Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Random Forest (RF) Wrappers for Waveband Selection and Classification of Hyperspectral Data

Hyperspectral data collected using a field spectroradiometer was used to model asymptomatic stress in Pinus radiata and Pinus patula seedlings infected with the pathogen Fusarium circinatum. Spectral data were analyzed using the random forest algorithm. To improve the classification accuracy of the model, subsets of wavebands were selected using three feature selection algorithms: (1) Boruta; (2) recursive feature elimination (RFE); and (3) area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of the random forest (AUC-RF). Results highlighted the robustness of the above feature selection methods when used in conjunction with the random forest algorithm for analyzing hyperspectral data. Overall, the Boruta feature selection algorithm provided the best results. When discriminating F. circinatum stress in Pinus radiata seedlings, Boruta selected wavebands (n = 69) yielded the best overall classification accuracies (training error of 17.00%, independent test error of 17.00% and an AUC value of 0.91). Classification results were, however, significantly lower for P. patula seedlings, with a training error of 24.00%, independent test error of 38.00%, and an AUC value of 0.65. A hybrid selection method that utilizes combinations of wavebands selected from the three feature selection algorithms was also tested. The hybrid method showed an improvement in classification accuracies for P. patula, and no improvement for P. radiata. The results of this study provide impetus towards implementing a hyperspectral framework for detecting stress within nursery environments.
Cardiovascular Defects Associated with Alcohol, Retinoic Acid, and Other Agents

Study of agents that are potentially teratogenic depends on human epidemiologic data and findings from animal models. Several factors are important in the choice of an animal model. First, the conditions of the experiments must be appropriate, For example, the mother animal must be properly nourished and in good health. The animal model chosen should have relative freedom from spontaneous malformation patterns. There should be an opportunity to examine dose-reponse relationships in order to delineate the full range of potential malformations. Ideally, the model should allow measurement of key physiologic parameters that help delineate the mechanism of action of the agent. ' In the study of mechanism, stage sensitivity is a major consideration. Three broad periods need to be understood: the time from fertilization to postimplantation, the steps of organogenesis, and the final histogenesis. An agent may act at all three of these stages, possibly causing death of the embryo with spontaneous abortion in the first stage, production of a cardiac defect in the second stage, and fetal growth failure in the third stage? Several other factors are important in understanding of the mechanism of action. Some agents have no observable effect at a certain dose. As the dose is increased, a point is reached where an effect is first noted. This is referred to as a threshold effect. With further increases of dose, a whole range of effects may then appear. It is important to look at several species or different strains within a species because genetic variability affects susceptibility to a given agent. One species or strain may show no response, whereas another may develop complex cardiac anomalies. Finally, where possible, the
Wisdom of crowds: much ado about nothing

