Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Topical application of 5-aminolevulinic acid followed by 595-nm pulsed dye laser irradiation for the treatment of recalcitrant port-wine stains: A primary study

Abstract Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness and safety of topical application of 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) followed by pulsed dye laser (PDL) irradiation for the treatment of recalcitrant port-wine stain (PWS). Methods: Thirty-five patients (19 females and 16 males) with recalcitrant PWS were treated with topical application of 20% ALA and then irradiated with a 595-nm PDL (energy density of 6.5–9.0 J/cm2 and pulse duration of 6 or 10 ms) at 6–8 weeks intervals. Clinical improvement of lesions was evaluated by comparing photographs of lesions at baseline and 2 months after the last treatment. Results: Topical ALA spreading followed by irradiation with a 595-nm PDL improved PWS in 21 out of 35 patients who were previously recalcitrant to PDL treatment alone. Side effects were limited to transient erythema, vesicle formation, edema and mild purpura with no obvious subsequent scarring or undesirable pigment changes. Conclusion: The topical application of ALA followed by irradiation with a 595-nm PDL is an effective and safe treatment for PWS recalcitrant to PDL therapy alone.
Nurses' ability and willingness to work during pandemic flu.

AIM The present study reports factors affecting nurses' ability and willingness to work during pandemic flu (PF). BACKGROUND Previous studies suggest some nurses may be unable or unwilling to work during PF. METHOD A questionnaire was mailed to nurses during October to December 2009, the second wave of the 2009 A/H1N1 flu pandemic. RESULTS Most (90.1%) reported they would work. Willingness decreased primarily as personal protective equipment (PPE) dwindled, family or nurse were perceived to be at risk and when vaccine or antiviral medication was not provided to both nurse and family although many other factors also affected willingness to work. Ability decreased primarily when the nurse was sick, a loved one needed care at home or transportation problems existed although many other factors also affected ability to work. CONCLUSION Certain factors can decrease willingness and ability of nurses to work during a flu pandemic. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT Managers can anticipate factors that may decrease nurse's ability and willingness to work during pandemic flu. Preparing for staffing during emergencies can retain the health care workforce when it is needed most.
The Determinants of Vote Intentions in Portugal

This paper offers new insights on theinteractions between economics and politicsin Portugal. We use two unexplored datasets consisting of monthly polls on voteintentions for the main political partiesin Portugal and responses to a consumersurvey containing a battery of questions oneconomic evaluations. The analysis coversthe interval from 1986 to 2001. We findthat: (1) right-wing governments arepenalized for higher inflation while theleft-wing ones are not, (2) left-winggovernments are more penalized forincreases in the unemployment rate; (3)voters base their evaluations ofincumbents' performances on perceptions ofpast and current economic conditions,rather than on expected future economicoutcomes.
Identification of a Novel Hepatitis E Virus Genotype 3 Strain Isolated from a Chronic Hepatitis E Virus Infection in a Kidney Transplant Recipient in Switzerland

ABSTRACT Hepatitis E virus genotype 3 (HEV-3) is the causal pathogen of chronic hepatitis E. We report here the full-length genome sequence of an HEV-3 strain, isolated from a kidney transplant recipient in Switzerland (SW/16-0282). This HEV-3 strain showed less than 88% homology compared to known strains, suggesting a new HEV-3 strain.
[Utilization of health care services in Brazil: gender, family characteristics, and social status].

OBJECTIVE To investigate the pattern of utilization of health care services by men and by women in Brazil. METHODS We used data from the Brazilian National Household Sample Survey (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios) carried out in 1998. Logistic regression models were developed to analyze information concerning men and women who had and who did not have restrictions in their routine activities due to health problems during the 15 days before the survey. The individual variables considered were: labor market position (type of employment), amount of schooling completed, and race. Also analyzed were family-related variables: per capita family income, size of the family, and, for the head of the family, the amount of schooling and labor market position. The two-level models (with family and individual variables) showed an effect from family characteristics, but the variables analyzed did not explain that effect. RESULTS Women used health services more often than did men, even after controlling for restrictions in routine activities due to health reasons. The use of health services by men and women was dependent on family income and on the social status of the individual, indicating a pattern of social inequality. In both the group with restrictions in their activities and in the group without such restrictions, the men and women differed from each other in their utilization of health care services. Family variables were more important in explaining the utilization of health services among people without restrictions in their activities. CONCLUSIONS Policies aimed at reducing inequalities in access to health care services must take into consideration the differences between women and men as well as the importance of family characteristics. It is also important to stress the need to include the dimensions of gender and family in the design of health service utilization models.
Factors Associated With Postoperative Infection

