Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Risk factors for pressure ulcers in acute care hospitals

Selection of patients for preventive measures to protect against pressure ulcers relies on clinical scales and provider judgment, which vary widely. Our objectives were to: (a) identify risk factors by clinical classification and report demographic differences in pressure ulcer risk and (b) develop criteria for identification of high‐risk patients. Patients with pressure ulcer as a discharge diagnosis were identified from the 2003 Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS). The effect of discharge diagnosis was examined using the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Clinical Classification Software (CCS). Multiple regression analysis for survey data was used to assess risk factors. The 2003 NIS listed 94,758 with a discharge diagnosis of pressure ulcer, identified as International Classification of Disease‐9 code 707.0–707.09, for an overall incidence of 143 per 10,000. Forty‐five CCS discharge diagnoses were present in at least 5% of these patients and 28 of these CCS diagnoses had odds ratios >2.0. African‐American race and advanced age were identified as risk factors for pressure ulcer diagnosis. Disorders of skin integrity, organ system failure, and infection were found to be broad categories of risk factors as well. Using the NIS, risk factors for pressure ulcer including diagnoses and demographic factors have been identified.
Polymorphisms in the IL4, IL4RA, and FCERIB genes and asthma severity.

BACKGROUND Genetic polymorphisms have been associated with asthma and asthma severity. OBJECTIVE We sought to determine whether 3 polymorphisms were associated with severe asthma indicated either by the occurrence of a fatal (or near-fatal) asthma attack or by severe airflow obstruction. METHODS We obtained DNA and clinical data from asthmatic subjects who either died or nearly died during an asthma attack and from a group of subjects with mild-to-moderate asthma who had never experienced a fatal or near-fatal asthma episode. These groups were compared with a group of nonatopic nonasthmatic control subjects. The level of airflow obstruction (FEV(1) percent predicted) in the subjects with mild-to-moderate asthma was used as an additional measure of disease severity. The subjects were genotyped for the IL4*C-589T promoter polymorphism and the IL4RA*Q576R and the FCERIB*E237G amino acid substitutions. RESULTS The results showed that the FCERIB*E237G and IL4RA*Q576R polymorphisms were not associated with fatal or near-fatal asthma. However, the IL4*-589T allele was significantly increased in the subjects with fatal or near-fatal asthma compared with nonasthmatic subjects (odds ratio [OR], 1.8; P =.02) and subjects with mild-to-moderate asthma (OR, 1.9; P =.02). There was no interaction between the IL4*-589T and IL4RA*576R alleles. Of the 3 polymorphisms, only the IL4RA*576R allele was associated with severe airflow obstruction (OR, 8.2; P =.01). CONCLUSION These data suggest that the IL4*-589T allele is a risk factor for life-threatening asthma and that the IL4RA*576R allele is a risk factor for a low level of lung function in asthmatic subjects.
Acoustic and perceptual effects of magnifying interaural difference cues in a simulated “binaural” hearing aid

Abstract Objective: To investigate the influence of an algorithm designed to enhance or magnify interaural difference cues on speech signals in noisy, spatially complex conditions using both technical and perceptual measurements. To also investigate the combination of interaural magnification (IM), monaural microphone directionality (DIR), and binaural coherence-based noise reduction (BC). Design: Speech-in-noise stimuli were generated using virtual acoustics. A computational model of binaural hearing was used to analyse the spatial effects of IM. Predicted speech quality changes and signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) improvements were also considered. Additionally, a listening test was carried out to assess speech intelligibility and quality. Study sample: Listeners aged 65–79 years with and without sensorineural hearing loss (N = 10 each). Results: IM increased the horizontal separation of concurrent directional sound sources without introducing any major artefacts. In situations with diffuse noise, however, the interaural difference cues were distorted. Preprocessing the binaural input signals with DIR reduced distortion. IM influenced neither speech intelligibility nor speech quality. Conclusions: The IM algorithm tested here failed to improve speech perception in noise, probably because of the dispersion and inconsistent magnification of interaural difference cues in complex environments.
The Aspergillus nidulans FcyB cytosine‐purine scavenger is highly expressed during germination and in reproductive compartments and is downregulated by endocytosis

