Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Corneal transplantation with donor tissue kept in organ culture for 7 weeks.

PURPOSE To study the fate of corneal grafts after extended organ culture (7 weeks). METHODS Six patients with symmetrical eye diseases were grafted bilaterally, in one eye with a cornea prepared by routine organ culture (mean 16 days), in the other eye with a donor cornea kept for 7 weeks (mean 49 days) in organ culture. The outcome was evaluated by biomicroscopy, graft thickness, endothelial cell density and visual performance after an observation time of at least 1 year. RESULTS Penetrating 7-8 mm grafting was uncomplicated in all cases. The endothelial densities were in both groups in the range 1000-2000 cells/mm2, and visual acuity 0.2-0.9 in cases with no other ocular pathology. Postoperative graft thickness and deswelling did not differ between 2- and 7-week cultured corneas. At final examination the thicknesses were 0.50 mm and 0.49 mm for 2- and 7-weeks cultured corneas. CONCLUSION Seven-week cultured corneas give clinical results comparable to those obtained using shorter culture periods. An extended culture period may be used to improve other qualities of the graft (compatibility, cell number, cell metabolism) and microbiological control.
High-Permittivity Substrate Multiresonant Antenna Inside Metallic Cover of Laptop Computer

This letter aims to describe a possible method of integrating an antenna inside the metallic cover of laptop computers. The proposed antenna consists of a patch and two parasitic monopoles on the high-permittivity substrate inside a 40 × 6 × 4 mm<sup>3</sup> (0.36λ<sub>0</sub> × 0.054λ<sub>0</sub> × 0.036λ<sub>0</sub>) cavity of the metallic cover. The -6-dB bandwidth of 2.62-2.81 GHz (7%) is achieved by combining multiple narrow bands from different resonant elements. A prototype of the proposed antenna is designed and measured to validate the design method. The obtained results including reflection coefficient, radiation pattern, and gain are presented and agree well with the simulation results.
Safety of Thrombolysis in Stroke Mimics: Results From a Multicenter Cohort Study

Background and Purpose— Intravenous thrombolysis for acute ischemic stroke is beneficial within 4.5 hours of symptom onset, but the effect rapidly decreases over time, necessitating quick diagnostic in-hospital work-up. Initial time strain occasionally results in treatment of patients with an alternate diagnosis (stroke mimics). We investigated whether intravenous thrombolysis is safe in these patients. Methods— In this multicenter observational cohort study containing 5581 consecutive patients treated with intravenous thrombolysis, we determined the frequency and the clinical characteristics of stroke mimics. For safety, we compared the symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage (European Cooperative Acute Stroke Study II [ECASS-II] definition) rate of stroke mimics with ischemic strokes. Results— One hundred stroke mimics were identified, resulting in a frequency of 1.8% (95% confidence interval, 1.5–2.2). Patients with a stroke mimic were younger, more often female, and had fewer risk factors except smoking and previous stroke or transient ischemic attack. The symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage rate in stroke mimics was 1.0% (95% confidence interval, 0.0–5.0) compared with 7.9% (95% confidence interval, 7.2–8.7) in ischemic strokes. Conclusions— In experienced stroke centers, among patients treated with intravenous thrombolysis, only a few had a final diagnosis other than stroke. The complication rate in these stroke mimics was low.
Refugees & Technology: Determining the Role of HCI Research

Currently, over 22 million people are considered to be refugees. Many of them are looking for shelter in the surrounding countries of their home country. Technology can be a helpful tool in addressing the challenges of the so-called "refugee crisis", facilitating initial orientation, information, as well as communication and networking support. This one-day workshop aims to (1) finalize the elaborated guidelines of the previous workshop and SIG meeting and to (2) formulate a manifesto for researchers who work with the vulnerable target group of refugees.
Superior NBTI in High- $k$ SiGe Transistors–Part I: Experimental

