Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Asthma-specific cognitions, self-focused attention, and fear of negative evaluation in adolescents and young adults diagnosed with childhood-onset asthma

Abstract The present study examined the impact of asthma-specific thought intrusion (TI) and thought suppression (TS) on two cognitive-affective variables (self-focused attention and fear of negative evaluation) among adolescents and young adults (AYAs) diagnosed with childhood-onset asthma. Participants were 290 AYAs who completed assessment questionnaires and participated in a written exercise electronically. Asthma-TI and TS were reported by participants following participation in a writing assignment. Asthma-TI was associated with increased private, public, and social anxiety self-focused attention, and greater fear of negative evaluation. Interestingly, asthma-TS was not associated with these same outcome variables. Findings suggest illness-specific cognitions are associated with cognitive-affective variables and it may be important to assess for illness-specific intrusive thoughts following asthma-focused medical appointments. Additionally, findings suggest the importance of assessing asthma-TI and TS separately in order to better understand thoughts about health and psychological functioning.
International Forum regarding practices related to donor haemoglobin and iron

M. Goldman, K. Magnussen, J. Gorlin, M. Lozano, J. Speedy, A. Keller, J. Pink, J. N. S. Leung, C. C. Y. Chu, C. -K. Lee, J. Faed, J. Chay, H. H. Tan, D. Teo, R. Djoudi, G. Woimant, A. -M. Fillet, J. Castr en, G. Miflin, G. C. Vandewalle, V. Compernolle, J. M. Cardenas, L. Infanti, A. Holbro, A. Buser, K. van den Hurk, V. J. Yahalom, V. Gendelman, E. Shinar, A. F. Eder, W. R. Steele, E. M. O’Neill, H. Kamel, R. Vassallo, G. Delage, A. Lebrun, P. Robillard, M. Germain, M. Gandhi, K. A. West & H. G. Klein
Terminalia catappa L. extract improves survival, hematological profile and resistance to Aeromonas hydrophila in Betta sp.

Abstract To determine the effects of Terminalia catappa extract (TCE) immersion on the survival and hematological profile of Betta sp, a group of fish was immersed in 500 ppm TCE and compared with the control group. After three days of immersion, survival, leukocyte (WBC), erythrocyte (RBC), hemoglobin (Hb), hematocrit (Hct), platelet (PLT), and differential leukocyte counts were compared between the two groups. Surviving fish from each group were then divided into three subgroups: subgroup without injection; subgroup injected with normal saline; subgroup injected with Aeromonas hydrophila. Survival, WBC, RBC, Hb, Hct, PLT, the percentage and number of lymphocyte, monocyte, and granulocytes post injection were evaluated for 48 h. The results showed that the survival of immersed fish was significantly higher than that in the control. No significant differences in the hematological profile were noted between the control and the immersed fish. The WBC of control subgroup (A. hydrophila injection) was significantly increased after 24 h. The fish immersed and injected with A. hydrophila had the highest PLT. The number of lymphocytes of all subgroups of fish was stable while the percentage of monocytes and granulocytes of the subgroups of immersed fish were increased. This finding suggested that 500 ppm of TCE is beneficial for improving survival, blood profile, and resistance to A. hydrophila.
MdoR Is a Novel Positive Transcriptional Regulator for the Oxidation of Methanol in Mycobacterium sp. Strain JC1