Abstract Objective: We have developed and analyzed a large surgical prophylaxis database and now report the factors significantly associated with early infection, readmission due to infection, and death within 28 days of surgery. This study is intended to be a stepping-stone for further studies using our clinical database. Design and Setting: A computerized database of 9,016 surgical patients from a 400-bed community hospital was examined. Multivariate logistic regression and tree-based modeling were used to identify factors associated with the outcomes. Factors considered included surgical procedure, prophylactic antibiotic, age, gender, serum creatinine, and albumin. Results: 12.6% had an early infection, 2.5% were read-mitted due to infection, and 2.5% died within 28 days. Most combination prophylactic antibiotics were associated with an increased probability of an early infection. Decreased albumin and increased age were associated with an increased probability of an early infection. Tracheostomy and amputations were associated with an increased probability of an early infection, whereas gallbladder and orthopedic procedures involving the arm were associated with a decreased probability. Factors associated with readmission due to infection included dialysis shunt, vascular repair, and an early infection. Factors associated with increased probability of death within 28 days included age, albumin, serum creatinine, and an early infection. Gallbladder procedures and obstetric-gynecologic procedures were associated with a decreased probability of death within 28 days. Discussion: Older patients and those with a decreased albumin were most likely to have an early infection. To the extent that an early infection was a significant risk factor for readmission due to infection, the impact of age and albumin on the probability of readmission due to infection is demonstrated by their effects on early infections. Interestingly, albumin and age were significantly associated with death within 28 days, in addition to early infection, showing the predictive association between these factors and early death.
Chicago classification criteria of esophageal motility disorders defined in high resolution esophageal pressure topography 1

Background The Chicago Classification of esophageal motility was developed to facilitate the interpretation of clinical high resolution esophageal pressure topography (EPT) studies, concurrent with the widespread adoption of this technology into clinical practice. The Chicago Classification has been an evolutionary process, molded first by published evidence pertinent to the clinical interpretation of high resolution manometry (HRM) studies and secondarily by group experience when suitable evidence is lacking.
Fouilles à l'aveugle : Les fantômes magnétiques un phénomène nouveau qui témoigne de l'importance des prospections géophysiques en archéologie

L'analogie du Francais Albert Hesse, un pionnier de la prospection archeologique, selon laquelle les sciences physiques sont capables de distinguer parmi les elements liquides ce qui est de l'eau et ce qui est de l'alcool alors que l'oeil humain ne le peut pas, decrit parfaitement l'opposition qui existe entre la maniere dont les archeologues et les specialistes de sciences naturelles interpretent leurs resultats. Les premiers croient dans ce qu'ils ont mis au jour au cours de leurs fouilles, les seconds dans ce qu'ils ont pu detecter avec leurs instruments.
Computer simulation of intracardiac potential with whole-heart model

Computer simulation of intracardiac potentials was performed based on a whole-heart model, emphasising applications to Electrophysiology Study (EPS) and catheter ablation. A numerical method was proposed based on a volume conductor model with multiple interfaces and piecewise homogeneity. A model of a normal heart and a model of Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) Syndrome with a right free-wall Accessory Pathway (AP) were employed to simulate intracardiac electrograms. The study was validated by comparing the simulated electrograms with those in catheter-based EPS and ablations. Applying whole-heart modelling to the EPS and ablation is regarded as a new direction of electrocardiologic forward problem.
The neural basis of processing anomalous information

This study explored the neural basis of the processing of anomalous information (the N400 effect) in an arithmetic task. Twenty healthy undergraduate students were scanned while they performed a number-matching task. Relative to matched numbers, unmatched numbers elicited significantly greater activation at left inferior and superior parietal cortex, left inferior frontal gyrus, and left fusiform and lingual gyri. Combining these results and those of previous studies on semantic anomaly, we proposed that the parietal region is the source of the arithmetic N400 component and the left inferior frontal gyrus is involved in domain-general processing of anomalous information.
SURGERY OF THE ADRENAL GLANDS

APART from excision of adrenal tumours, surgery of the adrenal glands is still in the experimental stage, The indications for operation on the adrenal gland at present are as follows: (i) the presence of adrenal tumours, cortical and medullary, benign and malignant; (ii) adrenal hyperplasia; (iii) Cushing's syndrome; (iv) perhaps for transplantation into patients with Addison's disease. Under the heading of surgery of the adrenal gland perhaps also the implantation of pellets of desoxycorticosterone acetate and of cortisone should be included. Because of the secretion of androgens unilateral adrenalectomy has been tried as an adjunct to stilbrestrol therapy and orchtdectomy in patients with advanced carcinoma of the prostate (Cox, 1946), but there is little to recommend it for such "poor risk" patients.
Enhanced Biodegradation of Azo Dyes Using an Integrated Elemental Iron‐Activated Sludge System: II. Effects of Physical–Chemical Parameters