SiGe quantum-well pMOSFETs have recently been introduced for enhanced performance of transistors. Quite surprisingly, a significant reduction in negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) was also found in these devices. Furthermore, a stronger oxide field acceleration of the degradation in SiGe devices compared with Si devices was reported. These observations were speculated to be a consequence of the energetical realignment of the SiGe channel with respect to the dielectric stack. As these observations were made on large-area devices, only the average contribution of many defects to NBTI could be studied. In order to reveal the microscopic reasons responsible for the improved reliability, a detailed study of single defects is performed in nanoscale devices. To provide a detailed picture of single charge trapping, the step-height distributions for different device variants are measured and found to follow a unimodal and bimodal distribution. This finding suggests two conducting channels, one in the SiGe and one in the thin Si cap layer. We, furthermore, demonstrate that similar trap depth distributions are present among the device variants supported by a similar stress bias dependence of the capture times of the identified single defects. We conclude that NBTI is primarily determined by the dielectric stack and not by the device technology.
Return and Volatility Spillover between Financial Market Participants of Dhaka Stock Exchange Using Asymmetric GARCH Methods

Abstract—This paper is an investigation of the comovement in the form of return and volatility spillover across financial market participants of Bangladesh. This study uses daily price data of commercial banks, non-bank financial institutions (NBFI), and insurance companies traded in the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) for the period spanning 2009 to 2016. Bayesian Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model has been used in the conditional mean equations of EGARCH and GJR-GARCH models have been used to test the return spillover effects whereas lagged squared residuals and lagged conditional variances have been used as variance regressors in conditional variance equations to test the spillover effects of historical volatility and innovations transmitting in the form of shock to other participants operating in the same market. Bayesian VAR output reveals a highly significant bi-directional return spillover between bank-insurance pair and also between NBFIs-insurance pair. However, return spillover between commercial banks and NBFIs is unidirectional; only bank returns are affecting returns from NBFIs. Conditional volatility of NBFIs exhibit a highly significant asymmetric effect implying that bad news increases volatility of NBFIs to a greater degree than good news. Both GJR-GARCH and EGARCH output reveal bidirectional volatility spillover in the form of historical volatility and innovations among commercial banks, NBFIs and insurance companies.
Interactions between Campylobacter jejuni and lipids

We previously showed that motility plays several key roles in Campylobacter jejuni pathogenesis, including increasing the efficiency of C. jejuni attachment to host epithelial cells. To further characterize C. jejuni attachment, we first examined the role of carbohydrates. Experiments with Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell mutants with defined defects in complex carbohydrate biosynthesis revealed that oligosaccharide sequences probably play a subordinate role in C. jejuni attachment to eukaryotic cells. Simple sugars such as mannose, fucose, glucose, N-acetylglucosamine, maltose, and galactose also did not significantly alter the binding of C. jejuni to CHO cells. Thin-layer chromatography overlay analysis with lipids extracted from CHO cells suggested that C. jejuni binds to lipids. Lipid binding was further investigated using a receptor-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Hydrophobic interactions were determined to play a minor role in binding, since tetramethylurea, a strong inhibitor of hydrophobic interactions, did not significantly decrease binding between C. jejuni and lipids. The interaction was dissected further by comparing the binding of C. jejuni to lipids and their derivatives. The results showed that binding was greatest to the entire lipid structure and decreased in affinity when portions of the lipid were removed. Thin-layer chromatography overlay analysis showed that lipids with unsaturated fatty acids were bound with the highest affinity. Our results suggest that C. jejuni may interact with lipids in host cell membranes. However, lipids only partially inhibited C. jejuni binding to CHO cells, suggesting that multiple interactions occur between the bacteria and host cells.
Photosynthesis Assessment in Microphytobenthos Using Conventional and Imaging Pulse Amplitude Modulation Fluorometry

