Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clinical Evaluation of Corneal Epithelialization after Photorefractive Keratectomy in Patients Treated with Polydeoxyribonucleotide (PDRN) Eye Drops: A Randomized, Double-blind, Placebo-controlled Trial

Purpose The effect of polydeoxyribonucleotide (PDRN) eye drops vs placebo on corneal epithelial healing after photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) for correction of myopic and myopic-astigmatic defects was evaluated in a randomized, double-blind clinical trial. Primary endpoint for efficacy was the evolution of corneal re-epithelialization. Secondary endpoint was the evaluation of PDRN eye drops tolerability. Methods Sixty eyes were enrolled in the study, randomly allocated into standard therapy plus placebo eye drops (30 eyes), or standard therapy plus PDRN eye drops (30 eyes). Checks were carried out preoperatively and at days 1, 2, 3, and 7 of the follow-up. Six eyes dropped out (four in PDRN group, two in placebo group) for reasons unrelated to the study. Results On day 2, the disepithelialized area was 8.4 mm2 ± 9.2 (mean ± SD) in controls and 6.0 mm2 ± 6.8 in PDRN group. On day 3 a complete corneal re-epithelialization was found in 20 out of 26 (77%) eyes of PDRN group and in 17 out of 28 (61%) eyes of placebo group (p<0.05 in percentage terms). On day 7 of follow-up, all eyes appeared to be completely re-epithelialized. The mean score of corneal evaluation on day 3 was 2.9 in PDRN group and 3.75 in control group (p<0.05 between groups). No adverse events occurred during the study. Conclusions The data of the study have shown that after PRK, PDRN stimulates corneal epithelium regeneration. PDRN eye drops administration four times a day is well tolerated by patients during the re-epithelialization stage. A much larger clinical study should be performed in order to prove the results obtained in this pilot study.
A geometric approach to systems with multiple time scales

Physical systems often involve several processes that are evolving on di erent time scales. The resulting equations have a speci c structure which can be exploited to great e ect and the kind of results that can be obtained, at least with a certain goal in mind, are the subject of this paper. On account of the physical motivation for the di erent scales, there are many areas in which applications can be found. Apart from their physical relevance, there is another important reason for developing a theory tailored to multiple time scale systems. Systems in low dimensions, here one should think of dimensions 1 and 2, can often be analyzed by well-established techniques. Indeed, the asymptotic behavior is determined by either periodic orbits and/or critical points, as follows from the celebrated Poincar e-Bendixson Theorem in 2 dimensions and purely elementary considerations in 1 dimension. If the underlying dimension of some system under consideration is higher then we are faced with two di culties: rst, the techniques are largely unavailable for performing the analysis and, secondly, the phenomena occurring can be considerably more complicated, involving, for instance, chaotic behavior. To resolve this apparent intractability of higher-dimensional problems, techniques involving reductions to lower dimensional phase spaces are very attractive. Such techniques are often found through the presence of conserved quantities or symmetries. While these techniques do make certain higher dimensional problems susceptible to analysis, the resulting behavior must necessarily be characteristic of the lower dimensional system and thus the richness of motion available in higher dimensional systems is not re ected in systems for which this approach works. Systems with multiple time scales, however, o er a method of reduction which preserves the higher dimensional nature of the behavior. This idea seems counter-intuitive but is not unreasonable when one considers the fact that at least two separate reductions are being used and, although each leads to a lower dimensional system, the combined e ect is to allow behavior characteristic of the full dimensional space. It is a consequence of the Recti cation Theorem, see Arnold [1], which states that a ow is locally trivial except near a critical point, that interesting behavior in a dynamical system will either occur near a critical point or be a result of recurrent motion. It is then not surprising
Discovery of a Natural Product-Like c-myc G-Quadruplex DNA Groove-Binder by Molecular Docking

