carotid intima‐media thickness (CIMT) and arterial stiffness are strong predictors of subsequent cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality, and are well related to an unfavourable cardiovascular risk profile in middle‐aged and older subjects. These similarities suggest that arterial stiffness may play a role in the development of atherosclerosis or vice versa. However, studies show conflicting results and are limited to elderly subjects. To study this issue further, we evaluated the relation of arterial stiffness to subclinical atherosclerosis in 524 healthy young adults, aged 27–30 years.
Fatal aluminium phosphide poisoning due to myocardial depression refractory to high dose inotropic support and intra-aortic balloon counterpulsation

We report a case of aluminium phosphide poisioning that presented to us with refractory myocardial depression. This patient developed worsening circulatory failure that did not respond to inotropic or vasopressor support and intra-aortic balloon counterpulsation. She went on to develop progressive metabolic acidosis, renal failure and died within 48 hours of admission to the intensive care unit.
Symptom Patterns of Alcoholism in a Northern Ontario Population

Alcoholism is noted to be a common problem in Canada and particularly in native populations. We report here a survey of the frequency of evidence of alcoholism over a period of four months in a relatively isolated Northern Ontario population in which more than 80% were either status Indians or of partly Indian origin. Using questionnaire methods, “definite” alcoholism was found to affect 27% of adults seen at a clinic and probable alcoholism affected another 20%. This gives a minimum prevalence of 14.6% of the local adult population over a four month period on the basis merely of examination of less than one third of the adults in the community. Blackouts, tremors, bad temper, chest pain, unsteadiness, loss of appetite, vomiting, sadness and stomach pain occurred significantly more often in the alcoholic patients. Stomach pain, loss of appetite and vomiting were less prominent with alcoholism in this population than in a Southern population. The findings indicate the importance in general practice of looking for alcoholism, the ease with which this may be undertaken with a few very simple short questions and the importance of some characteristic patterns, especially blackouts, shakiness and unsteadiness as one pattern and stomach pain and other gastro-intestinal symptoms as another pattern.
Sound Analogies with Phoneme Embeddings

Vector space models of words in NLP— word embeddings —have been recently shown to reliably encode semantic information, offering capabilities such as solving proportional analogy tasks such as man:woman::king:queen. We study how well these distributional properties carry over to similarly learned phoneme embed-dings , and whether phoneme vector spaces align with articulatory distinctive features, using several methods of obtaining such continuous-space representations. We demonstrate a statistically signiﬁcant correlation between distinctive feature spaces and vector spaces learned with word-context PPMI+SVD and word2vec, showing that many distinctive feature contrasts are implicitly present in phoneme distributions. Furthermore, these distributed representations allow us to solve proportional analogy tasks with phonemes, such as p is to b as t is to X , where the solution is that X = d . This effect is even stronger when a supervision signal is added where we extract phoneme representations from the embedding layer of an recurrent neural network that is trained to solve a word inﬂection task, i.e. a model that is made aware of word relatedness.
Bromodomain and extraterminal protein inhibitors in pediatrics: A review of the literature

The last few years have seen the identification of pharmacologic approaches to target bromodomain and extraterminal (BET) proteins for cancer treatment. These proteins have an essential role in gene transcription regulation by binding acetylated lysine residues on histone tails, activating gene transcription. BET inhibitors have been tested in preclinical models including pediatric malignancies and several adult clinical trials are ongoing. Since the development of new drugs in pediatric cancer has long lagged behind programs for adults, the aim of this review is to show the importance of these therapies in pediatric malignancies to support their development in pediatric oncology/hematology.
Efficiency of Conscious Access Improves with Coupling of Slow and Fast Neural Oscillations