Imaging pulse amplitude modulated (Imaging‐PAM) fluorometry is a breakthrough in the study of spatial heterogeneity of photosynthetic assemblages. However, Imaging and conventional PAM uses a different technology, making comparisons between these techniques doubtful. Thereby, photosynthetic processes were comparatively assessed using conventional (Junior PAM and PAM 101) and Imaging‐PAM on intertidal microphytobenthos (MPB; mud and sand) and on cork oak leaves. Lower values of α (initial slope of the rETR, relative photosynthetic electron transport rate) vs E (incident photosynthetic active radiation) curve), ETRmax (maximum relative ETR), Ek (light saturation parameter) and Fv/Fm (maximum quantum efficiency of photosystem II of dark‐adapted samples) were obtained using the Imaging‐PAM. The level of discrepancy between conventional and Imaging‐PAM systems was dependent on the type of sample, being more pronounced for MPB muddy sediments. This may be explained by differences in the depth integration of the fluorescence signal related to the thickness of the photosynthetic layer and in the light attenuation coefficients of downwelling irradiance. An additional relevant parameter is the taxonomic composition of the MPB, as cyanobacteria present in sandy sediments rendered different results with red and blue excitation light fluorometers. These findings emphasize the caution needed when interpreting chlorophyll fluorescence data of MPB communities.
Severity of obstructive sleep apnoea predicts coronary artery plaque burden: a coronary computed tomographic angiography study

Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is associated with significantly increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Carotid ultrasonography and retrospective, uncontrolled, coronary imaging studies have suggested an association of OSA with subclinical atherosclerosis, but there is a lack of prospective, controlled studies directly evaluating the relationship of OSA with occult coronary artery disease. We performed coronary computed tomographic angiography and inpatient-attended sleep studies on a cohort of otherwise healthy males attending our sleep laboratory, and compared coronary artery plaque volume between subjects with low and high apnoea/hypopnoea index (AHI) scores. 29 subjects participated. The median AHI was 15.5 events·h−1, with subjects who scored above this classified as high AHI. No significant differences were observed in demographic, anthropometric and clinical variables between the high- and low-AHI groups. Coronary plaque volume was significantly greater in the high-AHI group (mean plaque volume 2.6±0.7 mm2 versus 0.8±0.2 mm2; p=0.017) and, furthermore, correlated significantly with AHI (Spearman’s r=0.433; p=0.019). Following adjustment for dyslipidaemia and fasting plasma glucose levels, AHI remained a significant predictor of plaque volume (standardised &bgr;=0.424; p=0.027). In this prospective case–control study, we found that severity of OSA may predict occult coronary atherosclerosis in otherwise healthy overweight or obese male subjects. Increasing OSA severity predicts a greater burden of occult coronary artery disease in healthy overweight or obese males http://ow.ly/nSXEU
An ensemble method for unbalanced sentiment classification

Current binary sentiment classification has been focusing on improving the performance of classification, while the imbalance of sentiment data set in practical applications, which means the number of samples in one category is several folds of that of another category, is neglected. Most study on sentiment classification has been done on the balanced data, so these methods perform well on balanced data, while are unable to maintain the same performance on unbalanced data set. This paper proposed a method for unbalanced sentiment classification that combines unbalanced classification method and ensemble learning technique. Both algorithm and data set are considered to enhance the classification performance of imbalance sentiment data set. Under the framework of ensemble learning, this hybrid method integrates three different methods: under-sampling, bootstrap re-sampling and random feature selection to process the data set. Experiments on the unbalanced data set prove that this ensemble method can improve the classification performance of unbalanced sentiment data set.
Chinese trial on isolated systolic hypertension in the elderly. Systolic Hypertension in China (Syst-China) Collaborative Group.