ABSTRACT Mycobacterium sp. strain JC1 is able to grow on methanol as a sole source of carbon and energy using methanol:N,N′-dimethyl-4-nitrosoaniline oxidoreductase (MDO) as a key enzyme for methanol oxidation. The second open reading frame (mdoR) upstream of, and running divergently from, the mdo gene was identified as a gene for a TetR family transcriptional regulator. The N-terminal region of MdoR contained a helix-turn-helix DNA-binding motif. An electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA) indicated that MdoR could bind to a mdo promoter region containing an inverted repeat. The mdoR deletion mutant did not grow on methanol, but growth on methanol was restored by a plasmid containing an intact mdoR gene. In DNase I footprinting and EMSA experiments, MdoR bound to two inverted repeats in the putative mdoR promoter region. Reverse transcription-PCR indicated that the mdoR gene was transcribed only in cells growing on methanol, whereas β-galactosidase assays showed that the mdoR promoter was activated in the presence of methanol. These results indicate that MdoR serves as a transcriptional activator for the expression of mdo and its own gene. Also, MdoR is the first discovered member of the TetR family of transcriptional regulators to be involved in the regulation of the methanol oxidation, as well as to function as a positive autoregulator.
Dietary modulation of oxidative stress in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients

Abstract A total of 267 clinically stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients provided complete data about diet and oxidative stress markers in order to assess the relationship between antioxidant rich food groups and nutrients, and serum markers of oxidative stress in COPD. Dietary data of the last 2 years was assessed using a validated food frequency questionnaire (122 items). Levels of carbonyls, nitrotyrosine, malondialdehyde and reduced glutathione (GSH) were measured in serum. Vitamin E intake was inversely associated with levels of carbonyls (p = 0.05) and olive oil was positively associated with GSH levels (p = 0.01), in active smokers. Intake of vegetables was related to a decrease of malondialdehyde levels (p = 0.04) in former smokers. No statistically significant associations were found between remaining dietary antioxidants and serum oxidative stress markers. These results provide new data for a potential dietary modulation of systemic oxidative stress in COPD patients, particularly in those that continue smoking.
Qualitative research: meanings or practices?

With information systems (IS), as in other social sciences, the critique of quantitative research can lead to an oversimplified opposition between ‘positivism’ and ‘interpretivism’. This is one reason why qualitative IS research sometimes unnecessarily limits itself to the study of participants' meanings. A simple tabulation of published qualitative research is used to reveal the predominance of interview‐based studies in both sociology and IS. This is followed by a brief account of the limits of both quantitative studies of ‘objective’ variables and qualitative studies of ‘subjective meanings’. The emerging case for IS research on organizational practices is set out, coupled with an account of Suchman's (1987) study of how workers make use of a computer‐based system attached to a photocopier. The paper concludes with a call for an end to paradigm wars in organizational studies.
An Optimal 2 × 2 Space-Time Code for Time-Hopping Ultra-Wideband Systems with binary Pulse Position Modulation

The golden code (Belfiore, 2005) is a 2 x 2 space-time (ST) code that achieves the best known performance with all constellations carved from Zopf[i]. On the other hand, impulse radio (IR) time-hopping (TH) ultra wideband (UWB) is a carrier-less baseband transmission technique. Therefore, being complex-valued, the golden code can not be associated with IR-UWB systems. In this paper, we propose a new ST code that satisfies all of the construction constraints of the golden code and that has the additional advantage of being totally real making it suitable for low cost carrier-less UWB terminals. Unlike the golden code that can be associated with all constellations carved from Zopf[i], the proposed code is optimal with binary pulse position modulation (PPM) which is a popular modulation scheme for TH-UWB. Moreover, the proposed scheme permits to achieve full transmit diversity with hybrid pulse position and amplitude modulations (PPAM) having two modulation positions.
Glioblastoma Multiforme in an HIV-Infected Patient

We reported a case of glioblastoma multiforme in a 42-year-old female patient with HIV infection, who had a rapid progression to AIDS. She was diagnosed with an intracerebral mass and treated as neurotoxoplasmosis with improvement in the first week of therapy. On the fourth week she had a clinical worsening evolving to death, receiving the diagnosis at necropsy.
Blind adaptive LMS multiuser detector with variable step size