The natural product-like carbamide (1) has been identified as a stabilizer of the c-myc G-quadruplex through high-throughput virtual screening. NMR and molecular modeling experiments revealed a groove-binding mode for 1. The biological activity of 1 against the c-myc G-quadruplex was confirmed by its ability to inhibit Taq polymerase-mediated DNA extension and c-myc expression in vitro, demonstrating that 1 is able to control c-myc gene expression at the transcriptional level presumably through the stabilization of the c-myc promoter G-quadruplex. Furthermore, the interaction between carbamide analogues and the c-myc G-quadruplex was also investigated by in vitro experiments in order to generate a brief structure-activity relationship (SAR) for the observed potency of carbamide 1.
Evaluation of Pax6 Mutant Rat as a Model for Autism

Autism is a highly variable brain developmental disorder and has a strong genetic basis. Pax6 is a pivotal player in brain development and maintenance. It is expressed in embryonic and adult neural stem cells, in astrocytes in the entire central nervous system, and in neurons in the olfactory bulb, amygdala, thalamus, and cerebellum, functioning in highly context-dependent manners. We have recently reported that Pax6 heterozygous mutant (rSey2/+) rats with a spontaneous mutation in the Pax6 gene, show impaired prepulse inhibition (PPI). In the present study, we further examined behaviors of rSey2/+ rats and revealed that they exhibited abnormality in social interaction (more aggression and withdrawal) in addition to impairment in rearing activity and in fear-conditioned memory. Ultrasonic vocalization (USV) in rSey2+ rat pups was normal in male but abnormal in female. Moreover, treatment with clozapine successfully recovered the defects in sensorimotor gating function, but not in fear-conditioned memory. Taken together with our prior human genetic data and results in other literatures, rSey2/+ rats likely have some phenotypic components of autism.
Identification of Genes Important for the Physical Interaction between Protein Pairs through Reverse PCA (rPCA)

Cells contain many important protein complexes involved in performing and regulating structural, metabolic, and signaling functions. Understanding physical and functional interactions between proteins in living systems is of vital importance in biology. The importance of protein‐protein interactions (PPIs) has led to the development of several powerful methodologies and techniques to detect them. All of this information has enabled the creation of large protein‐interaction networks. One important challenge in biology is to understand how protein complexes respond to genetic perturbations. Here we describe a systematic genetic assay termed “reverse PCA,” which allows the identification of genes whose products are required for modulating the physical interaction between two given proteins. Our assay starts with a yeast strain in which the PPI of interest can be detected by resistance to the drug methotrexate, in the context of the protein‐fragment complementation assay (PCA). By combining the synthetic genetic array (SGA) technology, we can systematically screen mutant libraries of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to identify trans‐acting mutations that disrupt the physical interaction of interest. The identification of such mutants is valuable for unraveling important regulatory mechanisms, and for defining the response of the protein interactome to specific perturbations. Curr. Protoc. Cell Biol. 64:17.15. 1‐17.15. 11. © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Scaling relations and mass calibration of the X-ray luminous galaxy clusters at redshift ~0.2: XMM-Newton observations

We present the X-ray properties and scaling relations of a flux-limited morphology-unbiased sample of 12 X-ray luminous galaxy clusters at redshift around 0.2 based on XMM-Newton observations. The scaled radial profiles are characterized by a self-similar behavior at radii outside the cluster cores (> 0.2 r_(500)) for the temperature (T ∝ r^(−0.36)), surface brightness, entropy (S ∝ r^(1.01)), gas mass and total mass. The cluster cores contribute up to 70% of the bolometric X-ray luminosity. The X-ray scaling relations and their scatter are sensitive to the presence of the cool cores. Using the X-ray luminosity corrected for the cluster central region and the temperature measured excluding the cluster central region, the normalization agrees to better than 10% for the cool core clusters and non-cool core clusters, irrelevant to the cluster morphology. No evolution of the X-ray scaling relations was observed comparing this sample to the nearby and more distant samples. With the current observations, the cluster temperature and luminosity can be used as reliable mass indicators with the mass scatter within 20%. Mass discrepancies remain between X-ray and lensing and lead to larger scatter in the scaling relations using the lensing masses (e.g. ~40% for the luminosity-mass relation) than using the X-ray masses (<20%) due to the possible reasons discussed.
Development of a PCR assay to detect the potential production of nivalenol in Fusarium poae.