As part of a study to evaluate an integrated zero‐valent iron (Fe0)‐biological oxidation process for treating azo dye wastewaters, we conducted batch and column experiments with the azo dye orange G to assess the effects of solution conditions on the performance of iron pretreatment. The influence of iron type and surface area, solution pH, dissolved inorganic salts, and phosphate ion on the reduction (decolorization) of orange G solution were examined. In batch experiments, increased iron surface area, decreased pH, and chloride and sulfate salts enhanced dye decolorization, whereas high pH (9.9) and phosphate concentrations (>3 mg/L PO4‐P) inhibited dye reduction. Results from batch experiments were confirmed in column experiments. An increase in temperature from 22 to 35°C resulted in a near doubling of the reduction rate constant in a column study. The abiotic reduction results illustrate the feasibility and potential limitations of an integrated iron column, activated sludge treatment process for wastewaters containing azo dyes.
CEREBRAL BLOOD FLOW CHANGES IN CLUSTER HEADACHE

Serial cerebral blood flow studies performed by the intra‐carotid 133Xenon method were fortuitously determined during the course of a cluster headache in a 32 year old man. the initial study was performed about 10 min after the headache began and showed values at the upper limit of normal. Twenty min after the headache started a second procedure showed that the autoregulatory response on hyperventilation was normal. Ergotamine tartrate was given intra‐muscularly 23 min after the headache began and there was partial relief. A third cerebral blood flow estimation showed abnormally high values. the probable reasons for this are discussed.
Heifer ovariectomy using the Willis spay instrument: Technique, morbidity and mortality.

Two field trials were conducted to determine the morbidity and mortality rates in heifers ovariectomized with a Willis spay instrument.Trial A used 384 Hereford and Hereford cross, auction source, heifers, weighing an average of 230 kg. In trial B, 138 auction and ranch source heifers of mixed breeding and weighing an average of 285 kg were used. All heifers were ovariectomized per vaginam, with the ovaries left in the abdomen. Prophylactic antibiotics were administered and heifers were observed at pasture for the next 150 days.The morbidity and mortality rates for heifers in trial A were 0.5% and 0.26%, respectively. In trial B, there was no morbidity or mortality.These trials indicate that the technique described is a low risk, expedient method of ovariectomizing heifers.
Letter: New vasodilator drugs for hypertension.

SIR,-We agree with the view expressed in your leading article (10 November, p. 310) that clinically solitary thyroid nodules should be removed surgically because some are malignant. A proportion of benign follicular colloid nodules and papillary and m dullary carcinomnas can be recognized by fineneedle biopsy, but follicular carcinoma cannot be distinguished from benign adenoma by needle biopsy and here frozen section is also unreliable. Lobectomy provides the tissue necessary for diagnosis and is the d,efinitive treatment for follicular carcinomas, which have a good prognosis. ' In thyroid cancer we must consider the way the disease behaves and the possible effects of each type of treatment. The behaviour of papillary, follicular, and medullary thyroid cancers, which may present as a solitary nodule, is documented in the clinicopathological classification of Hazard2 and Woolner et al.,3 which is now widely accepted. Different classifications may confuse; for example, Russell's description4 of tumour spread within the thyroid is difficult to interpret because the HazardWoolner classification was not used. If it had been, however, the descriptions given plaoe at least 80°% of his carcinomas in the papillary group. Advocates of total thyroidectomy must define their aims since the behaviour of some thyroid carcinomas is remarkably "benign. " Total thyroidectomy is more radical than is usually necessary and neither removes the primary en bloc with its lymphatic drainage nor reliably ablates all thyroid tissue as a preliminary to radioiodine treatment. Of its complications, Dr. H. J. Goldsmith (5 January, p. 39) mentions hypoparathyroidism. The incidence of this reported by ex-perienced thyroid surgeons is about 150% after total thyroidectomy and we have recorded that of 12 children operated on in England and Wales in 1962-67, five have hypoparathyroidism, from which one almost died. ' The condition is serious and requires life-long treatment so that only if thyroid cancers were more "malignant" might one accept this penalty. In this respect Dr. Goldsmith's analogy with prostatic cancer reflects Crile's view of some of these tumours.1-We are, etc., J. E. RICHARDSON J. M. BEAUGI9 C. L. BROWN
Toward Data Representation with Formal Spiking Neurons

Notable advances in the understanding of neural processing have been made when sensory systems were investigated from the viewpoint of adaptation to the statistical structure of its input space. For this purpose, mathematical methods for data representation were used. Here, we point out that emphasis on the input structure has happened at cost of the biological plausibility of the corresponding neuron models which process the natural stimuli. The signal transformation of the data representation methods does not correspond well to the signal transformations happening on the single cell level in neural systems. Hence, we propose here data representation by means of spiking neuron models. We formulate the data representation problem as an optimization problem and derive the fundamental quantities for an iterative learning scheme.
GermanPolarityClues: A Lexical Resource for German Sentiment Analysis

