Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Purification and immunochemical studies of type b carbohydrate antigen of oral Streptococcus milleri

The type-specific antigen of serotype b Streptococcus milleri was extracted with trichloroacetic acid from a purified cell wall preparation of the strain NCTC 10708 and then purified on a DEAE-Sephadex A-25 column, followed by a Sephadex G-100 column. The antigen was composed of rhamnose and glucose in a molar ratio of 1.7:1.0, with a trace of galactosamine (0.1). The quantitative precipitin inhibition test with various haptenic sugars showed that rhamnose gave the greatest inhibition, whereas glucose and its related carbohydrates were less effective. The major carbohydrate components of the Rantz-Randall extracts from cells of all four serotype b strains tested were also rhamnose and glucose. These results suggest that rhamnose is structurally involved in the immunodeterminant of the serotype b-specific antigen of oral S. milleri.
The effects of acetazolamide on cerebral blood flow and cerebral tissue PO2.

An experiment was designed to rule out bypoxia of cerebral tissue as a mediator of increased cerebral blood flow (CBF) due to acetazolamide (Diamox). Hypoxia might be produced by carbonic anhydrase inhibition by delaying the acidification of the red blood cell until it left the tissue capillary. Fifteen dogs were studied under pentobarbital anesthesia. CBF was estimated from the arteriovenous oxygen content difference across the brain. Cerebral tissue oxygen tension (Paco2) was measured directly on the cortical surface. CBF was altered by altering arterial Pco2 (Paco2) before and after the intravenous administration of 25 mg. /kg. acetazolamide. At Paco2 = 30 mm. Hg, acetazolamide increased CBF by 69 per cent; at Paco2 = 40 mm. Hg, by 64 per cent; at Paco2 = 50 mm. Hg, by 55 per cent. This was accompanied by an increase in Po2 of 20 mm. Hg at Paco2 = 30 mm. Hg; 19 mm. Hg at Paco2 = 40 mm. Hg; 16 mm. Hg at Paco2 = 50 mm. Hg. Since Po2 increased, clinical use of the drug in association with mechanical ventilation in the treatment of chronic hypereapnia appears justified. The effect of acetazolamide on cerebrovascular tone remains unexplained.
Modulation of osteopontin in proteinuria‐induced renal interstitial fibrosis

Proteinuria is associated with macrophage‐dependent interstitial fibrosis (IF). Osteopontin (OPN), a macrophage chemoattractant, may be involved in the transition of proteinuria to IF but protective properties have also been reported. To elucidate whether OPN may be involved in the proteinuria‐induced cascade of tubulointerstitial damage, renal expression of OPN was studied during the development of proteinuria‐induced renal damage and during anti‐proteinuric intervention with ACE inhibition (ACEi). First, the temporal relationships between proteinuria, interstitial OPN induction, and IF in adriamycin nephrosis (AN), a model of chronic proteinuria‐induced renal damage, were studied. Second, the effect of anti‐proteinuric treatment on OPN expression was investigated. The time course of OPN induction and markers of renal damage was studied in rats with unilateral AN at 6‐week intervals until week 30. In a second study, a renal biopsy was taken 6 weeks after induction of bilateral AN; subsequently, rats were treated with ACEi until termination (week 12). In unilateral AN, proteinuria developed gradually and stabilized at week 10. In proteinuric kidneys, OPN expression was induced from week 12 onwards. Simultaneously, a progressive increase in interstitial macrophages, α‐smooth muscle actin (α‐SMA), collagen type III, and focal glomerulosclerosis (FGS) was observed. In bilateral AN, ACEi reduced proteinuria and OPN protein and stabilized fibrosis. In untreated animals, OPN mRNA increased, with stable OPN protein and fibrosis and increased FGS. Thus, in AN, development of proteinuria is followed by up‐regulation of OPN along with markers of renal damage. The up‐regulation of OPN is reversible by anti‐proteinuric treatment without a corresponding reduction in fibrosis. Whereas these data are consistent with a role for OPN in the cascade of transition from proteinuria to fibrosis, intervention with ACEi showed that reduction of OPN does not attenuate established fibrosis. Copyright © 2005 Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Allopurinol hypersensitivity syndrome in patients with hematological malignancies: characteristics and clinical outcomes