BACKGROUND In 1988, the Systolic Hypertension in China (Syst-China) Collaborative Group initiated the placebo-controlled Syst-China trial to investigate whether antihypertensive drug treatment could reduce the incidence of fatal and nonfatal stroke in older Chinese patients with isolated systolic hypertension. OBJECTIVES To explore (1) whether the benefits of active treatment were evenly distributed across 4 strata, prospectively defined according to sex and previous cardiovascular complications, and (2) whether the morbidity and mortality results were influenced by age, level of systolic or diastolic blood pressure (BP), smoking or drinking habits, or diabetes mellitus at enrollment. METHODS Eligible patients had to be 60 years or older with a sitting systolic BP of 160 to 219 mm Hg and diastolic BP less than 95 mm Hg. After stratification for center, sex, and previous cardiovascular complications, 1253 patients were assigned to active treatment starting with nitrendipine (10-40 mg/d), with the possible addition of captopril (12.5-50.0 mg/d), and/or hydrochlorothiazide (12.5-50 mg/d). In the 1141 control patients, matching placebos were used similarly. RESULTS Male sex, previous cardiovascular complications, older age, higher systolic BP or lower diastolic BP, living in northern China, smoking, and diabetes mellitus significantly and independently increased the risk of 1 or more of the following end points: total or cardiovascular mortality, all fatal and nonfatal cardiovascular end points, all strokes, and all cardiac end points. In the placebo-control group diabetes raised the risk of all end points 2- to 3-fold (P< or =.05). However, active treatment reduced the excess risk associated with diabetes to a nonsignificant level (P values ranging from .12-.86) except for cardiovascular mortality (P = .04). Cox regression with adjustments applied for significant covariates suggested that active treatment may reduce total mortality more (P = .06) in women and stroke more (P = .07) in men and that it may provide better protection against cardiac end points in nonsmokers than smokers (P = .04). Otherwise, the benefits of active treatment were equally manifest, regardless of the enrollment characteristics of the patients, and regardless of whether active treatment consisted of only nitrendipine or of nitrendipine associated with other active drugs. CONCLUSIONS In elderly Chinese patients with isolated systolic hypertension, stepwise antihypertensive drug treatment, starting with the dihydropyridine calcium channel blocker nitrendipine, improved prognosis. The benefit was particularly evident in diabetic patients; for cardiac end points it tended to be larger in nonsmokers. Otherwise, the benefit of active treatment was not significantly influenced by the characteristics of the patients at enrollment in the trial.
Prevalence and health impact of developmental disabilities in US children.

OBJECTIVE Data from the 1988 National Health Interview Survey--Child Health Supplement were used to examine the prevalence of selected developmental disabilities and their impact among children ages 0 through 17 years. DESIGN The following conditions, identified through a structured in-person interview with a parent or other adult household member, were examined: deafness or trouble hearing, blindness, epilepsy or seizures, stammering and stuttering, other speech defects, cerebral palsy, delay in growth or development, learning disabilities, and emotional or behavioral problems. The impact was defined by measures of perceived health status, school performance and attendance, and health care utilization. RESULTS Seventeen percent of children in the United States were reported to have ever had a developmental disability. The prevalence of the individual disabilities ranged from 0.2% for cerebral palsy to 6.5% for learning disabilities. These conditions taken together had a substantial impact on the health and educational functioning of affected children: 1.5 times more doctor visits, 3.5 times more hospital-days, twice the number of school-days lost, and a 2.5-fold increase in the likelihood of repeating a grade in school compared with children without these conditions. The extent of this impact was much greater among children with multiple disabilities or with either cerebral palsy, epilepsy or seizures, delays in growth and development, or emotional or behavioral problems. The impact on school performance was most pronounced for children reported to have learning disabilities. CONCLUSIONS Future research efforts should be focused on ways to reduce the impact of these developmental disabilities on quality of life.
Fault analysis-resistant implementation of Rainbow Signature scheme

Multivariate Public Key Cryptosystems (MPKC) are cryptographic schemes based on the difficulty of solving a set of multivariate system of nonlinear equations over a finite field. MPKC are considered to be secure against quantum attacks. Rainbow, an MPKC signature scheme, is among the leading MPKC candidates for post quantum cryptography. In this paper, we propose and compare two fault analysis-resistant implementations for the Rainbow signature scheme. The hardware platform for our implementations is Xilinx FPGA Virtex 7 family. Our implementation for the Rainbow signature completes in 191 cycles using a 20ns clock period which is an improvement over the previously reported implementations. The verification completes in 141 cycles using the same clock period. The two proposed fault analysis-resistant schemes offer different levels of protections and increase the area overhead by a factor of 33% and 9%, respectively. The first protection scheme acquires a time overhead of about 72%, but the second one does not have any time overhead.
A Breaker of Advanced Glycation End Products Attenuates Diabetes‐Induced Myocardial Structural Changes

