Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
'Immunomers'--novel 3'-3'-linked CpG oligodeoxyribonucleotides as potent immunomodulatory agents.

Oligodeoxyribonucleotides containing CpG dinucleotides (CpG DNAs) are currently being evaluated as novel immunomodulators in clinical trials. Recently, we showed that an accessible 5' end is required for immunostimulatory activity and blocking the 5' end of CpG DNA by conjugation of certain ligands abrogates immunostimulatory activity. Based on these results, we designed and synthesized 3'-3'-linked CpG DNAs that contained two or more identical CpG DNA segments, referred to here as 'immunomers'. The use of solid support bearing diDMT-glyceryl-linker permitted convenient synthesis of immunomers with both segments synthesized simultaneously, giving better yields and purity. The in vitro and in vivo studies suggest that as a result of accessibility to two 5' ends for recognition, immunomers show an enhanced immunostimulatory activity compared with linear CpG DNAs. We also studied the suitability of a number of different linkers for attaching the two segments of immunomers. A C3-linker was found to be optimal for joining the two segments of immunomers. Incorporation of multiple linkers between the two segments of immunomers resulted in different cytokine profiles depending on the nature and number of linkers incorporated. Additionally, the length of immunomer also plays a significant role in inducing immune responses. An immunomer containing 11 nt in each segment showed the highest activity and an 11mer linear CpG DNA failed to stimulate an immune response. These results suggest that immunomers have several advantages over conventional linear CpG DNAs for immunomodulatory activity studies.
Dimethyl‐2‐[(acridin‐9‐yl)methylidene]‐malonate as fluorescent probe for histochemical analysis

Fluorescent compounds have been widely used for biomolecule labeling in cytochemistry and histochemistry analysis. Here, it is described the optical properties of dimethyl 2‐[(acridin‐9‐yl)methylidene]‐malonate (LPSF/IP‐81), an acridine derivative. This compound was conjugated to Concanavalin A (Con A) lectin and applied as sugar probe in lectin histochemistry. Evaluation of luminescent properties showed that LPSF/IP‐81 is photoluminescent with excitation at 360 nm and emission at 428 nm. Con A hemagglutinating activity and LPSF/IP81 photoluminescence were unaltered after conjugation. Circular dichroism of Con A‐LPSF/IP81 conjugate showed the maintenance of the Con A structure. Lectin histochemistry with Con A‐LPSF/IP81 conjugate demonstrated different pattern recognition studying normal, fibroadenoma, and invasive ductal carcinoma of human breast. These findings indicate that LPSF/IP‐81 can be proposed as an alternative probe for histochemical analysis.
PULMONARY VENTILATION IN CHILDREN DURING HALOTHANE ANESTHESIA.

Tidal volumes and minute volumes were measured in 59 patients between the ages of six hours and five years (thirty-one less than one year) during halothane anesthesia and correlated with age, height, weight and surface area. Tidal volume was best estimated from body weight, minute volume from height. For use in estimating maximal requirements during halothane anesthesia, values of 5.5 ml. /kg. body weight for tidal volume and 40 ml. /cm. height for minute volume are suggested. Minimum values for tidal volume approached 1 ml. /kg. , especially in those cases with minimal decreases in temperature, dramatically emphasizing the importance of apparatus dead space and maintenance of body temperature.
Use of time‐resolved FRET to validate crystal structure of complement regulatory complex between C3b and factor H (N terminus)

Structural knowledge of interactions amongst the ∼ 40 proteins of the human complement system, which is central to immune surveillance and homeostasis, is expanding due primarily to X‐ray diffraction of co‐crystallized proteins. Orthogonal evidence, in solution, for the physiological relevance of such co‐crystal structures is valuable since intermolecular affinities are generally weak‐to‐medium and inter‐domain mobility may be important. In this current work, Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) was used to investigate the 10 μM KD (210 kD) complex between the N‐terminal region of the soluble complement regulator, factor H (FH1‐4), and the key activation‐specific complement fragment, C3b. Using site‐directed mutagenesis, seven cysteines were introduced individually at potentially informative positions within the four CCP modules comprising FH1‐4, then used for fluorophore attachment. C3b possesses a thioester domain featuring an internal cycloglutamyl cysteine thioester; upon hydrolysis this yields a free thiol (Cys988) that was also fluorescently tagged. Labeled proteins were functionally active as cofactors for cleavage of C3b to iC3b except for FH1‐4(Q40C) where conjugation with the fluorophore likely abrogated interaction with the protease, factor I. Time‐resolved FRET measurements were undertaken to explore interactions between FH1‐4 and C3b in fluid phase and under near‐physiological conditions. These experiments confirmed that, as in the cocrystal structure, FH1‐4 binds to C3b with CCP module 1 furthest from, and CCP module 4 closest to, the thioester domain, placing subsequent modules of FH near to any surface to which C3b is attached. The data do not rule out flexibility of the thioester domain relative to the remainder of the complex.
An association between coronary artery calcification score, lipid profile, and selected markers of chronic inflammation in ESRD patients treated with peritoneal dialysis.