Background/Aims Allopurinol is a urate-lowering agent that is commonly used to prevent chemotherapy-related hyperuricemia. Allopurinol hypersensitivity syndrome (AHS) is a disorder involving multiple organs, which may be accompanied by cutaneous adverse reactions. We identified the characteristics and clinical outcomes of chemotherapy-associated AHS in patients with hematological malignancies. Methods This retrospective single-center study included 26 AHS patients (11 with and 15 without hematological malignancies) admitted to Seoul St. Mary's Hospital. AHS was defined using the criteria of Singer and Wallace. Comparisons were made using the Mann-Whitney U test and Fisher exact test as appropriate. Results In patients with a hematological malignancy and AHS, statistically significant differences were observed in terms of younger age at onset; shorter duration of exposure; higher starting and maintenance doses of allopurinol; lower incidence of eosinophilia, leukocytosis, and underlying renal insufficiency; and more frequent occurrence of fever compared to AHS patients without a hematological malignancy. Two AHS patients with a hematological malignancy were examined for human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-B typing, but neither patient harbored the HLA-B*5801 allele. All of the patients ceased allopurinol treatment, with most patients making a full recovery. Two patients in the study died; however, these deaths were unrelated to AHS. One patient developed serious sequelae of AHS that required hemodialysis. Conclusions Physicians who prescribe allopurinol for the prevention of chemotherapy-related hyperuricemia should be aware of the unique risk of AHS, even in patients with hematological malignancies who do not have known risk factors for AHS. Novel urate-lowering agents should be considered alternative treatments.
Affinity of (±)‐Pindolol, (‐)‐Penbutolol, and (‐)‐Tertatolol for Pre‐ and Postsynaptic Serotonin 5‐HT1A Receptors in Human and Rat Brain

There is considerable interest in the use of drugs that selectively block presynaptic (somatodendritic) serotonin 5‐HT1A receptors for the adjunctive treatment of major depressive disorder. The 5‐HT1A/β‐adrenoceptor ligands (±)‐pindolol, (‐)‐tertatolol, and (‐)‐penbutolol are currently under clinical investigation, and knowledge of their affinity at different populations of central 5‐HT1A receptors is needed. Here we have determined the affinity of these drugs for presynaptic and postsynaptic 5‐HT1A receptors in postmortem human and rat brain using receptor autoradiography and the selective 5‐HT1A radioligand [3H]WAY‐100635. The binding of [3H]WAY‐100635 was specific and saturable and showed high affinity in the rat dorsal raphe nucleus and hippocampus (KD = 1.5‐1.7 nM). In competition studies, the three compounds had nanomolar affinity and produced monophasic displacement of [3H]WAY‐100635 binding in all regions of both species. (‐)‐Penbutolol and (‐)‐tertatolol had similar affinity for pre‐and postsynaptic 5‐HT1A receptors in both rat and human brain. However, in the human, but not the rat, the affinity of (±)‐pindolol in dorsal raphe nucleus (Ki = 8.9 ± 1.1 nM) was slightly but significantly higher than that in hippocampus (Ki = 14.4 ± 1.5 nM in CA1). In summary, our data show that (±)‐pindolol, (‐)‐tertatolol, and (‐)‐penbutolol are all high‐affinity ligands at native human and rat 5‐HT1A receptors. (‐)‐Penbutolol and (‐)‐tertatolol do not discriminate between the pre‐ and postsynaptic 5‐HT1A sites tested in either species, but (±)‐pindolol showed a slightly higher affinity for the presynaptic site in human brain. Further work is needed to establish whether the latter difference is clinically relevant.
Acoustic preference functions and song variability in the Hawaiian cricket Laupala cerasina