We cloned and characterized an Aspergillus nidulans gene, called fcyB, encoding the closest homologue to the yeast Fcy2p/Fcy21p permeases. Deletion of fcyB (ΔfcyB) does not affect growth, development, reproduction or bulk purine uptake, but eliminates the leaky growth on purines of ΔazgAΔuapCΔuapA strains, lacking all known purine transporters, and confers resistance to the antifungal 5‐fluorocytosine. Kinetic analyses showed FcyB is a low‐capacity, high‐affinity, cytosine‐purine transporter sharing similar molecular interactions for substrate recognition with the yeast Fcy2p/Fcy21p carriers. fcyB transcription is highly activated during germination but drops at low constitutive levels throughout vegetative development. UaY‐mediated purine induction of fcyB transcription is only moderate, while ammonium represses transcription through an AreA‐dependent mechanism. A strain expressing FcyB–GFP confirms a low protein expression level in the plasma membrane of vegetative mycelia, but reveals an abundant expression in sexual and asexual compartments. FcyB–GFP was also shown to be downregulated by endocytosis in response to ammonia or the presence of cytosine. The expression profile of FcyB supports that its main physiological role is cytosine‐purine scavenging.
Decidual, Amniotic Fluid, Maternal and Fetal Prolactin in Normal and Abnormal Pregnancies

In the present studies, the content and the in vitro production of prolactin by decidua as well as the concentrations of prolactin in amniotic fluid, maternal and fetal serum in normal term pregnancies, induced abortions at various gestational ages, and in pregnancies complicated by diabetes mellitus, preeclampsia, chronic hypertension, and polyhydramnios were measured. Maternal and fetal prolactin levels varied considerably throughout gestation, but at term did not differ significantly between normal and abnormal pregnancies. Prolactin levels in amniotic fluid as well as decidual prolactin content and production were significantly lower only in pregnancies complicated by either hypertension or polyhydramnios. In both normal and abnormal pregnancies, decidual prolactin production correlated strongly with amniotic fluid concentrations. The present data suggest that 1) maternal and fetal prolactin levels do not differ significantly between normal and abnormal pregnancies, 2) the decidua is the principal source of amniotic fluid prolactin, and 3) the significantly lower levels of prolactin in amniotic fluid of pregnancies complicated by hypertension or polyhydramnios are probably due to adverse effects of these conditions on the synthesis and release of prolactin by decidua.
Verb Retrieval in Aphasia. 1. Characterizing Single Word Impairments

The ability of aphasic patients to produce words from the grammatical classes of nouns and verbs was investigated in tasks that elicited these types of words in isolation. Eleven chronic aphasic patients produced nouns and verbs in picture naming, videotaped scene naming, sentence completion, naming from definition, and oral reading. Comprehension of the meanings of nouns and verbs was tested in word/picture and word/video scene matching, and appreciation of noun/verb grammatical class differences was tested with two metalinguistic tasks. Five patients demonstrated significantly more difficulty producing verbs than nouns, two patients were significantly more impaired producing nouns than verbs, and the remaining four patients showed no difference between the two classes. There was no improvement in verb production when naming actions presented on videotape, suggesting that selective verb impairments are not attributable to conceptual difficulty in identifying actions in static pictures. Selective noun impairments occurred in the context of severe anomia, as reported in previous studies. Selective verb impairments were demonstrated for both agrammatic and fluent (Wernicke) patients, indicating that such deficits are not necessarily associated with the nonfluent and morphologically impoverished production that is characteristic of agrammatism. There was no indication that single word comprehension was affected in these patients in a manner consonant with their production impairments. Results are interpreted in light of current models of lexical organization and processing.
Appearance Bending: A Perceptual Editing Paradigm for Data-Driven Material Models

Data-driven representations of material appearance play an important role in a wide range of applications. Unlike with analytical models, however, the intuitive and efﬁcient editing of tabulated reﬂectance data is still an open problem. In this work, we introduce appearance bending, a set of image-based manipulation operators, such as thicken , inﬂate , and roughen , that implement recent insights from perceptual studies. In particular, we exploit a link between certain perceived visual properties of a material, and speciﬁc bands in its spectrum of spatial frequencies or octaves of a wavelet decomposition. The result is an editing interface that produces plausible results at interactive rates, even for drastic manipulations. We present the effectiveness of our method on a database of bidirectional texture functions (BTFs) for a variety of material samples.
Computed tomography findings of primary epiploic appendagitis as an easily misdiagnosed entity: Case series and review of literature.