BACKGROUND Chronic uremia is considered a proinflammatory state associated with high cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the potential relationship between the prevalence of coronary artery calcification (CAC) and selected factors that may be involved in the process of atherogenesis (lipid profile, acute-phase reactants, growth factors, and cytokines). METHODS The study group consisted of 43 patients (19 women, 24 men) with a mean age of 50.6 +/- 13.4 years treated with peritoneal dialysis (PD) for a median period of 15 months (range, 2 to 96 months). Only patients with sinus rhythm were included. CAC score (CaSc) was measured using multirow spiral computed tomography (MSCT). As parameters of lipid profile, total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, and triglycerides were assayed. C-reactive protein (CRP) and fibrinogen represented the level of acute-phase activation. Proinflammatory cytokines (interleukin-6 [IL-6] and tumor necrosis factor-alpha [TNF-alpha]), leptin, and basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) also were measured. RESULTS Median CaSc equaled 17.9 Agatston units (range, 0 to 5,502 Agatston units). No calcification was detected in 20 subjects (46.5%; CaSc < 10 Agatston units). CaSc correlated with age (R = 0.57; P < 0.0001), body mass index (R = 0.42; P < 0.005), and serum leptin (R = 0.3; P < 0.05) and CRP levels (R = 0.38; P < 0.05). The correlation with PD therapy duration was borderline statistically significant (P = 0.063). Patients with the greatest values for CaSc (> 400 Agatston units) were characterized by significantly greater levels of IL-6, bFGF, and CRP compared with subjects with a CaSc less than 10 Agatston units (P < 0.05 for all). Patients with history of coronary artery disease (CAD) had significantly greater CaSc values (median, 778.6 versus 3.3 Agatston units; P < 0.001) compared with those without CAD. Serum triglyceride levels were significantly greater and HDL cholesterol levels were significantly lower in patients with CAD. The first group also was characterized by significantly greater serum TNF-alpha (P < 0.01) and CRP levels (P < 0.005). In multiple regression analysis, only age was independently associated with CaSc (beta = 0.45; P = 0.002). CONCLUSION Our results may suggest an association between CAC and chronic inflammation activity in the mentioned group of patients. To our knowledge, this is the first study reporting the prevalence of CAC in PD patients using the MSCT method. The association between CaSc results and classic, as well as inflammatory, risk factors for CAD found in this study should be interpreted with caution because of its method limitations (cross-sectional design, heterogeneity of study population, and small number of studied patients).
Calculation and measurement of the dose at points outside the primary beam for photon energies of 6, 10, and 23 MV.

PURPOSE A generalized model is developed to calculate the dose at any point in the body outside the primary beam, using experimentally determined data. METHODS AND MATERIALS The contribution of leakage radiation, radiation scattered from the collimator, from the floor, and in the patient was measured for 6, 10, and 23 MV photons. RESULTS The radiation scattered in the patient and the radiation scattered from the collimator exhibit a strong dependence on field size and distance and are predominant only at short distances. At larger distances the leakage radiation makes the largest contribution. With appropriate factors, correcting for patient dimensions and field shape, the accuracy is better than +/- 50%. CONCLUSION It is possible to calculate the contribution of radiation scattered in the patient at any point of the body outside the primary beam for photons with an energy up to 23 MV. At large distances this contribution increases with energy. Radiation leaking through, and scattering from the collimator has to be measured for each individual treatment machine.
Fracture and Dislocation Classification Compendium-2018

From the *Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, McGovern Medical School, University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston, ** Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospitial, University of California, San Francisco; *** Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Harborview Medical Center, Seattle, **** University of Iowa Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation, Iowa City, ***** Department of Orthopaedic Surgery; University of Louisville School of Medicine Disclosure: The authors report no conflicts of interest. Material presented in this Compendium is based on the Comprehensive Classification of Fractures of Long Bones by M.E. Müller, J. Nazarian, P. Koch and J. Schatzker, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1990. The Orthopaedic Trauma Association is indebted to Professor Maurice Müller for allowing use of the system. Correspondence: James F. Kellam, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, McGovern Medical School, University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston, 6431 Fannin Street, MSB 6.146, Houston Texas, 77030 (e-mail: James.F.Kellam@uth.tmc.edu) Copyright © 2017 by AO Foundation, Davos, Switzerland; Orthopaedic Trauma Association, IL, US To encourage the use of this classification and this fracture classification compendium, the figures may be reproduced and the classification may be used for research, educational and or medical purposes without the need to request permission from the OTA, AO Foundation or the publisher. It cannot be used commercially or for-profit without permission. Foreword
Consequences of Absolute and Relative Qualitative and Quantitative Sucrose-Incentive Reductions in the Albino Rat

