Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prevalence of congenital hypertrophy of the retinal pigment epithelium (CHRPE) in Israel

Dear Editor-in-Chief, While conducting a study on the prevalence of choroidal naevi on a healthy college population using the Optos Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscope (SLO) we also noted the presence of congenital hypertrophy of the retinal pigment epithelium (CHRPE). The differential diagnosis was made possible by the fact that the SLO uses two laser wavelengths: the red laser (633 nm) which provides an image of the deeper layers such as the choroid, and the green laser(532 nm) which provides a view of the superior layers of the retina. Typical CHRPE are unifocal or multifocal, round or oval, grey to black, unilateral pigmented lesions. The photoreceptor cell layer overlying the RPE usually shows marked degeneration but the choroid remains normal. CHRPE are usually benign and congenital. Using the SLO already described we analysed the fundus images of 406 healthy college subjects, composed of 303 Jews and 99 Arabs, 106 men, 300 women (mean age 23.5 4.4 years, range: 18–50 years). We found CHRPE in 18 subjects (4.4%; 95% CI, 3.9–4.8) unilaterally with one or more lesions. CHRPE was easily observed with both lasers unlike choroidal naevi, which can only be seen with the red laser. The average diameter of the lesions was 5.4 4.4 mm (range 1.6–20.1 mm) and they were located mostly in the inferior temporal quadrant (55.6%). They were asymptomatic because they were unilateral and located peripherally. We also assessed whether the presence of CHRPE was associated with gender, ethnicity or consanguinity. None of these variables were found to be a significant risk factor. Our result of prevalence of CHRPE of 4.4% in a healthy college population is much higher than other reported values. Coleman and Barnard found 1.2% in an optometric population using the same model ultra-wide field (up to 200°) SLO and the same criteria for identification of CHRPE, while 1% is a commonly assumed prevalence. It is not clear how to account for the difference. The cohort of patients in the optometric practice was older than ours (48 vs 23.5 years) but age is not a risk factor in this congenital condition. It was biased towards spectacle wearers but no relationship has been reported between refractive error and CHRPE. Our initial cohort was comprised of a higher percentage of women than men but gender was not significantly associated with the presence of CHRPE. It is possible that the prevalence of this congenital condition varies with ethnic or geographical populations. Although ethnic differences between Jews and Arabs and consanguinity were not significantly associated with CHRPE, endogamy is very common in the general population of this country and may account for the high prevalence found in this study. It may also account for the differences between our data and those obtained in London. In summary, although CHRPE is almost always benign one should be aware of its presence when considering a differential diagnosis of choroidal melanoma.
EFEITOS DA FISIOTERAPIA NO DESENVOLVIMENTO MOTOR DO LACTENTE COM DEFICIÊNCIA VISUAL TOTAL

RESUMO Existem no mundo 1,5 milhoes de criancas com deficiencia visual total (DVT). Destas 75% sao devido as causas previniveis. O sistema visual e responsavel por captar 80% das informacoes e por integrar e coordenar os outros sistemas. A DVT pode causar grande restricao ao desenvolvimento psicomotor do lactente. Por este motivo a estimulacao essencial e preconizada desde os primeiros dias de vida. Objetivo: relatar a evolucao do desenvolvimento motor de uma crianca com DVT, comparar os resultados com os da tabela ONCE (Organizacao Nacional dos Cegos Espanhois) e verificar a idade de aquisicao dos marcos motores. Metodologia: Relato de um caso. Os dados foram coletados do prontuario da paciente. Resultados: A lactente apresentou marcha independente aos 30 meses, entretanto quando comparado com a tabela da ONCE apresentou atraso na aquisicao motora. Discussao: Na analise dos resultados percebeu-se que nos primeiros dois anos de vida a lactente teve frequencia no tratamento comprometido devido as varias internacoes e seus pais apresentam limitacoes quanto a comunicacao e interacao com a lactente. A mae e o pai sao surdo/mudos, a mae tem disturbios comportamentais. Conclusao: Observou-se que a falta de assiduidade e o ambiente familiar inadequado contribuiram para a nao aquisicao motora no periodo proposto pela escala da ONCE, entretanto a crianca teve bom desenvolvimento psicomotor quando se analisa as circunstâncias em que a mesma esta inserida. O ambiente por si so ja e considerado de risco para o desenvolvimento pleno da lactente e ficou agravado pela deficiencia visual total.
The incidence of HLA DRB1*0103 in ulcerative colitis patients in north-eastern Poland.

