Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
HDL and endothelial protection

High‐density lipoproteins (HDLs) represent a family of particles characterized by the presence of apolipoprotein A‐I (apoA‐I) and by their ability to transport cholesterol from peripheral tissues back to the liver. In addition to this function, HDLs display pleiotropic effects including antioxidant, anti‐apoptotic, anti‐inflammatory, anti‐thrombotic or anti‐proteolytic properties that account for their protective action on endothelial cells. Vasodilatation via production of nitric oxide is also a hallmark of HDL action on endothelial cells. Endothelial cells express receptors for apoA‐I and HDLs that mediate intracellular signalling and potentially participate in the internalization of these particles. In this review, we will detail the different effects of HDLs on the endothelium in normal and pathological conditions with a particular focus on the potential use of HDL therapy to restore endothelial function and integrity.
Revisiting the Role of Herniography in the Preoperative Work-up of Groin Hernias ?

Abstract Introduction : The diagnosis of groin hernia is based on clinical symptoms and physical examination. In the case of equivocal clinical findings, patients are often referred for subsequent diagnostic imaging. Accurate detection is important to minimize the inherent risk of complications or to avoid unnecessary surgery. Although herniography has been reported as a save and highly accurate procedure, it has not gained widespread acceptance in the diagnostic work-up of groin hernias. Methods : We retrospectively analysed 157 patients who underwent herniography in our department, which is to date the third largest study reporting on this technique. The diagnostic value of herniography was investigated-with laparascopic surgical findings serving as a gold standard-in comparison to clinical symptoms, physical examination and ultrasound. Results : Herniography showed a substantial agreement with the surgical findings, but only a slight to fair agreement was found between surgery and clinical symptoms and examination. Poor agreement was found between sonographic and surgical findings. Conclusion : Based on the presented data and previously reported studies, we can conclude that herniography is a safe technique with a high accuracy to detect groin hernias in patients with equivocal clinical presentation, whereas ultrasound has a wide range in reported sensitivity. Clinicians and surgeons should take this into account when referring patients for subsequent imaging.
Everolimus in pediatric transplantation

Purpose of reviewThe use of everolimus has recently emerged for solid-organ transplantation in children. This review gives an overview of the relevant studies and clinical trials involving the immunosuppressive effects of everolimus in child organ transplant. Recent findingsThe use of everolimus in pediatric organ transplantation is associated with a decrease in calcineurin inhibitor-related toxicity, better renal function, a low number of acute rejections, and an acceptable side-effect profile. Particularly, the use of everolimus reduces the incidence of virus infection and the risk of posttransplant lymphoproliferative disease. SummaryEverolimus is an effective agent with several advantages for pediatric solid-organ transplantation. Future prospective, randomized controlled trials will have to be performed in order to validate the findings of these pilot trials.
The Longitudinal Relation Between Community Violence Exposure and Academic Engagement During Adolescence: Exploring Families’ Protective Role

Few published studies have examined the interaction between community violence exposure, academic engagement, and parental involvement, despite theory suggesting that these three domains of development are interrelated during adolescence. This study had two related objectives: (a) to assess the temporal ordering of the relation between community violence exposure and academic engagement over the course of mid-adolescence and (b) to examine whether the pattern of these relations varies by level of parental involvement. The study sample included 273 ethnic minority males (33.4% Latino and 65.6% African American) and their caregivers living in impoverished urban neighborhoods. The present study drew on data collected through in-home surveys on violence exposure, school experiences, and family functioning at three time points during mid-adolescence. Cross-lagged model results suggest that at Time 1 (M age = 13.5), community violence exposure predicted lower academic engagement at Time 2 (M age = 14.8). Between Time 2 and Time 3 (M age = 15.8), it was academic engagement that predicted lower community violence. Parental involvement moderated these relations such that academic engagement at Time 2 only reduced the risk of violence exposure at Time 3 in the presence of families with high levels of involvement relative to others in the sample. Findings suggest that practitioners might seek to promote positive school experiences as youth move into high school to reduce risk of violence exposure. Results also indicate the importance of designing interventions that target both positive family and school functioning.
A Low-Power Self-Forward-Body-Bias CMOS LNA for 3–6.5-GHz UWB Receivers