Female preference functions for different sexual traits can differ significantly, from ‘unimodal’ to ‘open ended’. Through the study of acoustic communication in anurans, several studies have reported an association between static (stereotyped) traits versus dynamic (variable) traits and preference function shape (unimodal versus open ended, respectively). Observing a similar pattern in a phylogenetically independent group would suggest that deterministic forces have caused a relationship between signal variability and preference function shape in acoustic signalling systems. We examined this phenomenon in crickets, another animal characterized by intersexual acoustic communication. We measured the within–male variability for three acoustic features of the male calling song in Laupala cerasina and the corresponding shape of the female preference function for each of these features. We offer support for the generalization that open–ended preference functions correspond to relatively dynamic courtship traits and unimodal preference functions correspond to relatively static courtship traits. We discuss the evolutionary significance of these findings in the context of the natural history of the Laupala species radiation.
A tobacco-related carcinogen: assessing the impact of smoking behaviours of cohabitants on benzene exposure in children

Background Secondhand smoke (SHS) represents a major preventable cause of morbidity for communities, especially for children, who are more susceptible than adults to the adverse effects of passive smoking. SHS contains several carcinogens, including benzene. Objective To investigate the role of household characteristics and the smoking behaviours of cohabitants in predicting SHS-derived benzene exposure levels. Methods In this cross-sectional study, 122 children (aged 5–11 years old) were selected from a school in rural Italy. Characteristics of their home environment and the smoking habits of the children's cohabitants were obtained via questionnaire, and urinary unmodified benzene (u-UB) and cotinine (a specific nicotine metabolite) levels were determined from spot urine samples. Results Significant differences between SHS-exposed and SHS-unexposed children were found with respect to u-UB levels (median values 359.50 and 92.50 ng/litre, respectively; p<0.001). The excretion of u-UB increased significantly in parallel to increased SHS exposure as follows: unexposed to SHS (median value 92.50 ng/litre)<cohabitant(s) smoker(s) not smoking inside the home (282.00 ng/litre)<cohabitant(s) smoking inside the home only when children are out (314.50 ng/litre)<cohabitant(s) smoking inside the home even when children are in (596.00 ng/litre). The difference between groups was significant (p=0.019). Conclusions Although smoke-free legislation has transformed the smoking behaviours of some, domestic environments remain an important source of SHS exposure for children. This fact holds true even in the case of parents and other cohabitants who believe they are fully protecting children by smoking only outdoors or at home only when the children are not present. These findings should be included in Italian community-level health promotion interventions for discouraging tobacco use.
Comparative Prevalence of Virulence Factors in Escherichia coli Causing Urinary Tract Infection in Male Infants with and without Bacteremia

ABSTRACT Escherichia coli isolates causing urinary tract infection in 83 male infants younger than 90 days with and without bacteremia were compared for phylogenetic groups and the presence of 10 virulence factors. Our result suggest that the absence of both hemolysin and antigen K1 may be used as a negative predictive factor for bacteremia.
Online Deep Learning: Learning Deep Neural Networks on the Fly

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are typically trained by backpropagation in a batch setting, requiring the entire training data to be made available prior to the learning task. This is not scalable for many real-world scenarios where new data arrives sequentially in a stream. We aim to address an open challenge of ``Online Deep Learning" (ODL) for learning DNNs on the fly in an online setting. Unlike traditional online learning that often optimizes some convex objective function with respect to a shallow model (e.g., a linear/kernel-based hypothesis), ODL is more challenging as the optimization objective is non-convex, and regular DNN with standard backpropagation does not work well in practice for online settings. We present a new ODL framework that attempts to tackle the challenges by learning DNN models which dynamically adapt depth from a sequence of training data in an online learning setting. Specifically, we propose a novel Hedge Backpropagation (HBP) method for online updating the parameters of DNN effectively, and validate the efficacy on large data sets (both stationary and concept drifting scenarios).
Evaluating short-term and working memory in older adults: French normative data