Global workspace access is considered as a critical factor for the ability to report a visual target. A plausible candidate mechanism for global workspace access is coupling of slow and fast brain activity. We studied coupling in EEG data using cross-frequency phase–amplitude modulation measurement between delta/theta phases and beta/gamma amplitudes from two experimental sessions, held on different days, of a typical attentional blink (AB) task, implying conscious access to targets. As the AB effect improved with practice between sessions, theta–gamma and theta–beta coupling increased generically. Most importantly, practice effects observed in delta–gamma and delta–beta couplings were specific to performance on the AB task. In particular, delta–gamma coupling showed the largest increase in cases of correct target detection in the most challenging AB conditions. All these practice effects were observed in the right temporal region. Given that the delta band is the main frequency of the P3 ERP, which is a marker of global workspace activity for conscious access, and because the gamma band is involved in visual object processing, the current results substantiate the role of phase–amplitude modulation in conscious access to visual target representations.
Effect of combined occupational exposure to noise and organic solvents on hearing

Noise exposure has been commonly regarded as the main hazard of occupational hearing loss. Recent studies indicate that several chemicals, including organic solvents have ototoxic effects. This study aimed at evaluating the hearing of workers exposed to both noise and a mixture of organic solvents at concentrations anticipated as safe. The study comprised three groups. The first one included 70 workers exposed to noise only, the second group consisted of 93 workers exposed to organic solvents and noise, and the control group included 59 individuals exposed to neither noise nor organic solvents. The three groups were matched for age, socioeconomic status, and smoking habit. The results of this study revealed that there was no statistically significant difference between the two exposed groups as regards the duration of exposure. There was a highly statistically significant difference between the two exposed groups as regards the different types of hearing loss (conductive deafness, sensory neural hearing loss, and mixed type) compared with the control one. Our study reported that sensory neural hearing loss occurred earlier in subjects with combined exposure to noise and solvents at a mean duration of exposure (16.38 ± 9.44 years) compared to (24.53 ± 9.59 years) the subjects with sole exposure to noise. The difference between the two groups was statistically significant regarding this type of hearing impairment (p < 0.05). There was a positive significant correlation between hearing impairment and duration of exposure in the two exposed groups. As regards the results of the environmental monitoring, both noise exposure levels (dB) and levels of different organic solvents measured (mg/m3) in different work departments were less than the levels recommended by Egyptian Environmental Law No. 4 for 1994. It is recommended that in the case of combined exposure, noise and solvent levels should be lowered than the permissible limits recommended for either alone.
In vitro susceptibilities of Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Mycoplasma hominis, and Ureaplasma urealyticum to sparfloxacin and PD 127391

The in vitro activities of two investigational quinolones, sparfloxacin (previously designated AT 4140) and PD 127391, were determined for 30 strains each of Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Mycoplasma hominis, and Ureaplasma urealyticum and compared with those of ciprofloxacin, tetracycline, clindamycin, and erythromycin. Erythromycin was the most active compound against M. pneumoniae (maximum MIC, less than 0.008 microgram/ml). PD 127391 (MICs, less than 0.008 to 0.031 microgram/ml), sparfloxacin (MICs, less than 0.008 to 0.25 microgram/ml), clindamycin (MICs, less than 0.008 to 0.5 microgram/ml), and tetracycline (MICs, 0.063 to 0.25 microgram/ml) were superior to ciprofloxacin (MICs, 0.5 to 2 microgram/ml). Sparfloxacin and PD 127391 were active against M. hominis (MICs, less than 0.008 to 0.031 microgram/ml for each) at concentrations comparable to those of clindamycin (MICs, less than 0.008 to 0.063 microgram/ml) and at concentrations lower than those of ciprofloxacin (MICs, 0.125 to 0.5 microgram/ml). As expected, M. hominis was resistant to erythromycin (MICs, 32 to greater than or equal to 256 micrograms/ml). For U. urealyticum, PD 127391 (MICs, 0.031 to 0.5 microgram/ml) and sparfloxacin (MICs, 0.063 to 1 microgram/ml) were superior to erythromycin (MICs, 0.25 to 4 micrograms/ml), ciprofloxacin (MICs, 0.5 to 8 micrograms/ml), and clindamycin (MICs, 0.25 to 64 micrograms/ml. Both new quinolones were equally active against tetracycline-susceptible as well as resistant strains of M. hominis and U. urealyticum. The possible influence of medium components and/or pH on MICs was evaluated by testing a Staphylococcus aureus reference strain with each antibiotic in SP-4 broth and 10-B broth and comparing the results with published MICs for this strain. MICs determined in 10-B broth for erythromycin were affected most. This study shows that the activities of sparfloxacin and PD 127391 are similar to one another and comparable or superior to those of other drugs used to treat mycoplasmal infections. The MICs of both new quinolones were consistently 2 to several dilutions lower than those of ciprofloxacin for each species.
Collective repacking reveals that the structures of protein cores are uniquely specified by steric repulsive interactions