The puzzling idea that the combination of independent estimates of the magnitude of a quantity results in a very accurate prediction, which is superior to any or, at least, to most of the individual estimates is known as the wisdom of crowds. Here we use the federal reserve bank of Philadelphia’s survey of professional forecasters database to confront the statistical and psychophysical explanations of this phenomenon. Overall we find that the data do not support any of the proposed explanations of the wisdom of crowds. In particular, we find a positive correlation between the variance (or diversity) of the estimates and the crowd error in disagreement with some interpretations of the diversity prediction theorem. In addition, in opposition to the predictions of the psychophysical augmented quincunx model, we find that the skew of the estimates offers no information about the crowd error. More importantly, we find that the crowd beats all individuals in less than 2% of the forecasts and beats most individuals in less than 70% of the forecasts, which means that there is fair chance that an individual selected at random will perform better than the crowd. These results contrast starkly with the performance of non-natural crowds composed of unbiased forecasters which beat most individuals in practically all forecasts. The moderate statistical advantage of a real-world crowd over its members does not justify the ado about its wisdom, which is most likely a product of the selective attention fallacy.
[18F]FDG-PET/CT for the diagnosis of patients with fever of unknown origin.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The diagnosis of patients with fever of unknown origin (FUO) remains a challenging medical problem. We aimed to assess the diagnostic contribution of 18-fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET)/computed tomography (CT) for the evaluation of FUO. METHODS We performed a 4-year retrospective single-center study of all hospitalized patients that underwent FDG-PET/CT for evaluation of FUO. The final diagnosis of the febrile disease was based on clinical, microbiological, radiological and pathological data available at the final follow-up. Predictors for a contributory exam were sought. RESULTS One hundred and twelve patients underwent FDG-PET/CT for the investigation of FUO in the years 2008-2012 and were included in the study. A final diagnosis was determined in 83 patients (74%) and included: infectious disease in 49 patients (43%), non-infectious inflammatory disease in 17 patients (16%), malignancies in 15 patients (14%), other diagnoses in 2 patients (1.7%), FUO resolved with no diagnosis and no evidence of disease during a 6-month follow-up in 23 patients (20%), and death with fever and with no diagnosis in 6 patients (5%). Seventy-four FDG-PET/CT studies (66%) were considered clinically helpful and contributory to diagnosis (46% positive contributory value and 20.5% contributory to exclusion of diagnosis). PET/CT had a sensitivity of 72.2%, a specificity of 57.5%, a positive predictive value (PPV) of 74.2% and a negative predictive value (NPV) of 53.5%. On multivariable analysis, significant predictors of a positive PET/CT contributory to diagnosis were a short duration of fever and male gender. CONCLUSIONS PET/CT is an important diagnostic tool for patients with FUO.
Urokinase plasminogen activator mRNA is induced by IL‐1α and TNF‐α in in vitro acantholysis

Abstract: The role of urokinase type plasminogen activator (uPA) has been well documented in the pathogenesis of pemphigus vulgaris (PV). Activation of plasminogen into active serine protease plasmin initiates extracellular proteolysis leading to acantholysis but the mechanisms underlying this process are not clearly understood. We have previously shown that keratinocyte derived cytokines IL‐1α and TNF‐α are involved in PV‐induced acantholysis. In the present study we sought to examine whether keratinocyte‐derived IL‐1α and TNF‐α are correlated with uPA induction in keratinocytes during acantholysis. Normal human keratinocytes were incubated with diluted PV serum. mRNAs for IL‐1α, TNF‐α and uPA were examined with RT‐PCR at various time points and acantholysis was measured. IL‐1α, TNF‐α and uPA mRNAs were all induced in keratinocytes following PV serum stimulation; IL‐1α/TNF‐α mRNAs' expression was earlier than the expression of uPA mRNA. To further examine the role of IL‐1α, TNF‐α and uPA in acantholysis, we performed antibody blocking studies. Anti‐IL‐1α, anti‐TNF‐α and anti‐uPA antibodies suppressed acantholysis by 76%, 80% and 90%, respectively. In addition, anti‐IL‐1α and anti‐TNF‐α antibodies inhibited uPA mRNA induction, whereas anti‐uPA antibodies did not alter IL‐1α/TNF‐α mRNAs' expression. Our results confirm the role of uPA in acantholysis and suggest an involvement of IL‐1α/TNF‐α in uPA induction.
Recurrent aphthous ulceration. Effect of sera and peripheral blood lymphocytes upon oral epithelial tissue culture cells.

In order to elucidate the possible role of humoral and cellular immune mechanisms in the pathogenesis of recurrent aphthous ulceration, a series of tissue culture experiments was undertaken in which oral epithelial cells were used as target cells. The survival of the oral epithelial cells was assessed, after culture for 24 hours, with the addition of sera, lymphocytes, or both sera and lymphocytes, from patients with recurrent aphthous ulceration and from persons free of the disease. In the experiments in which serum alone was added, there was no significant difference between the patients with recurrent aphthous ulceration and the controls. The addition of lymphocytes from patients suffering from recurrent aphthous ulceration, in either lymphocyte donor serum or inactivated foetal bovine serum, reduced significantly the level of survival of the oral epithelial cells as compared with the controls.
Preformulation studies of novel 5′-O-carbonates of lamivudine with biological activity: solubility and stability assays