Fusarium species can produce mycotoxins, which can contaminate cereal-based food producing adverse effects for human and animal health. In recent years, the importance of Fusarium poae has increased within the Fusarium head blight complex. Fusarium poae is known to produce trichothecenes, especially nivalenol, a potent mycotoxin able to cause a variety of toxic effects. In this study, a specific primer pair was designed based on the tri7 gene to detect potential nivalenol-producing F. poae isolates. A total of 125 F. poae, four F. cerealis, two F. culmorum, one F. langsethiae, one F. sporotrichioides and seven F. graminearum, plus F. austroamericanum, F. meridionale, F. graminearum sensu stricto and F. cortaderiae from the NRRL collection were analysed, and only F. poae isolates gave a positive result for the presence of a 296-bp partial tri7 DNA fragment. Moreover, the primer set was tested from cereal seed samples where F. poae and other Fusarium species with a negative result for the specific reaction ( F. graminearum, F. oxysporum, F. chlamydosporum, F. sporotrichioides, F. equiseti and F. acuminatum) were isolated, and the expected fragment was amplified. We developed a rapid and reliable PCR assay to detect potential nivalenol-producing F. poae isolates.
DCT Implementation with Distributed Arithmetic

This paper presents an efficient method for implementing the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) with distributed arithmetic. While conventional approaches use the original DCT algorithm or the even-odd frequency decomposition of the DCT algorithm, the proposed architecture uses the recursive DCT algorithm and requires less area than the conventional approaches, regardless of the memory reduction techniques employed in the ROM Accumulators (RACs). An efficient architecture for implementing the scaled DCT with distributed arithmetic is also proposed. The new architecture requires even less area while keeping the same structural regularity for an easy VLSI implementation. A comparison of synthesized DCT processors shows that the proposed method reduces the hardware area of regular and scaled DCT processors by 17 percent and 23 percent, respectively, relative to a conventional design. With the row-column decomposition method, the proposed architectures can be easily extended to compute the two-dimensional DCT required in many image compression applications such as HDTV.
Strong cosmic censorship for T^2-symmetric cosmological spacetimes with collisionless matter

This paper addresses strong cosmic censorship for spacetimes with self-gravitating collisionless matter, evolving from surface-symmetric compact initial data. The global dynamics exhibit qualitatively different features according to the sign of the curvature $k$ of the symmetric surfaces and the cosmological constant $\Lambda$. With a suitable formulation, the question of strong cosmic censorship is settled in the affirmative if $\Lambda=0$ or $k\le0$, $\Lambda>0$. In the case $\Lambda>0$, $k=1$, we give a detailed geometric characterization of possible "boundary" components of spacetime; the remaining obstruction to showing strong cosmic censorship in this case has to do with the possible formation of extremal Schwarzschild-de Sitter-type black holes. In the special case that the initial symmetric surfaces are all expanding, strong cosmic censorship is shown in the past for all $k,\Lambda$. Finally, our results also lead to a geometric characterization of the future boundary of black hole interiors for the collapse of asymptotically flat data: in particular, in the case of small perturbations of Schwarzschild data, it is shown that these solutions do not exhibit Cauchy horizons emanating from $i^+$ with strictly positive limiting area radius.
Parallelization and performance of Conjugate Gradient algorithms on the Cedar hierarchical-memory multiprocessor