Abstract Protein core repacking is a standard test of protein modeling software. A recent study of six different modeling software packages showed that they are more successful at predicting side chain conformations of core compared to surface residues. All the modeling software tested have multicomponent energy functions, typically including contributions from solvation, electrostatics, hydrogen bonding and Lennard–Jones interactions in addition to statistical terms based on observed protein structures. We investigated to what extent a simplified energy function that includes only stereochemical constraints and repulsive hard-sphere interactions can correctly repack protein cores. For single residue and collective repacking, the hard-sphere model accurately recapitulates the observed side chain conformations for Ile, Leu, Phe, Thr, Trp, Tyr and Val. This result shows that there are no alternative, sterically allowed side chain conformations of core residues. Analysis of the same set of protein cores using the Rosetta software suite revealed that the hard-sphere model and Rosetta perform equally well on Ile, Leu, Phe, Thr and Val; the hard-sphere model performs better on Trp and Tyr and Rosetta performs better on Ser. We conclude that the high prediction accuracy in protein cores obtained by protein modeling software and our simplified hard-sphere approach reflects the high density of protein cores and dominance of steric repulsion.
A Randomized, Double-Blind, Multicenter Study of Caspofungin Versus Liposomal Amphotericin B for Empiric Antifungal Therapy in Pediatric Patients With Persistent Fever and Neutropenia

Background: Persistently febrile neutropenic children at risk for invasive fungal infections receive empiric antifungal therapy as a standard of care. However, little is known about the role of echinocandins and liposomal amphotericin B (L-AmB) for empiric antifungal therapy in pediatric patients. Methods: Patients between the ages of 2 to 17 years with persistent fever and neutropenia were randomly assigned to receive caspofungin (70 mg/m2 loading dose on day 1, then 50 mg/m2 daily [maximum 70 mg/d]) or l-AmB (3 mg/kg daily) in a 2:1 ratio. Evaluation of safety was the primary objective of the study. Efficacy was also evaluated, with a successful outcome defined as fulfilling all components of a prespecified 5-part composite endpoint. Suspected invasive fungal infections were evaluated by an independent, treatment-blinded adjudication committee. Results: Eighty-two patients received study therapy (caspofungin 56, l-AmB 26), and 81 were evaluated for efficacy (caspofungin 56; l-AmB 25). Outcomes for safety and efficacy endpoints were similar for both study arms. Adverse drug-related event rates [95% confidence interval] were similar between the caspofungin and l-AmB groups (clinical 48.2% [34.7–62.0] versus 46.2% [26.6–66.6]; laboratory 10.7% [4.0–21.9] versus 19.2% [6.6–39.4]). Serious drug-related adverse events occurred in 1 (1.8%) of caspofungin-treated patients and 3 (11.5%) of l-AmB-treated patients. Overall success rates [95% CI] were 46.4% [33.4–59.5] for caspofungin and 32.0% [13.7–50.3] for l-AmB. Conclusions: Caspofungin and l-AmB were comparable in tolerability, safety, and efficacy as empiric antifungal therapy for persistently febrile neutropenic pediatric patients.