BACKGROUND Primer epiploic appendagitis (PEA) is an uncommon condition. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed the clinical records and computed tomography (CT) findings of 45 patients with PEA. RESULTS On the basis of physical examination and pain localization, presumptive clinical diagnosis was acute appendicitis (n=13), acute cholecystitis (n=2), acute diverticulitis (n=19), renal colic (n=7) and ovarian pathology (n=4). CONCLUSION Although it has no characteristic clinical and laboratory features, CT is the best modality for accurate diagnosis of PEA.
Can Simplifying Financial Aid Offers Impact College Enrollment and Borrowing? Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Evidence

Recent policy and research efforts have focused on simplifying the college-going process, improving transparency around college costs, and helping students make informed decisions. In 2012, the Obama administration released the “shopping sheet,” a standardized financial aid offer that is intended to provide students with simplified information about costs, loan options, and college outcomes. This paper examines the impact of the shopping sheet (adopted by more than 400 four-year colleges in two years) using: (1) administrative data from a field experiment among admitted and already-enrolled students at a public university, and (2) college-level data from a quasi-experiment among four-year colleges. Findings provide some evidence that information in the shopping sheet relating a college's graduation rate to other colleges led to decreased borrowing at colleges with poor graduation outcomes. Additionally, the shopping sheet decreased borrowing at colleges that enroll high shares of students receiving federal student aid and underrepresented minority students. These findings indicate the shopping sheet may be particularly salient to students who traditionally face higher informational barriers during the college-going process.
Unmanned aerial vehicles for surveying marine fauna: assessing detection probability.

Aerial surveys are conducted for various fauna to assess abundance, distribution, and habitat use over large spatial scales. They are traditionally conducted using light aircraft with observers recording sightings in real time. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) offer an alternative with many potential advantages, including eliminating human risk. To be effective, this emerging platform needs to provide detection rates of animals comparable to traditional methods. UAVs can also acquire new types of information, and this new data requires a reevaluation of traditional analyses used in aerial surveys; including estimating the probability of detecting animals. We conducted 17 replicate UAV surveys of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) while simultaneously obtaining a 'census' of the population from land-based observations, to assess UAV detection probability. The ScanEagle UAV, carrying a digital SLR camera, continuously captured images (with 75% overlap) along transects covering the visual range of land-based observers. We also used ScanEagle to conduct focal follows of whale pods (n = 12, mean duration = 40 min), to assess a new method of estimating availability. A comparison of the whale detections from the UAV to the land-based census provided an estimated UAV detection probability of 0.33 (CV = 0.25; incorporating both availability and perception biases), which was not affected by environmental covariates (Beaufort sea state, glare, and cloud cover). According to our focal follows, the mean availability was 0.63 (CV = 0.37), with pods including mother/calf pairs having a higher availability (0.86, CV = 0.20) than those without (0.59, CV = 0.38). The follows also revealed (and provided a potential correction for) a downward bias in group size estimates from the UAV surveys, which resulted from asynchronous diving within whale pods, and a relatively short observation window of 9 s. We have shown that UAVs are an effective alternative to traditional methods, providing a detection probability that is within the range of previous studies for our target species. We also describe a method of assessing availability bias that represents spatial and temporal characteristics of a survey, from the same perspective as the survey platform, is benign, and provides additional data on animal behavior.
The rhoptry neck protein RON4 relocalizes at the moving junction during Toxoplasma gondii invasion

Host cell invasion in the Apicomplexa is unique in its dependency on a parasite actin‐driven machinery and in the exclusion of most host cell membrane proteins during parasitophorous vacuole (PV) formation. This exclusion occurs at a junction between host cell and parasite plasma membranes that has been called the moving junction, a circumferential zone which forms at the apical tip of the parasite, moves backward and eventually pinches the PV from the host cell membrane. Despite having been described by electron microscopic studies 30 years ago, the molecular nature of this singular structure is still enigmatic. We have obtained a monoclonal antibody that recognizes the moving junction of invading tachyzoites of Toxoplasma gondii, in a pattern clearly distinct from those described so far for microneme and rhoptry proteins. The protein recognized by this antibody has been affinity purified. Mass spectrometry analysis showed that it is a rhoptry neck protein (RON4), a hypothetical protein with homologues restricted to Apicomplexa. Our findings reveals for the first time the participation of rhoptry neck proteins in moving junction formation and strongly suggest the conservation of this structure at the molecular level among Apicomplexa.
Don’t fear the reaper: distortive media effects on workers’ perceptions of injury

ABSTRACT This study sought to determine whether newspaper reports affect workers’ beliefs about workplace injury in the western Canadian province of Alberta. This issue is important because prior research has identified that Canadian newspaper reports profoundly distort the frequency and type of workplace injuries that occur as well as which workers experience them. An online survey (n = 2000) revealed that workers’ views of injury broadly conform to distorted newspaper representations and that workers’ own experiences of injury do not act as a corrective. This study provides support for the proposition that distorted newspaper reporting contributes to inaccurate public perceptions of workplace injury. This, in turn, has implications for public policy around injury prevention.
Association of HMOX1 gene promoter polymorphisms with hyperbilirubinemia in the early neonatal period