BACKGROUND/AIMS Susceptibility to inflammatory bowel disease is partially genetically determined and the HLA (human leukocyte antigen) alloantigens and genes located in the HLA region have been studied over the course of many years as the candidate genes responsible for ulcerative colitis. Improvements in molecular genotyping have allowed disease association with HLA to be narrowed down to specific subtypes. For class II antigens, increasing phenotype frequency of DRB1*0103, DRB1*1502 is observed and positive correlation to disease susceptibility is proposed. We investigated the incidence of HLA DRB1*0103 in ulcerative colitis patients in North-Eastern Poland and possible association with overall disease susceptibility and clinical course of the disease. METHODOLOGY 41 patients and 45 healthy control blood donors were included in this study. All subjects were Polish. RESULTS The incidence of HLA DRB1*0103 was low (2.44%), but was associated with fulminant course of the disease (pancolitis with megacolon toxicum). None of the ethnically matched healthy control blood donors possessed the HLA DRB1*0103 allele (0.00%). CONCLUSIONS The results gained in the presented study confirm, that in the Polish population HLA DRB1*0103 allele is uncommon and it would not be a useful marker of disease susceptibility.
Better Timing of Cyber Conflict ∗

In this paper, we construct a model of cyber-weapon deployment and attempt to determine an optimal deployment time for cyberweapons using this model. We compare and contrast our approach to that in Axelrod and Iliev (R. Axelrod and R. Iliev. Timing of cyber conflict. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, (1322638111), 2013. ), showing that our model accurately captures four real-world scenarios and has fewer quantities that are difficult to measure than the aforementioned approach. Under simplifying assumptions, we prove rules of thumb for determining when and wether a cyber-weapon should be deployed.
Bioenergy and climate change mitigation: an assessment

Bioenergy deployment offers significant potential for climate change mitigation, but also carries considerable risks. In this review, we bring together perspectives of various communities involved in the research and regulation of bioenergy deployment in the context of climate change mitigation: Land‐use and energy experts, land‐use and integrated assessment modelers, human geographers, ecosystem researchers, climate scientists and two different strands of life‐cycle assessment experts. We summarize technological options, outline the state‐of‐the‐art knowledge on various climate effects, provide an update on estimates of technical resource potential and comprehensively identify sustainability effects. Cellulosic feedstocks, increased end‐use efficiency, improved land carbon‐stock management and residue use, and, when fully developed, BECCS appear as the most promising options, depending on development costs, implementation, learning, and risk management. Combined heat and power, efficient biomass cookstoves and small‐scale power generation for rural areas can help to promote energy access and sustainable development, along with reduced emissions. We estimate the sustainable technical potential as up to 100 EJ: high agreement; 100–300 EJ: medium agreement; above 300 EJ: low agreement. Stabilization scenarios indicate that bioenergy may supply from 10 to 245 EJ yr−1 to global primary energy supply by 2050. Models indicate that, if technological and governance preconditions are met, large‐scale deployment (>200 EJ), together with BECCS, could help to keep global warming below 2° degrees of preindustrial levels; but such high deployment of land‐intensive bioenergy feedstocks could also lead to detrimental climate effects, negatively impact ecosystems, biodiversity and livelihoods. The integration of bioenergy systems into agriculture and forest landscapes can improve land and water use efficiency and help address concerns about environmental impacts. We conclude that the high variability in pathways, uncertainties in technological development and ambiguity in political decision render forecasts on deployment levels and climate effects very difficult. However, uncertainty about projections should not preclude pursuing beneficial bioenergy options.
Animal models to assess the local and systemic effects of nailing: Review of the literature and considerations for future studies

BACKGROUND Numerous experimental studies have been performed to investigate the adverse effects of reamed versus unreamed nailing in isolated or combined trauma models. However, the translational relevance is still discussed controversially. METHODS AND RESULTS A systemic review of the literature was performed. An increase of intramedullary pressure with liberation of emboli to the venous and systemic circulation associated with reamed and unreamed nailing has been well described. Reamed nailing, however, seems to have superior clinical results in terms of fracture healing. CONCLUSION The pathophysiologic effects, optimal timing, and technique of reamed nailing particularly in patients with multiple injuries continue to be controversial topics. Therefore, further experimental studies should focus on these topics as well as on the interaction of local and systemic processes particularly in the context of different surgical treatment strategies (Early Total Care vs. Damage Control Orthopaedics) to improve our understanding and approach to intramedullary nailing.
Circadian Rhythms in Neurospora: A New Measurement, the Reset Zone