In this paper, we propose GermanPolarityClues, a new publicly available lexical resource for sentiment analysis for the German language. While sentiment analysis and polarity classification has been extensively studied at different document levels (e.g. sentences and phrases), only a few approaches explored the effect of a polarity-based feature selection and subjectivity resources for the German language. This paper evaluates four different English and three different German sentiment resources in a comparative manner by combining a polarity-based feature selection with SVM-based machine learning classifier. Using a semi-automatic translation approach, we were able to construct three different resources for a German sentiment analysis. The manually finalized GermanPolarityClues dictionary offers thereby a number of 10, 141 polarity features, associated to three numerical polarity scores, determining the positive, negative and neutral direction of specific term features. While the results show that the size of dictionaries clearly correlate to polarity-based feature coverage, this property does not correlate to classification accuracy. Using a polarity-based feature selection, considering a minimum amount of prior polarity features, in combination with SVM-based machine learning methods exhibits for both languages the best performance (F1: 0.83-0.88).
Performance analysis of storage and network subsystems in cluster architectures

Single System Image is a desirable property for all services provided by a cluster environment. Coherently with this principle, cluster file systems should make data distribution transparent to the application, giving rise to a heavy communication workload induced by I/O activity. Hence, I/O performance greatly depends on communication performance and on how the storage and network subsystems interact at all levels. The authors present a detailed performance analysis of the storage and network subsystems of a properly configured cluster node. In particular, we consider the case of an Ultra2 SCSI controller with multiple attached disks sharing the I/O bus with a Gigabit LAN adapter. The analysis helps to understand how the several hardware and software components interact, which are the potential bottlenecks, and how these bottlenecks affect the overall performance.
Astrocytes in culture require docosahexaenoic acid to restore the n‐3/n‐6 polyunsaturated fatty acid balance in their membrane phospholipids

Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), the main n‐3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) in membranes, is particularly abundant in brain cells. Decreased cerebral concentrations of DHA, resulting from dietary n‐3 deficiency, are associated with impaired cognitive function. Because the cellular causes of this impairment are still unknown, we need in vitro models that mimic the variations in n‐3/n‐6 PUFA seen in vivo. We have compared the PUFA profiles of hamster astrocytes cultured in medium supplemented with long‐chain PUFA [DHA and/or arachidonic acid (AA)] with those of brain tissue from hamsters fed an n‐6/n‐3 PUFA‐balanced diet or one lacking n‐3 PUFA. Astrocytes were obtained from the brain cortex of newborn hamsters and cultured in minimum essential medium + 5% fetal calf serum (FCS) supplemented with DHA and/or AA for 10 days. The astrocytes cultured in medium + FCS had low n‐3 PUFA contents, comparable to those of brain tissue from hamsters fed an n‐3‐deficient diet. We have shown that astrocytes grown in medium supplemented with DHA and/or AA, plus α‐tocopherol to prevent lipid peroxidation, incorporated large amounts of these long‐chain PUFA, so that the n‐6/n‐3 PUFA compositions of the phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidylcholine, the two main classes of membrane phospholipids, were greatly altered. Astrocytes cultured in medium plus DHA had a more physiological n‐3 status, grew better, and retained their astrocyte phenotype. Thus astrocytes in culture are likely to be physiologically relevant only when provided with adequate DHA. This reliable method of altering membrane phospholipid composition promises to be useful for studying the influence of n‐6/n‐3 imbalance on astrocyte function. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Structural Insights into Molecular Function of the Metastasis-associated Phosphatase PRL-3*

Phosphatases and kinases are the cellular signal transduction enzymes that control protein phosphorylation. PRL phosphatases constitute a novel class of small (20 kDa), prenylated phosphatases with oncogenic activity. In particular, PRL-3 is consistently overexpressed in liver metastasis in colorectal cancer cells and represents a new therapeutic target. Here, we present the solution structure of PRL-3, the first structure of a PRL phosphatase. The structure places PRL phosphatases in the class of dual specificity phosphatases with closest structural homology to the VHR phosphatase. The structure, coupled with kinetic studies of site-directed mutants, identifies functionally important residues and reveals unique features, differentiating PRLs from other phosphatases. These differences include an unusually hydrophobic active site without the catalytically important serine/threonine found in most other phosphatases. The position of the general acid loop indicates the presence of conformational change upon catalysis. The studies also identify a potential regulatory role of Cys49 that forms an intramolecular disulfide bond with the catalytic Cys104 even under mildly reducing conditions. Molecular modeling of the highly homologous PRL-1 and PRL-2 phosphatases revealed unique surface elements that are potentially important for specificity.