A low-power low-noise amplifier (LNA) implemented in 0.18 ¿m CMOS technology utilizing a self-forward-body-bias (SFBB) technique is proposed for UWB low-frequency band system. By using the SFBB technique, it reduces supply voltage as well as saves additional bias circuits, which leads to low power consumption of 4.5 mW with low supply voltage of 1.06 V for two drain-to-source voltage drops. The complementary architecture and direct coupling technique between the first two stages also save bias circuits. The measurement result shows that the proposed LNA presents a maximum power gain of 16 dB with a good input impedance matching (S11 < -12 dB) and an average noise figure of 2.65 dB in the frequency range of 3-6.5 GHz.
What is the role of the abdominal perfusion pressure for subclinical hepatic dysfunction in laparoscopic cholecystectomy?

BACKGROUND Subclinical hepatic dysfunction after laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) has been described in the literature. However, this alteration is not encountered in all patients. In order to address this situation, a prospective study was conducted to investigate the effect of abdominal perfusion pressure (APP) on liver function tests after LC performed under constant intra-abdominal pressure (IAP). PATIENTS AND METHODS Of 78 patients who underwent LC between May 2007 and October 2007, 40 patients were eligible for the study. In all the patients, six parameters of liver function (aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, direct bilirubin, indirect bilirubin, alkaline phosphatase, and gamma-glutamyltransferase) were assessed before and 24 hours after surgery. Patients who showed more than a 100% increase in at least one parameter (group 1) were compared to those who did not (group 2) regarding age, sex, body weight, body height, operation time, pneumoperitoneum time, IAP, preoperative, and intraoperative APP. RESULTS Of the patients, 37.5% showed more than a 100% increase in at least one parameter of liver function. No significant difference was found between the two groups with regard to age, sex, body weight, body height, operation time, pneumoperitoneum time, and IAP. There were significant increase in AST and ALT at 24 hours postoperatively in group 1, as compared with group 2 (P = 0.000, P = 0.001). In comparison of preoperative APP with intraoperative APP values, group 1 showed a statistically significant decrease (P = 0.000), while no difference was found in group 2. CONCLUSION Subclinical hepatic dysfunction after LC could mostly be attributed to the negative effects of the pneumoperitoneum on hepatic blood flow. For the evaluation of hepatic hypoperfusion, APP may be a new criterion as a determinant of interaction with mean arterial pressure (MAP) and IAP.
Thrombin Interacts with Thrombomodulin, Protein C, and Thrombin-activatable Fibrinolysis Inhibitor via Specific and Distinct Domains*

A collection of 56 purified thrombin mutants, in which 76 charged or polar surface residues on thrombin were mutated to alanine, was used to identify key residues mediating the interactions of thrombin with thrombomodulin (TM), protein C, and thrombin-activatable fibrinolysis inhibitor (TAFI). Comparison of protein C activation in the presence and absence of TM identified 11 residues mediating the thrombin-TM interaction (Lys21, Gln24, Arg62, Lys65, His66, Arg68, Thr69, Tyr71, Arg73, Lys77, Lys106). Three mutants (E25A, D51A, R89A/R93A/E94A) were found to have decreased ability to activate TAFI yet retained normal protein C activation, whereas three other mutants (R178A/R180A/D183A, E229A, R233A) had decreased ability to activate protein C but maintained normal TAFI activation. One mutant (W50A) displayed decreased activation of both substrates. Mapping of these functional residues on thrombin revealed that the 11 residues mediating the thrombin-TM interaction are all located in exosite I. Residues important in TAFI activation are located above the active-site cleft, whereas residues involved in protein C are located below the active-site cleft. In contrast to the extensive overlap of residues mediating TM binding and fibrinogen clotting, these data show that distinct domains in thrombin mediate its interactions with TM, protein C, and TAFI. These studies demonstrate that selective enzymatic properties of thrombin can be dissociated by site-directed mutagenesis.
Multilingual Dependency Parsing: Using Machine Translated Texts Instead of Parallel Corpora