The authors define a new feature of a circadian rhythm, the reset zone, and point out its usefulness for predictions concerning oscillator behavior. The reset zone measures the responses of a circadian system to resetting pulses. It can be easily determined from a phase transition curve (PTC), which is simply a phase response curve (PRC) replotted as new phase versus old phase (Winfree's format). The reset zone is the range of new phases seen in such a plot and has two potentially useful characteristics: its size and its midpoint. A series of experiments with Neurospora involving temperature pulses indicated that the size of the reset zone changed in a nonlinear way in response to both the duration of 40°C pulses and to the magnitude of temperature change for 3-h pulses. Other existing data are replotted to show how the reset zone size varies with growth temperature and with the period of different clock mutants. Employing exclusively reset zone data within the framework of a limit cycle displacement model, an equation is formulated that predicts the relative changes in the values of state variables of the oscillator for changes in any given environmental condition, such as temperature. Examples are also drawn from other organisms, such as hamsters, Gonyalaux, Kalanchoe, and Drosophila, illustrating the usefulness of the reset zone measurement. It can be used as a numerical scale for assessing the strength of a pulse, for comparing the relative effects of a given pulse applied to different organisms or mutants, for determining the directionality of the changes in state variables produced by various types of pulses, and possibly for measuring clock amplitude.
Acoustic Modelling from the Signal Domain Using CNNs

Most speech recognition systems use spectral features based on fixed filters, such as MFCC and PLP. In this paper, we show that it is possible to achieve state of the art results by making the feature extractor a part of the network and jointly optimizing it with the rest of the network. The basic approach is to start with a convolutional layer that operates on the signal (say, with a step size of 1.25 milliseconds), and aggregate the filter outputs over a portion of the time axis using a network in network architecture, and then down-sample to every 10 milliseconds for use by the rest of the network. We find that, unlike some previous work on learned feature extractors, the objective function converges as fast as for a network based on traditional features. Because we found that iVector adaptation is less effective in this framework, we also experiment with a different adaptation method that is part of the network, where activation statistics over a medium time span (around a second) are computed at intermediate layers. We find that the resulting ‘direct-fromsignal’ network is competitive with our state of the art networks based on conventional features with iVector adaptation.
Bladder cancer risk and personal hair dye use

Several cohort and case‐control studies have found an increased risk of bladder cancer among hairdressers and barbers who are occupationally exposed to hair dyes. However, the carcinogenic risk associated with personal use of hair dyes remains uncertain since several large case‐control and cohort studies did not find an association between personal hair dye use and bladder cancer. To address this question, the authors used data collected on 459 bladder cancer cases and 665 controls who were interviewed as part of a case‐control study conducted in New Hampshire between 1994 and 1998. Participants underwent a structured personal interview with regard to history of hair dye use and bladder cancer risk factors. Unconditional logistic regression analysis was used to compute odds ratios that were associated with hair dye use, while controlling for potential confounding factors. A history of any hair dye use was inversely associated with bladder cancer incidence in men [adjusted odds ratio (OR) = 0.5; 95% confidence interval (CI)=0.3–0.8], although risk reductions were not statistically significant for individual dye types. In women, use of permanent (adjusted OR = 1.5; 95%CI = 0.8–2.7) and rinse‐type hair dye (adjusted OR = 1.7; 95%CI = 0.8–3.6) were associated with a modestly elevated risk of bladder cancer but with limited statistical precision; no association was found with use of semi‐permanent dyes (adjusted OR = 0.7; 95%CI = 0.3–1.4). For permanent hair dye use, odds ratios were most pronounced for younger age at first use, higher frequency and prolonged time since first use; however there were no clear trends in risk by these factors. In light of the prevalence of hair dye use, further studies are needed that address the effects of specific colors and types of hair dyes along with the possible role of individual susceptibility. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Evaluation of the cellular antioxidant activity of 25 commonly consumed fruit species in China based on Caco-2 cells

Introduction. Determination of antioxidant activity using a biological method is important in predicting antioxidant capacity in vivo . The Caco-2 cell-based antioxidant activity (CAA) assay quantifies antioxidant activity in Caco-2 cells and has proved to possess good biological relevance. The aim of this study was to determine the CAA of 25 fruits commonly consumed in China, along with total phenolic content, total flavonoid content and oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC). Materials and methods. The CAA was determined in Caco-2 cells by utilizing 2’,7’-dichlorofluorescin diacetate (DCFH-DA) as a probe and 2,2’-azobis(2-methylpropionamidine) dihydrochloride (AAPH) as the generator of peroxyl radicals. The ORAC values were measured using fluorescein and AAPH. The total phenolic content was determined by the Folin-Ciocalteu method and total flavonoid content by aluminum chloride-sodium nitrite method. Results and discussion. There was a large variation in CAA values among different fruit species with the highest value in pomegranate (96.3 ± 5.6 ¯mol quercetin equivalents (QE) 100 g-1 ) and the lowest value in papaya (0.453 ± 0.031 ¯mol QE 100 g-1 ). For melons (white muskmelon, hami melon and watermelon), pineapple, pitaya, nectarine and loquat, the CAA was too low to be measured. Data analysis showed that CAA values were significantly correlated to total phenolic content (R 2 = 0.159, P = 0.003, P > 0.05) or ORAC values (R 2 = 0.123, P > 0.05). Conclusion. Increasing the consumption of fruits, especially pomegranate, is an effective strategy to increase antioxidant intake, thus helpful for consumers to protect against the oxidative stressors.
NKT TCR Recognition of CD1d-α-C-Galactosylceramide