In this paper, two low-complexity adaptive step size algorithms are investigated for blind adaptive multiuser detection in direct sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) systems. The adaptive step size approaches are applied to a least mean squares (LMS) algorithm, which employs the Minimum output energy (MOE) criterion as the optimization objective function. Simulations are provided to compare the proposed algorithms with previously studied blind LMS and blind RLS algorithms. Results indicate that the proposed algorithms achieve superior performance, better convergence behavior and lower computational complexity in both static and dynamic environments.
HIGH-ENERGY FEMORAL SHAFT FRACTURES IN CABLE WAKEBOARDING AND REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE. CASE REPORT

Wakeboarding is a common water sport which may cause serious injuries. Especially joints are affected like anterior cruciate ligament tears, shoulder dislocations or sprained ankles and have frequently been described. In contrast, because of the largeness, length and strength of the femur, femoral shaft fractures are mainly caused by high-energy trauma in young people1 in an ordinary population. Among athletic population numerous studies evaluated stress fractures of the femur. According to their results this type of injury is relatively uncommon, and data from the literature suggest that they constitute only 2.8–7% of all sport related stress fractures.2 There are only few data about high-energy trauma of the femoral shaft in sport although the incidence of acute femoral fractures is quite high in certain sports' like motocross (10%),3 and alpine skiing among inpatient athletes. Despite multiple reports in various sports of stress fracture of the femur and few publications of direct trauma, to our knowledge there is only one retrospective epidemiological study in wakeboarding, which reports femur fractures without differentiating between vehicle towed and cable wakeboarding. Our purpose is to illustrate two cases of high-energy related femoral shaft fractures in a male recreational cable wakeboarder and to review the pertinent literature.
Outcome of Pregnancy after First Trimester Exposure to H2 Receptor Antagonists

H2 antagonists are widely prescribed medications and are often consumed by women who are unaware of being pregnant. In 23 cases reported to the Motherisk program there were two spontaneous abortions, two therapeutic abortions, 18 normal births, and one infant with a large hemangioma of the upper right eyelid. The hemangioma was removed without incident. Our data suggest that cimetidine and ranitidine may not be teratogenic risk in humans.
Systematic review and meta-analysis of bifrontal electroconvulsive therapy versus bilateral and unilateral electroconvulsive therapy in depression

Abstract Objectives. Our aim was to perform a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials comparing efficacy and side effects of bifrontal (BF) ECT to bitemporal (BT) or unilateral (RUL) ECT in depression. Methods. We performed a systematic review of randomized controlled trials comparing BF ECT with RUL or BT ECT in depression. Eight trials (n = 617) reported some cognitive outcome. Efficacy was measured by reduction in Hamilton Depression Rating Scale score. Cognitive outcomes were limited to Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) in seven studies, with two studies measuring each of: Complex-figure delayed recall, Trail-making tests and verbal learning. Results. Efficacy was equal between BF and BT ECT (Hedges's g = 0.102, P = 0.345, confidence interval (CI): –0.110, 0.313) and BF and RUL ECT (standardized mean difference = –0.12, P = 0.365, CI: –0.378, 0.139). Post-treatment MMSE score decline was less for BF than BT ECT (g = 0.89, CI: 0.054, 1.724) but not RUL ECT. RUL ECT impaired Complex figure recall more than BF ECT (g = 0.76, CI :0.487, 1.035), but BF ECT impaired word recall more than RUL ECT (g = –1.45, CI: –2.75, –0.15). Conclusions. Bifrontal ECT is not more effective than BT or RUL ECT but may have modest short-term benefits for specific memory domains. BF ECT has potential advantages, but given longer experience with BT and RUL, bifrontal ECT requires better characterization.
Robust optimization with time-dependent uncertainty in radiation therapy