Heme oxygenase (HO) is the rate‐limiting enzyme in the heme degradation pathway that produces bilirubin. The promoter region of human heme oxygenase‐1 (HMOX1) contains a polymorphic (GT)n repeat that can regulate gene expression. Here, we investigated the association of (GT)n repeat length in the HMOX1 promoter region with neonatal hyperbilirubinemia in a population of Japanese term neonates.
Upregulation of CD40 ligand and enhanced monocyte-platelet aggregate formation are associated with worse clinical outcome after ischaemic stroke

Summary The white blood cell count and mean platelet volume determined shortly after the symptom onset are known as independent predictors for clinical outcome after stroke. In the present study we sought to evaluate the prognostic value of platelet-derived inflammatory biomarkers measured prospectively after an ischaemic event. Using five-colour flow cytometry, the platelet surface expression of CD40L, CD62P and subpopulations of leukocyte-platelet aggregates were assessed in 93 stroke patients on the first (V0), 10th (V1) and 90th (V2) day after stroke, and once in 65 disease controls. The clinical outcome was evaluated using the Scandinavian Stroke Scale (SSS) and modified Rankin Scale (mRS) at the same time points as blood sampling and 24 months after the event. Patients with either CD40L surface expression or the percentage of monocyte-platelet aggregates (M-plt) in the third tertile (T3) at V0 had a significantly lower score on the SSS at V1. Patients with the percentage M-plt at V0 higher than the median value of M-plt in controls were at increased risk of SSS < 40 at V1 (odds ratio: 2.6; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.4 – 8.7; p=0.006). Patients with the percentage of M-plt in T3 at V0 showed progressive decline in survival (hazard ratio [HR]: 1.6; 95% CI: 1.1–1.9; p=0.02) and a significantly higher number of recurrent vascular events (HR: 2.64; 95% CI: 1.3–3.2; p=0.02) when compared to the first tertile. In conclusion, increased levels of M-plt could be a predictive marker for both early outcome and long-term prognosis while increased CD40L was correlated with worse clinical outcome. The preliminary results of this study were presented in part during a poster session at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in Toronto, 7–17 April 2010.
Controversies in cardiovascular medicine More answers to the still unresolved question of nitrate tolerance

Organic nitrates are traditionally felt to be a safe adjuvant in the chronic therapy of patients with coronary artery disease. Despite their long use, progress in the understanding of the pharmacology and mechanism of action of these drugs has been achieved only in the last two decades, with the identification of the role of oxidative stress in the pathophysiology of nitrate tolerance, with, the discovery of the ancillary effects of nitrates, and with the demonstration that nitrate therapy has important chronic side effects that might modify patients’ prognosis. These advances are however mostly confined to the molecular level or to studies in healthy volunteers, and the true impact of organic nitrates on clinical outcome remains unknown. Complicating this issue, evidence supports the existence of important differences among the different drugs belonging to the group, and there are reasons to believe that the nitrates should not be treated as a homogeneous class. As well, the understanding of the effects of alternative nitric oxide (NO) donors is currently being developed, and future studies will need to test whether the properties of these new medications may compensate and prevent the abnormalities imposed by chronic nitrate therapy. Intermittent therapy with nitroglycerin and isosorbide mononitrate is now established in clinical practice, but they should neither be considered a definitive solution to the problem of nitrate tolerance. Both these strategies arenot deprived of complications, and should currently be seen as a compromise rather than away fully to exploit the benefits of NO donor therapy.
Dissecting the Monty Hall Anomaly

We assess competing explanations of irrational behavior in the Monty Hall problem by creating new variants of the problem. Some variants employ a feature that automates the merging of probabilities, thus rendering transparent the probabilistic advantage of the rational choice. That feature also enables systematic variation in informational asymmetry, and in ordering of actions. Data from 77 subjects, each of whom makes 30 binary decisions, indicate that automated merging raises the fraction of rational choices from around 40% to over 80%. Other features examined have much less impact, indicating the importance of a Bayesian updating failure. (JEL C91, D02, D81, D83)
Public Investment, Debt, and Welfare: A Quantitative Analysis

Abstract In this paper, we examine the relationship between infrastructure investment and economic welfare in the context of a heterogeneous agent, incomplete-markets economy. Using a quantitative model to match the key aggregate and distributional features of the U.S. economy over the period 1990–2015, we show that the welfare-maximizing share of public investment in GDP depends critically on whether one internalizes the transition path between stationary equilibria or not. When welfare changes are evaluated by only comparing long-run stationary equilibria, the model implies that the government should increase infrastructure investment above its average share of 4 percent of GDP in the data. However, once the transition path and short-run dynamics are internalized, welfare-maximization generates an intertemporal trade-off in the path of infrastructure spending: a short-run increase significantly above its observed share in the data, but a long-run decline below this share to satisfy the government’s budget constraint.