Short-term and working memory (WM) capacities are subject to change with ageing, both in normal older adults and in patients with degenerative or non-degenerative neurological disease. Few normative data are available for comparisons of short-term and WM capacities in the verbal, spatial and visual domains. To provide researchers and clinicians with a set of standardised tasks that assess short-term and WM using verbal and visuospatial materials, and to present normative data for that set of tasks. The present study compiled normative French data for three short-term memory tasks (verbal, visual and spatial simple span tasks) and two WM tasks (verbal and spatial complex span tasks) obtained from 445 healthy older adults aged between 55 and 85 years. Our data reveal main effects of age, education level and gender on older adults’ short-term and WM performances. Equation-based normalisation can therefore be used to take these factors into account. The results provide a set of cut-off scores for five standardised tasks that can be used to determine the presence of short-term or WM impairment in older adults.
Algorithms for Colouring Random k-colourable Graphs

The k-colouring problem is to colour a given k-colourable graph with k colours. This problem is known to be NP-hard even for fixed k [ges ] 3. The best known polynomial time approximation algorithms require nδ (for a positive constant δ depending on k) colours to colour an arbitrary k-colourable n-vertex graph. The situation is entirely different if we look at the average performance of an algorithm rather than its worst-case performance. It is well known that a k-colourable graph drawn from certain classes of distributions can be k-coloured almost surely in polynomial time. In this paper, we present further results in this direction. We consider k-colourable graphs drawn from the random model in which each allowed edge is chosen independently with probability p(n) after initially partitioning the vertex set into k colour classes. We present polynomial time algorithms of two different types. The first type of algorithm always runs in polynomial time and succeeds almost surely. Algorithms of this type have been proposed before, but our algorithms have provably exponentially small failure probabilities. The second type of algorithm always succeeds and has polynomial running time on average. Such algorithms are more useful and more difficult to obtain than the first type of algorithms. Our algorithms work as long as p(n) [ges ] n−1+ε where ε is a constant greater than 1/4.
Neuropsychological characteristics of people living in squalor

ABSTRACT Background: Squalor is an epiphenomenon associated with a range of medical and psychiatric conditions. People living in squalor are not well described in the literature, and prior work has indicated that up to 50% do not have a psychiatric diagnosis. Squalor appears to be linked with neuropsychological deficits suggestive of the presence of impaired executive function. We present a case series of people living in squalor that examines their neuropsychological assessment and diagnosis. Methods: Clinicians from local health networks were invited to submit neuropsychological reports of patients living in squalor. These selected reports were screened to ensure the presence of squalor and a comprehensive examination of a set of core neuropsychological domains. Assessments were included if basic attention, visuospatial reasoning, information processing speed, memory function, and executive function were assessed. Results: Sixty-nine neuropsychological reports were included. Sixty-eight per cent of the group underwent neuropsychological assessments during an inpatient admission. For participants where it was available (52/69), the mean Mini-Mental State Examination score was 25.29 (SD = 3.96). Neuropsychological assessment showed a range of cognitive impairment with nearly all the participants (92.75%) found to have frontal executive dysfunction. One person had an unimpaired neuropsychological assessment. Results indicated that dorsolateral prefrontal rather than orbitofrontal functions were more likely to be impaired. Vascular etiology was the most common cause implicated by neuropsychologists. Conclusions: Frontal executive dysfunction was a prominent finding in the neuropsychological profiles of our sample of squalor patients, regardless of their underlying medical or psychiatric diagnoses. Our study highlights the importance of considering executive dysfunction when assessing patients who live in squalor.
Acute respiratory failure caused by Leptospira spp. in 5 foals.