ABSTRACT In the recent past, robust optimization methods have been developed and successfully applied to a variety of single-stage problems. More recently, some of these approaches have been extended to multi-stage settings with fixed uncertainties. However, in many real-world applications, uncertainties evolve over time, rendering the robust solutions suboptimal. This issue is particularly prevalent in medical decision making, where a patient’s condition can change during the course of the treatment. In the context of radiation therapy, changes in cell oxygenation directly affect the response to radiation. To address such uncertain changes, we provide a general robust optimization framework that incorporates time-dependent uncertainty sets in a tractable fashion. Temporal changes reside within a cone, whose projection at each step yields the current uncertainty set. We develop conic robust two-stage linear problems and provide their robust counterparts for uncertain constraint parameters, covering the range of radiation therapy problems. For a clinical prostate cancer case, the time-dependent robust approach improves the tumor control throughout the treatment, as opposed to current methods that lose efficacy at some stage. We show that this advantage does not bear additional risks compared to current clinical methods. For intermediate diagnostics, we provide the optimal observation timing that maximizes the value of information. While these findings are relevant to clinical settings, they are also general and can be applied to a broad range of applications; e.g., in maintenance scheduling.
Fumed and Precipitated Hydrophilic Silica Suspension Gels in Mineral Oil: Stability and Rheological Properties

Hydrophilic fumed silica (FS) and precipitated silica (PS) powders were suspended in mineral oil; increasing the silica volume fraction (φ in the suspension led to the formation of sol, pre-gel, and gel states. Gelation took place at lower φ values in the FS than the PS suspension because of the lower silanol density on the FS surface. The shear stresses and dynamic moduli of the FS and PS suspensions were measured as a function of φ. Plots of the apparent shear viscosity against shear rate depended on φ and the silica powder. The FS suspensions in the gel state exhibited shear thinning, followed by a weak shear thickening or by constant viscosity with an increasing shear rate. In contrast, the PS suspensions in the gel state showed shear thinning, irrespective of φ. The dynamic moduli of the pre-gel and gel states were dependent on the surface silanol density: at a fixed φ, the storage modulus G′ in the linear viscoelasticity region was larger for the FS than for the PS suspension. Beyond the linear region, the G′ of the PS suspensions showed strain hardening and the loss modulus G″ of the FS and PS suspensions exhibited weak strain overshoot.
What Analogies Reveal about Word Vectors and their Compositionality

Analogy completion via vector arithmetic has become a common means of demonstrating the compositionality of word embeddings. Previous work have shown that this strategy works more reliably for certain types of analogical word relationships than for others, but these studies have not offered a convincing account for why this is the case. We arrive at such an account through an experiment that targets a wide variety of analogy questions and defines a baseline condition to more accurately measure the efficacy of our system. We find that the most reliably solvable analogy categories involve either 1) the application of a morpheme with clear syntactic effects, 2) male–female alternations, or 3) named entities. These broader types do not pattern cleanly along a syntactic–semantic divide. We suggest instead that their commonality is distributional, in that the difference between the distributions of two words in any given pair encompasses a relatively small number of word types. Our study offers a needed explanation for why analogy tests succeed and fail where they do and provides nuanced insight into the relationship between word distributions and the theoretical linguistic domains of syntax and semantics.
Local energetic regulation of sarcoplasmic and myosin ATPase is differently impaired in rats with heart failure

Local control of ATP/ADP ratio is essential for efficient functioning of cellular ATPases. Since creatine kinase (CK) activity and mitochondrial content are reduced in heart failure (HF), and cardiomyocyte ultrastructure is altered, we hypothesized that these changes may affect the local energetic control of two major cardiac ATPases, the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) Ca2+‐ATPase (SERCA) and the myosin ATPase. Heart failure was induced by aortic stenosis in rats. Electron microscopy confirmed that failing cardiomyocytes had intracellular disorganization, with fewer contacts between mitochondria and myofibrils. Despite normal SERCA protein content, spontaneous Ca2+ release measurements using Fluo‐4 on saponin‐permeabilized cardiomyocytes showed a lower SR loading in HF even when endogenous CK and mitochondria were fully activated. Similarly, in permeabilized fibres, SR Ca2+ loading supported by SR‐bound CK and mitochondria was significantly reduced in HF (by 49% and 40%, respectively, 43% when both systems were activated, P < 0.05). Alkaline phosphatase treatment had no effect, but glycolytic substrates normalized calcium loading in HF to the sham level. The control by CK and mitochondria of the local ATP/ADP ratio close to the myosin ATPase (estimated by rigor tension) was also significantly impaired in HF fibres (by 32% and 46%, respectively). However, while the contributions of mitochondria and CK to local ATP regeneration were equally depressed in HF for the control of SERCA, mitochondrial contribution was more severely impaired than CK (P < 0.05) with respect to myofilament regulation. These data show that local energetic regulation of essential ATPases is severely impaired in heart failure, and undergoes a complex remodelling as a result of a decreased activity of the ATP‐generating systems and cytoarchitecture disorganization.
Electrophysiological Studies on Preexcitation in the Dog Using an Electronically Simulated Atrioventricular Bypass Pathway