Abstract This paper revisits the projection-based approach to dependency grammar induction task. Traditional cross-lingual dependency induction tasks one way or the other, depend on the existence of bitexts or target language tools such as part-of-speech (POS) taggers to obtain reasonable parsing accuracy. In this paper, we transfer dependency parsers using only approximate resources, i.e., machine translated bitexts instead of manually created bitexts. We do this by obtaining the the source side of the text from a machine translation (MT) system and then apply transfer approaches to induce parser for the target languages. We further reduce the need for the availability of labeled target language resources by using unsupervised target tagger. We show that our approach consistently outperforms unsupervised parsers by a bigger margin (8.2% absolute), and results in similar performance when compared with delexicalized transfer parsers.
Demographic determinants of electronic commerce (EC) adoption by SMEs: A twist by location factors

Purpose – Research on the demographic characteristics of top management team (TMT) on e-commerce adoption has really advanced. Although some of such studies factored location factors as e-commerce adoption drivers, rare attempts have been made to unravel if the differences in the demographic composition of TMT and the rate of adoption may be explained by the differences in the firm’s geographical location. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to bridge this knowledge gap by proposing a framework that conceives and measures geographical location as a contextual variable between e-commerce adoption and TMT composition. Design/methodology/approach – Data were generated from the opinions of owners/managers of 226 SMEs drawn purposefully from registered SMEs in five industries located in three geo-political zones of Nigeria. Two cities (a state capital and a commercial nerve centre) were studied and a four-step hierarchical regression (spanning factor-loading) was used to test the hypotheses. Findings – Evi.
CORDIAL: Cognitive Rehabilitation and Cognitive-behavioral Treatment for Early Dementia in Alzheimer Disease A Multicenter, Randomized, Controlled Trial

Cognitive rehabilitation (CR) is a promising treatment approach for older adults with dementia because it aims at supporting the management of day-to-day problems. There is insufficient evidence regarding whether CR provides clinically meaningful benefits. In this study, we evaluated the feasibility, acceptance, efficacy, and usefulness of a CR intervention in a multicenter, randomized, controlled trial on 201 patients with mild dementia in Alzheimer disease and their carers. The intervention comprised 12 individual weekly sessions and combined 4 established strategies adopted from neurorehabilitation and psychotherapy. Activities of daily living were chosen as the primary outcome. The results show that the feasibility, treatment adherence, and carer commitment were excellent. However, no effect of the intervention was demonstrable on everyday functioning. There were improvements favoring the intervention on quality of life and treatment satisfaction and a significant antidepressant effect in female participants. The lack of impact on everyday activities may be due to methodological limitations including insufficient personalization, short treatment duration, poor transfer into the real-life setting, and low sensitivity of assessment instruments. The findings of this study may be helpful for designing further studies that are needed to determine the potential of CR in older adults with dementia.
Nonfatal sports- and recreation-related injuries treated in emergency departments--United States, July 2000-June 2001.