NKT cells respond to a variety of CD1d-restricted glycolipid Ags that are structurally related to the prototypic Ag α-galactosylceramide (α-GalCer). A modified analog of α-GalCer with a carbon-based glycosidic linkage (α-C-GalCer) has generated great interest because of its apparent ability to promote prolonged, Th1-biased immune responses. In this study, we report the activation of spleen NKT cells to α-C-GalCer, and related C-glycoside ligands, is weaker than that of α-GalCer. Furthermore, the Vβ8. 2 and Vβ7 NKT TCR affinity for CD1d–α-C-GalCer, and some related analogs, is ∼10-fold lower than that for the NKT TCR–CD1d–α-GalCer interaction. Nevertheless, the crystal structure of the Vβ8. 2 NKT TCR–CD1d–α-C-GalCer complex is similar to that of the corresponding NKT TCR–CD1d–α-GalCer complex, although subtle differences at the interface provide a basis for understanding the lower affinity of the NKT TCR–CD1d–α-C-GalCer interaction. Our findings support the concept that for CD1d-restricted NKT cells, altered glycolipid ligands can promote markedly different responses while adopting similar TCR-docking topologies.
Satisfying Patients’ Rights: a hospital patient survey

The aim of this project was to study the way in which patients’ rights are being exercised in everyday hospital practice in Greece. Data were collected by using questionnaires and structured interviews with 600 patients. These patients were found to ignore the fact that special regulations exist regarding their rights. They considered their right to information was being respected, albeit to different degrees. Many patients allowed their doctors to make decisions. The right to confidentiality was not considered as a major priority by these patients because they doubted its applicability. They hesitated to protest when their rights were being violated. They thought that the most effective way of protecting their rights is either through the existence of someone with specialized knowledge or an internal hospital committee. These Greek patients appeared to be relatively satisfied with the way in which their rights were being exercised in hospital. However, a number of improvements could increase patient satisfaction regarding this issue.
How does ageing affect the impact of medically unexplained symptoms and medically explained symptoms on health‐related quality of life?

Physical symptoms significantly impair health‐related quality of life (HRQoL), but age effects and differential effects of medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) and medically explained symptoms (MES) have hardly been examined. Our objective was to determine the effect of age on the impact of MUS and MES on HRQoL.
Secure Variable Data Rate Transmission

A novel secure variable data rate (SVDR) transmission method is presented along with an architecture for implementing the SVDR transmission. This method reduces transmission overhead requirements by allowing both parties to maintain the initialization vector information locally rather than by obtaining it from the received packet. The only requirement this method places on the transmission is to maintain the sequence. This brief shows a 70% reduction in the overhead for transmitting this sequence information with a window size of 10 and seven priority levels.
A RANDOMIZED COMPARISON OF A SIROLIMUS-ELUTING STENT WITH A STANDARD STENT FOR CORONARY REVASCULARIZATION

A BSTRACT Background The need for repeated treatment of restenosis of a treated vessel remains the main limitation of percutaneous coronary revascularization. Because sirolimus (rapamycin) inhibits the proliferation of lymphocytes and smooth-muscle cells, we compared a sirolimus-eluting stent with a standard uncoated stent in patients with angina pectoris. Methods We performed a randomized, double-blind trial to compare the two types of stents for revascularization of single, primary lesions in native coronary arteries. The trial included 238 patients at 19 medical centers. The primary end point was in-stent late luminal loss (the difference between the minimal luminal diameter immediately after the procedure and the diameter at six months). Secondary end points included the percentage of in-stent stenosis of the luminal diameter and the rate of restenosis (luminal narrowing of 50 percent or more). We also analyzed a composite clinical end point consisting of death, myocardial infarction, and percutaneous or surgical revascularization at 1, 6, and 12 months. Results At six months, the degree of neointimal proliferation, manifested as the mean (±SD) late luminal loss, was significantly lower in the sirolimusstent group (¡0.01±0.33 mm) than in the standardstent group (0.80±0.53 mm, P<0.001). None of the patients in the sirolimus-stent group, as compared with 26.6 percent of those in the standard-stent group, had restenosis of 50 percent or more of the luminal diameter (P<0.001). There were no episodes of stent thrombosis. During a follow-up period of up to one year, the overall rate of major cardiac events was 5.8 percent in the sirolimus-stent group and 28.8 percent in the standard-stent group (P<0.001). The difference was due entirely to a higher rate of revascularization of the target vessel in the standard-stent group. Conclusions As compared with a standard coronary stent, a sirolimus-eluting stent shows considerable promise for the prevention of neointimal proliferation, restenosis, and associated clinical events. (N Engl J Med 2002;346:1773-80.)