Experiments were performed on open-chest dogs. In the in situ heart, electronic circuits were used to simulate atrioventricular (AV) bypass pathways as they are found in the preexcitation syndrome. Bipolar electrograms were recorded from the atria, His bundle, Purkinje system, and ventricles. A Systron-Donner SD-80 computer was used to simulate conduction over the Kent or the James bundle and over Mahaim fibers. The electronic bypass circuits had the properties of an excitation threshold, conduction delay, and refractoriness and the ability to conduct in the antegrade or retrograde directions. Simulated lateral accessory AV pathways at various regions of the base of the left and right AV margin produced electrocardiogram (ECG) patterns corresponding to type A, type B, and intermediate types of the Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. Stimulation of the ventricular septum along that region of the His bundle corresponding to Mahaim fibers did not produce prominent delta waves or obvious fusion of ECG complexes when the timing of ventricular septal stimulation was coincident with His bundle activation or preceded it by 18 msec. The characteristics of the fusion beats during introduction of premature atrial beats and during phasic changes in vagal tone were also investigated. Retrograde conduction through a simulated Kent bundle caused the development of a self-sustained supraventricular tachycardia. Spontaneously occurring echo beats during simulated preexcitation exhibited distorted ECG complexes and verified the possibility of a nodal reentrant atrial tachycardia with rapid antegrade conduction over the Kent bundle. The danger of atrial tachyarrhythmias in individuals with preexcitation was demonstrated by showing that, with the proper conduction parameters across a bypass tract, atrial fibrillation could lead to ventricular fibrillation.
Survival of subthreshold oscillations: The interplay ofnoise, bifurcation structure, and return mechanism

Mixed mode oscillations (MMO's) composed of subthreshold oscillations (STO's) and spikes appear via a variety of mechanisms in models of neural dynamics. Two key elements that can influence the prominence of the STO's are multiple time scales and time varying parameters near critical points. These features can lead to dynamics associated with bifurcation delay, and we consider three systems with this behavior. While it is well known that bifurcation delay related to a slow time scale is sensitive to noise, we compare other aspects of the noise-sensitivity in the context of MMO's, where not only bifurcation delay, but also coherence resonance and dynamics in the interspike interval play a role. Noise can play a role in amplifying the STO's but it can also drive the system into repetitive spiking without STO's. In particular we compare integrate and fire models with models that capture both spike and STO dynamics. The interplay of the underlying bifurcation structure and the modeling of the return mechanism following the spike are major factors in the robustness and noise sensitivity of the STO's in the context of multiple time scales.
Predicting solvent accessibility: Higher accuracy using Bayesian statistics and optimized residue substitution classes

We introduce a novel Bayesian probabilistic method for predicting the solvent accessibilities of amino acid residues in globular proteins. Using single sequence data, this method achieves prediction accuracies higher than previously published methods. Substantially improved predictions—comparable to the highest accuracies reported in the literature to date—are obtained by representing alignments of the example proteins and their homologs as strings of residue substitution classes, depending on the side chain types observed at each alignment position. These results demonstrate the applicability of this relatively simple Bayesian approach to structure prediction and illustrate the utility of the classification methodology previously developed to extract information from aligned sets of structurally related proteins. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.