Each year in the United States, an estimated 30 million children and adolescents participate in organized sports, and approximately 150 million adults participate in some type of nonwork-related physical activity. Engaging in these activities has numerous health benefits but involves a risk for injury. CDC analyzed data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System All Injury Program (NEISS-AIP) to characterize sports- and recreation-related injuries among the U.S. population. This report summarizes the results of that analysis, which indicate that during July 2000-June 2001 an estimated 4.3 million nonfatal sports- and recreation-related injuries were treated in U.S. hospital emergency departments (EDs). Injury rates varied by sex and age and were highest for boys aged 10-14 years. Effective prevention strategies, including those tailored to specific activities and those aimed at children, adolescents, and adults, are needed to reduce sports- and recreation-related injuries in the United States.
Macrophage involvement in the kidney repair phase after ischaemia/reperfusion injury

Macrophage infiltration is a common feature of the early phase of renal ischaemia/reperfusion injury. Indeed, it is generally regarded as the cause of tissue injury in this phase, although it is also clear that it can lead to tissue repair in other phases. In order to ascertain whether macrophages are directly involved in the repair/late phase, which follows the pro‐inflammatory and injury process of renal ischaemia/reperfusion, we used two different approaches based on macrophage depletion. Firstly, we produced renal ischaemia in mice that were previously treated with clodronate liposome. Secondly, during reperfusion we re‐injected RAW 264.7 to macrophage‐depleted mice 24 h prior to sacrifice. The results showed that regeneration, as evaluated by stathmin and PCNA markers, was macrophage‐dependent: it was blocked when macrophage depletion was provoked and recovered with macrophage re‐injection. The cytokine profile revealed the influence of the inflammatory environment on kidney repair: pro‐inflammatory cytokines (MCP‐1, MIP‐1α) increased during the early stages of reperfusion, coinciding with low regeneration, and the anti‐inflammatory cytokine IL‐10 increased during the longer periods of reperfusion when regeneration was more evident. We conclude that macrophages induce renal regeneration after ischaemia/reperfusion, depending on the inflammatory milieu. Copyright © 2007 Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Expression of Anaplasma marginale Major Surface Protein 2 Variants in Persistently Infected Ticks

ABSTRACT Anaplasma marginale, an intraerythrocytic ehrlichial pathogen of cattle, establishes persistent infections in both vertebrate (cattle) and invertebrate (tick) hosts. The ability ofA. marginale to persist in cattle has been shown to be due, in part, to major surface protein 2 (MSP2) variants which are hypothesized to emerge in response to the bovine immune response. MSP2 antigenic variation has not been studied in persistently infected ticks. In this study we analyzed MSP2 in A. marginalepopulations from the salivary glands of male Dermacentor variabilis persistently infected with A. marginaleafter feeding successively on one susceptible bovine and three sheep. New MSP2 variants appeared in each A. marginale population, and sequence alignment of the MSP2 variants revealed multiple amino acid substitutions, insertions, and deletions. These results suggest that selection pressure on MSP2 occurred in tick salivary glands independent of the bovine immune response.
Neurogranin expression identifies a novel array of Purkinje cell parasagittal stripes during mouse cerebellar development

Markers that reveal the parasagittal organization of cerebellar Purkinje cells may be grouped into two classes based on the time during development when they are expressed. In mice, early‐onset markers are defined by their heterogeneous expression in clusters of Purkinje cells during late embryogenesis, which disappears shortly following birth. Late‐onset markers are generally not expressed until about 1 week after birth and do not reach a stable striped expression pattern until about 3 weeks postnatally. Currently, no endogenous markers are known that are heterogeneously expressed in the temporal gap between these two classes. Here we present immunocytochemical evidence that parasagittal stripes of Purkinje cells express a member of the calpacitin protein family, neurogranin, possibly from as early as embryonic day (E) 13 and definitively from E15, in a pattern that persists up to postnatal day (P) 20. Neurogranin is thus the first endogenous marker of a Purkinje cell subset capable of bridging the temporal gap between the early‐ and late‐onset patterns. In the early neonate, up to five pairs of neurogranin‐immunopositive Purkinje cell stripes run parasagittally through the cerebellum, with the exact number dependent on the rostrocaudal position. Expression is lost during postnatal development in a transverse zone‐dependent fashion. Purkinje cells in the central and nodular zones lose neurogranin expression between approximately P4 and P6, whereas expression in the posterior zone persists until approximately P20. Neurogranin immunoreactivity will be a valuable tool in helping to clarify the relationships between early‐ and late‐onset patterns. J. Comp. Neurol. 494:215–227, 2006. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Mutations of the NOG gene in individuals with proximal symphalangism and multiple synostosis syndrome