Four experiments are reported which involved relative qualitative (Exps. 1 and 2), relative quantitative (Exp. 3), and absolute quantitative (Exp. 4) sucrose-solution incentive reductions in the first goal box of a double runway. In the three relative experiments, different GB1 amounts (.50 cc vs .10 cc) or concentrations (32% vs 8%) of sucrose did not affect pre- or postshift locomotion speeds in either runway. In the absolute study, RW1 speeds varied directly, and RW2 speeds varied inversely, with GB1 reward magnitude (.50 vs NR). Postshift RW2 speed changes favored a demotivation rather than a frustration interpretation of incentive change.
Comparative Safety of Antidepressant Agents for Children and Adolescents Regarding Suicidal Acts

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to assess the risk of suicide attempts and suicides after initiation of antidepressant medication use by children and adolescents, for individual agents. METHODS: We conducted a 9-year cohort study by using population-wide data from British Columbia. We identified new users of antidepressants who were 10 to 18 years of age with a recorded diagnosis of depression. Study outcomes were hospitalization attributable to intentional self-harm and suicide death. RESULTS: Of 20 906 children who initiated antidepressant therapy, 16774 (80%) had no previous antidepressant use. During the first year of use, we observed 266 attempted and 3 completed suicides, which yielded an event rate of 27.04 suicidal acts per 1000 person-years (95% confidence interval [CI]: 23.9–30.5 suicidal acts per 1000 person-years). There were no meaningful differences in the rate ratios (RRs) comparing fluoxetine with citalopram (RR: 0.97 [95% CI: 0.54–1.76]), fluvoxamine (RR: 1.05 [95% CI: 0.46–2.43]), paroxetine (RR: 0.80 [95% CI: 0.47–1.37]), and sertraline (RR: 1.02 [95% CI: 0.56–1.84]). Tricyclic agents showed risks similar to those of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (RR: 0.92 [95% CI: 0.43–2.00]). CONCLUSION: Our finding of equal event rates among antidepressant agents supports the decision of the Food and Drug Administration to include all antidepressants in the black box warning regarding potentially increased suicidality risk for children and adolescents beginning use of antidepressants.
Challenges in Cell-Based Design of Very-High-Speed Si-Bipolar IC's at 100 Gb/s

A cell-based design concept for higher integrated SiGe-bipolar circuits at 100 Gb/s is presented and discussed with regard to performance limitations. The results of two cell-based designs are demonstrated by a 100 Gb/s 2:1 multiplexer IC and a 100 Gb/s 1:2 demultiplexer IC with on-chip clock-and data-recovery.
Virtual reality enhanced rehabilitation for a service member with bilateral lower extremity amputations: A case study

To review the outcomes of rehabilitation for a service member with bilateral lower extremity amputations. A 25 year-old marine suffered a right knee disarticulation and a left transtibial amputation during military service. For two years, the patient underwent a comprehensive rehabilitation program at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. During the course of his rehabilitation, this patient took part in conventional physical therapy and at 16.5 months post-injury added clinical sessions in the Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment (CAREN) Laboratory to his therapy regimen for approximately six months. Gait analyses were conducted at three different points in his rehabilitation program: 5.5, 18, and 23.5 months post-injury. Temporal spatial parameters of self-selected velocities, cadence, and step length increased while his stance support time and step width decreased, becoming closer to asymptomatic populations. During the CAREN clinical sessions, the patient showed an increase in overall speed in the Road with Overhead Targets application. With the Boat application, the patient was able to improve the application time at increased levels of difficulty. The use of virtual reality as an adjunct to conventional rehabilitation for individuals with amputations provides a novel approach for maximizing function.
Autoimmunity in chronic graft-versus-host disease.

F1 mice with chronic GVH disease were studied to investigate the hypothesis that non-specific stimulation of helper T cells, such as might be seen in graft-versus-host (GVH) disease, results in autoantibody production. Antinuclear antibody (ANA) was detected significantly more frequently in F1 mice with GVH disease than in control animals. The antigenic specificities of the ANA indicate that it is of host origin and, since it reacts with syngeneic nuclei, it can be considered a true autoantibody. The pattern of development, intensity, prevalence and sex distribution of ANA reactions differed notably in experiments with A × CBA F1s compared to those with C57B1/6 × BALB/c F1s suggesting that these parameters of ANA formation are influenced significantly by the genotype of the animal with GVH disease.
Measurement of the B-meson inclusive semileptonic branching fraction and electron-energy moments