Abstract As a part of preformulation studies, the aim of this work was to examine the solubility and stability of a series of 5′-O-carbonates of lamivudine with proven antihuman immunodeficiency virus activity. Solubility studies were carried out using pure solvents (water, ethanol and polyethylene glycol 400 [PEG 400]), as well as cosolvents in binary mixture systems (water–ethanol and water–PEG 400). These ionizable compounds showed that their aqueous solubility is decreasing as the carbon length of the substituent moiety increases, but being enhanced as the pH was reduced from 7.4 to 1.2. Thus, 3TC-Metha an active compound of the series, with an intrinsic solubility at 25 °C of 17 mg/mL, was about 70 times more soluble than 3TC-Octa (0.24 mg/mL), and at pHs of 1.2, 5.8 and 7.4 had intrinsic solubilities of 36.48, 19.20 and 15.40 mg/mL, respectively. In addition, the solubility was enhanced significantly by using ethanol and PEG 400 as cosolvents. A stability study was conducted in buffer solutions at pH 1.2, 5.8, 7.4 and 13.0 and in human plasma at 37 °C. Stability-indicating high-performance liquid chromatography procedure was found to be selective, sensitive and accurate for these compounds and good recovery, linearity and precision were also observed.
Strong Association Between Angiotensin I-Converting Enzyme I/D Polymorphism and Unexplained Recurrent Miscarriage of Chinese Women—A Case–Control Study

The patients with recurrent miscarriage (RM) undergo multiple diagnostic tests to detect parental chromosomal anomalies, maternal thrombophilic, endocrine, or immunological disorders, and over 50% of the cases with RM are classified as idiopathic unexplained RM (URM). Angiotensin I-converting enzyme (ACE) is proposed to be a candidate gene in many common diseases, and the plasma ACE levels was associated with an insertion (I)/deletion (D) polymorphism involving about 287 bp situated in intron 16 of the ACE gene, the so-called ACE/ID polymorphism. In this study, we have estimated the ACE I/D polymorphism within a cohort of Chinese patients with URM. There were significant differences both in allele and genotype distribution between patients with URM and healthy controls. The association to URM reached significant both in dominate (1.63-fold, D allele) and in recessive mode (1.76-fold, DD genotype). To our knowledge, the present study is the first to establish the association between ACE I/D polymorphism and the development of URM and indicates that the D allele of the polymorphism possibly be a risk factor for URM in Chinese population.
Aluminum nitride lamb wave resonators with high figure of merit for narrowband filter applications

In this paper, we report experimental results on band-pass aluminum nitride (AlN) MEMS filters that are based on Lamb wave resonators (LWRs) which exhibit a high ratio of the resistance at parallel resonance (Rp) to the resistance at series resonance (Rs). One-port LWRs working at S0 mode with various geometry dimensions are analyzed and the design guidelines for LWRs with high performance are reported for the first time. A 252 MHz LWR, with an aperture of 200 μm, 12 IDT fingers, and 1.5 μm thick AlN, is found to have a remarkable Rp/Rs of 1317 and a corresponding product of the electromechanical coupling coefficient (Kf) and quality factor (Q) exceeding 60. Consisting of such resonators, a 6-stage ladder filter with a low pass-band insertion loss (IL) of 4.5 dB, a high out-of-band rejection of 40 dB, and steep filter skirts, is achieved, occupying only a small area of 880×1150 μm2.
Low-Loss Silicon Strip-to-Slot Mode Converters

We demonstrate compact highly efficient broadband strip-to-slot mode converters in silicon with record-low losses of 0.02 (±0.02) dB and negligible reflections between 1480 nm and 1580 nm. The new strip-to-slot transition is logarithmically tapered, which enables a compact design. The new logarithmic tapers are compared with more conventional linearly tapered converters.
Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale: Method Effects, Factorial Structure and Scale Invariance Across Migrant Child and Urban Child Populations in China