Proximal symphalangism is an autosomal‐dominant disorder with ankylosis of the proximal interphalangeal joints, carpal and tarsal bone fusion, and conductive deafness. These symptoms are shared by another disorder of joint morphogenesis, multiple synostoses syndrome. Recently, it was reported that both disorders were caused by heterozygous mutations of the human noggin gene (NOG). To date, seven mutations of NOG have been identified from unrelated families affected with joint morphogenesis. To characterize the molecular lesions of proximal symphalangism, we performed analyses of NOG in three Japanese individuals with proximal symphalangism. We found three novel mutations: g.551G>A (C184Y) in a sporadic case of symphalangism, g.386T>A (L129X) in a familial case of symphalangism, and a g.58delC (frameshift) in a family with multiple synostosis syndrome. Characteristic genotype–phenotype correlations have not been recognized from the mutations in the NOG gene.
Psychosocial Functioning in Adults with Congenital Craniofacial Conditions

Objective To examine the psychosocial functioning of adults with congenital craniofacial conditions relative to normative data. Design Single sample cross-sectional design. Setting The Australian Craniofacial Unit, Women's and Children's Hospital, Adelaide, which is one of the main craniofacial treatment centers in Australia. Participants Adults (N = 93) with congenital craniofacial conditions (excluding cleft lip/palate) who were treated in the Australian Craniofacial Unit. Main Outcome Measures All participants completed self-report scales assessing health-related quality of life (SF-36); life satisfaction, anxiety, and depression (HADS); self-esteem (Rosenberg); appearance-related concerns; perceived social support; and social anxiety. Results Overall, participants were very similar in psychosocial function to the general population. However, adults with craniofacial conditions were less likely to be married and have children (females), were more likely to be receiving a disability pension, and reported more appearance-related concerns and less social support from friends. They also reported more limitations in both their social activities, due to physical or emotional problems, and usual role activities, because of emotional problems, as well as poorer mental health. Conclusions These results give cause to be very positive about the long-term outcomes of children who are undergoing treatment for craniofacial conditions, while also identifying specific areas that interventions could target.
Repertoires and cycles of collective action

The modern era has generated a bewildering profusion of popular protest including widespread social movements and sporadic revolutionary upheaval. Despite the seemingly chaotic character of such collective action, social scientists have increasingly noted the remarkable regularities exhibited by even the most tumultuous social change. In this volume, sociologists, political scientists, and historians come together to assess the complementary concepts of repertoires and cycles as tools for illuminating the consistent patterns that emerge from the apparent chaos. The significance of repertoires-recurrent forms or tactics of social protest- is explored in an essay on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain by the originator of the concept, Charles Tilly. Sidney Tarrow, whose work has most directly linked the concept of repertoires with that of cycles-the recurrent peaks and troughs in the historical incidence of collective action-contributes an essay that focuses on twentieth-century Italy. Other essays investigate the rhythms and logic of social change in contexts as diverse as sixteenth- through nineteenth-century Japan, nineteeth-century Europe, and twentieth-century America. Through inquiries into the consequences of violent repression for social mobilization, the struggle to control the linguistic terms of social conflict, the unacknowledged antecedents of contemporary movements, and the importance of "movement families," this volume demonstrates the usefulness of these two concepts and defines the relationship between them. Collected from past issues of Social Science History, with a new introduction and two new essays, Repertoires and Cycles of Collective Action will reward an interdisciplinary audience of readers with the extraordinary vitality that emerges from this rich blend of historical perspectives. Contributors. Charles Brockett, Craig Calhoun, Doug McAdam, Marc Steinberg, Sidney Tarrow, Charles Tilly, Mark Traugott, James White