The conjugate gradient method is a powerful algorithm for solving well-structured sparse linear systems that arise from partial di erential equations. The broad application range makes it an interesting object for investigating novel architectures and programming systems. In this paper we analyze the computational structure of three di erent conjugate gradient schemes for solving elliptic partial di erential equations. We describe its parallel implementation on the Cedar hierarchical memory multiprocessor from both angles, explicit manual parallelization and automatic compilation. We report performance measurements taken on Cedar, which allow us a number of conclusions on the Cedar architecture, the programming methodology for hierarchical computer structures, and the contrast of manual vs automatic parallelization.
Country- and individual-level socioeconomic determinants of depression: multilevel cross-national comparison

Background The prevalence and correlates of depression vary across countries. Contextual factors such as country-level income or income inequalities have been hypothesised to contribute to these differences. Aims To investigate associations of depression with socioeconomic factors at the country level (income inequality, gross national income) and individual (education, employment, assets and spending) level, and to investigate their relative contribution in explaining the cross-national variation in the prevalence of depression. Method Multilevel study using interview data of 187 496 individuals from 53 countries participating in the World Health Organization World Health Surveys. Results Depression prevalence varied between 0.4 and 15.7% across countries. Individual-level factors were responsible for 86.5% of this variance but there was also reasonable variation at the country level (13.5%), which appeared to increase with decreasing economic development of countries. Gross national income or country-level income inequality had no association with depression. At the individual level, fewer material assets, lower education, female gender, economic inactivity and being divorced or widowed were associated with increased odds of depression. Greater household spending, unlike material assets, was associated with increasing odds of depression (adjusted analysis). Conclusions The variance of depression prevalence attributable to country-level factors seemed to increase with decreasing economic development of countries. However, country-level income inequality or gross national income explained little of this variation, and individual-level factors appeared more important than contextual factors as determinants of depression. The divergent relationship of assets and spending with depression emphasise that different socioeconomic measures are not interchangeable in their associations with depression.
Population Pharmacokinetics of Cyclophosphamide and Metabolites in Children With Neuroblastoma: A Report From the Children's Oncology Group

Cyclophosphamide‐based regimens are front‐line treatment for numerous pediatric malignancies; however, current dosing methods result in considerable interpatient variability in tumor response and toxicity. In this pediatric population, the authors' objectives were (1) to quantify and explain the pharmacokinetic variability of cyclophosphamide and 2 of its metabolites, hydroxycyclophosphamide (HCY) and carboxyethylphosphoramide mustard (CEPM), and (2) to apply a population pharmacokinetic model to describe the disposition of cyclophosphamide and these metabolites. A total of 196 blood samples were obtained from 22 children with neuroblastoma receiving intravenous cyclophosphamide (400 mg/m2/d) and topotecan. Blood samples were quantitated for concentrations of cyclophosphamide, HCY, and CEPM using liquid chromatography—mass spectrometry and analyzed using nonlinear mixed‐effects modeling with the NONMEM software system. After model building was complete, the area under the concentration‐time curve (AUC) was computed using NONMEM. Cyclophosphamide elimination was described by noninducible and inducible routes, with the latter producing HCY. Glomerular filtration rate was a covariate for the fractional elimination of HCY and its conversion to CEPM. Considerable interpatient variability was observed in the AUC of cyclophosphamide, HCY, and CEPM. These results represent a critical first step in developing pharmacokinetic‐linked pharmacodynamic studies in children receiving cyclophosphamide to determine the clinical relevance of the pharmacokinetic variability in cyclophosphamide and its metabolites.
Hot tearing susceptibility of TiB2-reinforced Al–5Cu matrix composite