ABSTRACT Using confirmatory factor analyses, this study examined the method effects on a Chinese version of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES; Rosenberg, 1965) in a sample of migrant and urban children in China. In all, 982 children completed the RSES, and 9 models and 9 corresponding variants were specified and tested. The results indicated that the method effects are associated with both positively and negatively worded items and that Item 8 should be treated as a positively worded item. Additionally, the method effects models were invariant across migrant and urban children in China.
The current state of research on ayahuasca: A systematic review of human studies assessing psychiatric symptoms, neuropsychological functioning, and neuroimaging

Rationale: In recent decades, the use of ayahuasca (AYA) – a β-carboline- and dimethyltryptamine-rich hallucinogenic botanical preparation traditionally used by Northwestern Amazonian tribes for ritual and therapeutic purposes – has spread from South America to Europe and the USA, raising concerns about its possible toxicity and hopes of its therapeutic potential. Thus, it is important to analyze the acute, subacute, and long-term effects of AYA to assess its safety and toxicity. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to conduct a systematic review of human studies assessing AYA effects on psychiatric symptoms, neuropsychological functioning, and neuroimaging. Methods: Papers published until 16 December 2015 were included from PubMed, LILACS and SciELO databases following a comprehensive search strategy and pre-determined set of criteria for article selection. Results: The review included 28 full-text articles. Acute AYA administration was well tolerated, increased introspection and positive mood, altered visual perceptions, activated frontal and paralimbic regions and decreased default mode network activity. It also improved planning and inhibitory control and impaired working memory, and showed antidepressive and antiaddictive potentials. Long-term AYA use was associated with increased cortical thickness of the anterior cingulate cortex and cortical thinning of the posterior cingulate cortex, which was inversely correlated to age of onset, intensity of prior AYA use, and spirituality. Subacute and long-term AYA use was not associated with increased psychopathology or cognitive deficits, being associated with enhanced mood and cognition, increased spirituality, and reduced impulsivity. Conclusions: Acute, subacute, and long-term AYA use seems to have low toxicity. Preliminary studies about potential therapeutic effects of AYA need replication due to their methodological limitations.
Can Functional Septorhinoplasty Independently Treat Obstructive Sleep Apnea?

Background: The purpose of this study was to determine whether functional rhinoplasty alone results in a significant improvement in obstructive sleep apnea parameters in patients with nasal obstruction. Methods: Records of consecutive adult patients with nasal obstruction who underwent surgery to repair their nasal inlet and completed preoperative and postoperative polysomnography were reviewed. Patients underwent polysomnography before and after functional septorhinoplasty. Long-term follow-up using Nasal Obstruction Symptom Evaluation scores was conducted. Statistical analysis was performed using the Wilcoxon signed rank sum test. A Holm-Bonferroni sequential correction was also used because of multiple statistical comparisons being made. Results: Twenty-six patients were included in this study. Mean apnea-hypopnea index scores preoperatively was 24.7, which dropped to a mean postoperative apnea-hypopnea index of 16, a reduction of 35 percent (p = 0.013). Excluding patients with a body mass index greater than 30 resulted in improved apnea-hypopnea index scores, from 22.5 to 9.6, a mean 57 percent reduction (p < 0.01). Conclusions: Functional rhinoplasty may have the potential to significantly improve the severity of obstructive sleep apnea for select patients with nasal obstruction. The nasal airflow improvement may modify pharyngeal aerodynamics. This is a fast and minimally invasive approach to consider in patients with obstructive sleep apnea and nasal obstruction, especially in patients with a body mass index less than 30. CLINICAL QUESTION/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Therapeutic, IV.
Steps in integrin β1‐chain glycosylation mediated by TGFβ1 signaling through ras