&NA; The formation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) on extracellular matrix components leads to accelerated increases in collagen cross linking that contributes to myocardial stiffness in diabetes. This study determined the effect of the crosslink breaker, ALT‐711 on diabetes‐induced cardiac disease. Streptozotocin diabetes was induced in Sprague‐Dawley rats for 32 weeks. Treatment with ALT‐711 (10 mg/kg) was initiated at week 16. Diabetic hearts were characterized by increased left ventricular (LV) mass and brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) expression, decreased LV collagen solubility, and increased collagen III gene and protein expression. Diabetic hearts had significant increases in AGEs and increased expression of the AGE receptors, RAGE and AGE‐R3, in association with increases in gene and protein expression of connective tissue growth factor (CTGF). ALT‐711 treatment restored LV collagen solubility and cardiac BNP in association with reduced cardiac AGE levels and abrogated the increase in RAGE, AGE‐R3, CTGF, and collagen III expression. The present study suggests that AGEs play a central role in many of the alterations observed in the diabetic heart and that cleavage of preformed AGE crosslinks with ALT‐711 leads to attenuation of diabetes‐associated cardiac abnormalities in rats. This provides a potential new therapeutic approach for cardiovascular disease in human diabetes. (Circ Res. 2003;92:785–792.)
Molecular Basis of the Anaerobic Response in Plants

The response of plants to flooding is complex and involves the induction of specific gene sets. A multidisciplinary approach by several research teams has led to a reasonably good understanding of the low oxygen response, and many of the genes and proteins that are involved are known. But the factors that are critical in determining tolerance or intolerance remain unknown. Microarray technology offers renewed hope to unravel the complex changes in gene expression occurring in plants upon low oxygen treatment and what mechanisms are involved in the response.
Glycomics and Proteomics Analyses of Mouse Uterine Luminal Fluid Revealed a Predominance of Lewis Y and X Epitopes on Specific Protein Carriers*S

Sperm motility and maturation are known to be affected by a host of factors encountered en route in both male and female genital tracts prior to fertilization. Using a concerted proteomics and glycomics approach with advanced mass spectrometry-based glycan sequencing capability, we show in this work that 24p3, an abundant mouse uterine luminal fluid (ULF) glycoprotein also called lipocalin 2 (Lcn2), is highly fucosylated in the context of carrying multiple Lewis X and Y epitopes on complex type N-glycans at its single glycosylation site. The predominance of Lewis X/Y along with Neu5Acα2–6 sialylation was found to be a salient feature of the ULF glycome, and several other protein carriers were additionally identified including the highly abundant lactotransferrin, which is N-glycosylated at two sites, both with a similar range of highly fucosylated N-glycans. A comparative glycomics analysis of the male genital tract fluids revealed that there is a gradient of glycomic complexity from the cauda to caput regions of the epididymis, varying from high mannose to sialylated complex type N-glycans but mostly devoid of fucosylation. The seminal vesicle fluid glycome, on the other hand, carries equally abundant multimeric Lewis X structures but is distinctively lacking in additional fucosylation of the terminal galactose to give the Lewis Y epitope typifying the glycome of female ULF. One-dimensional shotgun proteomics analysis identified over 40 proteins in the latter, many of which are reported for the first time, and a majority are notably involved in immune defense and antigen processing. Further sperm binding and motility assays suggest that the Lewis X/Y epitopes do contribute to the sperm motility-enhancing activity of 24p3, whereas lactotransferrin is largely inactive in this context despite being similarly glycosylated. These findings underline the importance of glycoproteomics in delineating both the specific glycan structures and their carriers in assigning glycobiological functions.
Immunolabeling of lipopolysaccharide liberated from antibiotic-treated Escherichia coli

Increased anti-core glycolipid antibody binding was visualized by immunoelectron microscopy after incubation of Escherichia coli K1:O7 cells with a bacteriolytic antibiotic and compared with binding in control cells. The findings suggest that the core glycolipid regions of the lipopolysaccharides of some gram-negative bacilli can be effectively sequestered until liberated by antibiotic-induced cell lysis.