This work investigated the hot tearing susceptibility of TiB2 reinforced Al–5Cu matrix composites. The results indicated that the hot tearing susceptibility of Al–5Cu alloy was significantly decreased when the TiB2 content was less than 3%. The improvement was attributed to the TiB2 particles promoted the grain refinement. The hot tearing susceptibility of TiB2-reinforced Al–5Cu matrix composite decreased first and then increased with the increase of TiB2 content. The 2TiB2/Al–5Cu composite had the smallest hot tearing susceptibility value. It could be ascribed to the refined grain and shortened solidification temperature range, which contributed to the hot tearing susceptibility decrease. Nevertheless, the 4TiB2/Al–5Cu and 6TiB2/Al–5Cu composites had more severe hot tearing susceptibility than others. The reason was that the enlarged solidification temperature range increased the solidification shrinkage strain, which was adverse to the hot tearing susceptibility improvement. Furthermore, the increase of TiB2 led to the formation of large particles agglomeration, which lowered the hot tearing initiation force and the feeding capacity of liquid metal.
An efficient analytical model for calculating trapped charge in amorphous silicon

We present an efficient analytical model for calculating the trapped-charge density as a function of Fermi energy based on two exponential regions for density-of-states distribution in hydrogenated amorphous silicon. In this efficient model, the trapped-charge density is calculated without numerical integration and without curve fitting as a function of Fermi energy. Comparisons between the analytical and the numerical models have been made and excellent agreement has been obtained. Such a model is useful as an aid to study the impact on the performance of amorphous-silicon devices such as thin-film transistors. >
Increased Carotid Intima-Media Thickness as a Predictor of the Presence and Extent of Abnormal Myocardial Perfusion in Type 2 Diabetes

OBJECTIVE Identification of asymptomatic patients with type 2 diabetes at increased risk for coronary artery disease (CAD) remains a challenge. We evaluated the potential of carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) for prediction of abnormal myocardial perfusion in this population. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS CIMT and SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging were assessed in 98 asymptomatic patients with type 2 diabetes. An increased CIMT was defined as ≥75th percentile of reference values. RESULTS Increased CIMT was an independent predictor of the extent of abnormal perfusion (P < 0.001). In patients with increased CIMT as compared with patients with normal CIMT, abnormal perfusion (75 vs. 9%) and severely abnormal perfusion (28 vs. 3%) were observed more frequently. CONCLUSIONS Increased CIMT was significantly related to the presence and extent of abnormal myocardial perfusion. Assessment of CIMT may be useful to identify asymptomatic patients with type 2 diabetes at higher risk for CAD.
Trends in Raman chemical imaging

The use of Raman microscopy (or Raman chemical imaging) has grown enormously in the last few decades and it has become a valuable tool for a range of applications. Raman microscopy presents several unique features such as ability to provide chemical and spatial information with resolution of a few micrometers in a rapid and non-destructive fashion, requir- ing little or no sample preparation and the ability to probe aqueous materials. Instrumentation, data processing methods and computer technology advances have made a renaissance of Raman microscopy and the number of applications has continu- ously growing. Furthermore, other spectroscopic derivatives aimed to improve Raman sensitivity have been recently applied to imaging: coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS), stimulated Raman spectroscopy (SRS), surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), tip enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS) and imaging with carbon nanotubes (CNTs). These methods provide a significant improvement in sensitivity in relation to traditional spontaneous Raman microscopy, allowing faster data acquisition and therefore the study of in-vitro, ex-vivo and in-vivo dynamic systems in an unprecedented manner. This paper will discuss recent papers applying the techniques above mentioned and discuss trends for future Raman chemical imaging.
Multiscale recurrent neural network based language model

We describe a novel recurrent neural network-based language model (RNNLM) dealing with multiple time-scales of contexts. The RNNLM is now a technical standard in language modeling because it remembers some lengths of contexts. However, the RNNLM can only deal with a single time-scale of a context, regardless of the subsequent words and topic of the spoken utterance, even though the optimal time-scale of the context can vary under such conditions. In contrast, our multiscale RNNLM enables incorporating with sufﬁcient ﬂexibility, and it makes use of various time-scales of contexts simultaneously and with proper weights for predicting the next word. Experimental comparisons carried out in large vocabulary spontaneous speech recognition demonstrate that introducing the multiple time-scales of contexts into the RNNLM yielded improvements over existing RNNLMs in terms of the perplexity and word error rate.