Ras is activated by transforming growth factor beta (TGFβ) in several cell types, but the biological consequences of this activation are largely unknown. We now show that ras mediates two stages in integrin β1‐chain maturation: 1) glycosylation of the 86‐kD core peptide, which is a TGFβ1‐independent process, and 2) TGFβ1‐mediated conversion of the 115‐kD β1 integrin precursor into the mature 130‐kD form. HD3 colon epithelial cells maintain elevated levels of integrin α2β1 heterodimers, strong binding to collagen I, and autocrine regulation by TGFβ1, which converts β1 integrin into the mature cell surface form. Each of three HD3 cell clones that stably express dominant negative ras (N17ras) exhibited abnormal glycosylation of the integrin β1‐chain, decreased cell surface expression of the mature integrin β1, and impaired binding to collagen and laminin. Autocrine levels of TGFβ were not altered by expression of N17ras. The aberrant glycosylation of the integrin β1‐chain was reversed by antisense oligonucleotides specific to the DNA sequence encoding the rasS17N mutation. Glycosylation of the 86‐kD core peptide was delayed in the N17ras transfectants, but was not altered by either the addition of TGFβ1 or inhibition of autocrine TGFβ1. In contrast, conversion of the partially glycosylated β1 integrin precursor into the mature 130‐kD isoform was accelerated by exogenous TGFβ1 and blocked by neutralizing antibody to autocrine TGFβ1 in control cell lines. Neither effect was seen in the N17ras transfectants, indicating that TGFβ1 modulates integrin β1‐chain maturation by activating ras proteins. Cell fractionation studies demonstrated that this conversion takes place within the Golgi. J. Cell. Physiol. 181:33–44, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Ilfeld abduction orthosis is an effective second-line treatment after failure of Pavlik harness for infants with developmental dysplasia of the hip.

BACKGROUND Closed reduction and spica casting is the most commonly recommended choice for infants with developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH) for whom Pavlik harness treatment has failed, but it requires general anesthesia in addition to the challenges of spica cast care. The purposes of this study were to evaluate the effectiveness of Ilfeld bracing for infants for whom Pavlik harness treatment is unsuccessful and to compare these results with those for a similar cohort of patients directly undergoing closed reduction and spica casting. METHODS We reviewed the cases of a consecutive series of children with DDH who had failure of Pavlik harness treatment and were subsequently managed with Ilfeld bracing (the BR cohort) and compared this cohort with a similar historical group of infants who had failure of Pavlik harness treatment but had standard closed reduction and spica casting (the CR cohort). The cohorts were compared with respect to clinical and ultrasonographic data at the time of Pavlik discontinuation. At one year, the hip stability and acetabular index were assessed; the presence of osteonecrosis was graded according to the criteria described by Salter et al. RESULTS Twenty-eight hips (nineteen infants) made up the BR cohort and twenty-two hips (sixteen infants) made up the CR cohort. Ultrasonographic indices (including the alpha angle and the percentage of femoral head coverage) were comparable between the two cohorts (p=0.66 and 0.19, respectively). Following treatment, a stable reduction was achieved in twenty-three (82%) of twenty-eight hips in the BR cohort compared with twenty (91%) of twenty-two hips in the CR cohort. At one year, acetabular indices were similar between both cohorts (mean and standard deviation, 27°±6° for the BR cohort versus 27°±5° for the CR cohort; p=0.62); however, osteonecrosis developed in three hips in the CR cohort compared with none in the BR cohort. CONCLUSIONS In our series of infants with DDH for whom Pavlik harness treatment had failed, Ilfeld bracing had success rates comparable with those for closed reduction and spica cast treatment. With the added advantages of avoiding general anesthesia and spica casting as well as a potentially lower rate of osteonecrosis, rigid abduction bracing should be considered as the next step for infants who have had failed Pavlik harness treatment prior to proceeding with closed reduction and spica casting.
Analysing the Shadows: Private Tutoring as a Descriptor of the Education System in Georgia.

During the past decade Georgia has received strong international support for education reform, and it represents an interesting case by which the effectiveness of particular interventions in the region can be assessed. Most attempts to analyse progress within the system have so far been concentrated on two aspects of formal education: private and public schools. This article analyses the dynamics of change from a different angle, and focuses attention on a third important, but shadow aspect of the education system: supplementary private tutoring. A representative survey of parents of school-age children and university entrants describes the scope, drivers and effects of private tutoring in Georgia. These findings are then used to analyse the effectiveness of the system in terms of the criteria of quality and equity.