We report a new measurement of the B-meson semileptonic decay momentum spectrum that has been made with a sample of 9.4/fb of electron-positron annihilation data collected with the CLEO II detector at the Y(4S) resonance. Electrons from primary semileptonic decays and secondary charm decays were separated by using charge and angular correlations in Y(4S) events with a high-momentum lepton and an additional electron. We determined the semileptonic branching fraction to be (10.91 +- 0.09 +- 0.24)% from the normalization of the electron-energy spectrum. We also measured the moments of the electron energy spectrum with minimum energies from 0.6 GeV to 1.5 GeV.
On-demand virtualization for live migration in bare metal cloud

The level of demand for bare-metal cloud services has increased rapidly because such services are cost-effective for several types of workloads, and some cloud clients prefer a single-tenant environment due to the lower security vulnerability of such enviornments. However, as the bare-metal cloud does not utilize a virtualization layer, it cannot use live migration. Thus, there is a lack of manageability with the bare-metal cloud. Live migration support can improve the manageability of bare-metal cloud services significantly. This paper suggests an on-demand virtualization technique to improve the manageability of bare-metal cloud services. A thin virtualization layer is inserted into the bare-metal cloud when live migration is requested. After the completion of the live migration process, the thin virtualization layer is removed from the host. We modified BitVisor [19] to implement on-demand virtualization and live migration on the x86 architecture. The elapsed time of on-demand virtualization was negligible. It takes about 20 ms to insert the virtualization layer and 30 ms to remove the one. After removing the virtualization layer, the host machine works with bare-metal performance.
Sequence Transfers between Variable Regions in a Mouse Antibody Transgene Can Occur by Gene Conversion1

Different vertebrate species show widely differing usage of somatic hyperconversion (SHC) as a mechanism for diversifying expressed Ab V genes. The basis for the differing levels of SHC in different species is not known. Although no clear evidence for SHC has been found in normal mouse B cells, transgenic mice carrying high-copy numbers of a gene construct designed to optimize detection of SHC have previously been shown to exhibit sequence transfers that resemble gene conversion events. However, these transgene sequence transfers could reflect multistep or reciprocal DNA recombination events rather than gene conversions. We now find in low-copy number transgenic mice that transgene sequence transfers can exhibit the unidirectional sequence information movement that is a hallmark of gene conversion. This indicates that gene conversion between V region sequences can occur in mouse B cells; we propose that the lack of efficient SHC contributions to Ab diversification in normal mice may be due, at least in part, to the particular pattern of V gene recombinational accessibility that occurs in differentiating mouse B cells.
StreetStyle: Exploring world-wide clothing styles from millions of photos

Each day billions of photographs are uploaded to photo-sharing services and social media platforms. These images are packed with information about how people live around the world. In this paper we exploit this rich trove of data to understand fashion and style trends worldwide. We present a framework for visual discovery at scale, analyzing clothing and fashion across millions of images of people around the world and spanning several years. We introduce a large-scale dataset of photos of people annotated with clothing attributes, and use this dataset to train attribute classifiers via deep learning. We also present a method for discovering visually consistent style clusters that capture useful visual correlations in this massive dataset. Using these tools, we analyze millions of photos to derive visual insight, producing a first-of-its-kind analysis of global and per-city fashion choices and spatio-temporal trends.
Nonmedical Stimulant Use in College Students: Association With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Other Disorders.

Objective The nonmedical use of stimulants (misuse) in the college setting remains of utmost public health and clinical concern. The objective of this study was to evaluate comprehensively the characteristics of college students who misused stimulants, attending to rates of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), other psychopathology, and substance use disorders. Methods The data presented are from a cross-sectional study of college students who misused prescription stimulant medications (not including cocaine or methamphetamine) and controls (college students without stimulant misuse). Between May 2010 and May 2013, college students were assessed blindly for psychopathology and substance use disorder by way of Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-TR Axis I Disorders, Research Version, Patient Edition (SCID-I/P) and completion of self-report questionnaires. Results The analysis included 198 controls (mean ± SD age = 20.7 ± 2.6 years) and 100 stimulant misusers (20.7 ± 1.7 years). Misusers, when compared to controls, were more likely to endorse alcohol, drug, alcohol + drug, and any substance use disorder (all P values < .01). When a subset of stimulant misusers (n = 58) was examined, 67% had a full or subthreshold prescription stimulant use disorder. Misusers also had higher rates of conduct disorder (10% vs 3%; P = .02) and ADHD (including subthreshold cases; 27% vs 16%; P = .02) in addition to lower Global Assessment of Functioning score (P < .01). Higher rates of misuse of immediate-release—relative to extended-release—stimulants were reported. Conclusions Our data suggest that, compared to controls, college students who misuse stimulant medications are more likely to have ADHD, conduct disorder, stimulant and other substance use disorder, and overall dysfunction.