A lthough clinical disease in horses is uncommon, serological surveys show that equine exposure to leptospires is very common. In some populations, up to 80% of the animals have leptospiral antibodies. In Europe, Leptospira interrogans serovar bratislava, copenhageni, and patoc are the presumed host-adapted serovars of horses. Clinical leptospirosis in horses is primarily associated with recurrent uveitis, abortions, stillbirth, neonatal disease, hemolysis, renal disease, and liver disease. Unlike cases in humans or small animals, respiratory signs caused by alveolar hemorrhage have not been associated with leptospirosis. The present report describes 5 cases of foals with respiratory distress caused by leptospirosis.
Biological correlates of HIV‐1 heterosexual transmission

Objectives:To study the role of HIV-1 biological phenotype, viral load and neutralizing antibodies in male-to-female heterosexual transmission of HIV-1. Methods:Seven transmitting and seven non-transmitting HIV-1-seropositive heterosexual male index cases were included in the present study. All couples had engaged in unprotected sex for a period of over 1 year. Transmission was defined by the seroconversion of the female sexual partner. Virus isolates were tested in MT-2 cells for replication and syncytia induction. HIV-1 RNA plasma load was measured by the branched DNA technique. Serum neutralizing activity to primary HIV-1 isolates was tested by using peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) as target cells. Results:Non-transmitting index cases had a lower HIV-1 RNA concentration in plasma than transmitting index cases. Non-transmitting index cases also tended to have serum neutralizing activity with broad specificity and to have viruses with low replicative capacity, as characterized by 50% infectious dose titres in PBMC and by the lack of MT-2 tropism. Conclusions:The results indicate that plasma viral-RNA load is a marker for transmission. Moreover, an interplay between the host immune response and viral replication may modulate the level of viral load and thereby influence HIV-1 transmission.
In vitro clearance of dexmedetomidine in extracorporeal membrane oxygenation

Dexmedetomidine (DMET) is a useful agent for sedation, both alone and in combination with other agents, in critically ill patients, including those on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) therapy. The drug is a clonidine-like derivative with an 8-fold greater specificity for the alpha 2-receptor while maintaining respiratory and cardiovascular stability. An in vitro ECMO circuit was used to study the effects of both “new” and “old” membrane oxygenators on the clearance of dexmedetomidine over the course of 24 hours. Once primed, the circuit was dosed with 840 μg of dexmedetomidine for a final concentration of 0.9 μg/ml. Serial samples, both pre- and post-oxygenator, were taken at 5, 60, 360, and 1440 minutes. Concentrations of the drug were expressed as a percentage of the original concentration remaining at each time point, both for new and old circuits. The new circuits were run at a standard flow for 24 hours, after which time the circuit was considered old and re-dosed with dexmedetomidine and the trial repeated. Results show that dexmedetomidine losses occur early in the circuits and then continue to decline. Initial losses in the first hour were 11+-65% and 59-73% pre- and post-oxygenator in the new circuit and 36-50% and 42-72% in the old circuit. The clearance of the drug through the membrane oxygenator exhibits no statistical difference between pre and post or new and old circuits. Dexmedetomidine can be expected to exhibit concentration changes during ECMO therapy. This effect appears to be more related to adsorption to the polyvinyl chloride (PVC) tubing rather than the membrane oxygenator. Dosage adjustments during dexmedetomidine administration during ECMO therapy may be warranted in order to maintain adequate serum concentrations and, hence, the desired degree of sedation. *(Lack of equilibrium)
Cross-modal iconicity: A cognitive semiotic approach to sound symbolism

It is being increasingly recognized that the Saussurean dictum of "the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign" is in conflict with the pervasiveness of the phenomenon commonly known as "sound symbolism". After first presenting a historical overview of the debate, however, we conclude that both positions have been exaggerated, and that an adequate explanation of sound symbolism is still lacking. How can there, for example, be (perceived) similarity between expressions and contents across different sensory modalities? We offer an answer, based on the Peircian notion of iconic ground, and G. Sonesson's distinction between primary and secondary iconicity. Furthermore, we describe an experimental study, in a paradigm first pioneered by W. Kohler, and recently popularized by V. Ramachandran, in which we varied vowels and consonants in fictive word-forms, and conclude that both types of sounds play a role in perceiving an iconic ground between the word-forms and visual figures. The combination of historical conceptual analysis, semiotic explication and psychological experimentation presented in this article is characteristic of the emerging paradigm of cognitive semiotics.