Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A comparison of self-reported joint symptoms following infection with different enteric pathogens: effect of HLA-B27.

OBJECTIVE We conducted a case-case comparison study to estimate the attack-rate of reactive joint pain (JPrea) following intestinal infections, and evaluated whether the susceptibility and severity of joint symptoms was associated with the tissue-type HLA-B27. METHODS Consecutive patients with positive fecal culture for Salmonella, Campylobacter, Yersinia, Shigella, and E. coli were addressed by questionnaires inquiring about gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms and the occurrence of joint pain in a previously healthy joint within 4 weeks after onset of infection. A blood sample was requested for HLA-B27 typing. RESULTS Of 3146 patients invited, 2105 (67%) responded to the survey questionnaire. The triggering infections were Campylobacter, 1003; Salmonella, 619; E. coli, 290; Shigella, 102; and Yersinia, 91. JPrea was reported by 294 subjects: Campylobacter, 131 (13.1%); Salmonella, 104 (16.8%); Yersinia, 21 (23.1%); Shigella, 10 (9.8%); and E. coli, 28 (9.7%). There was a significant association between severity of gastroenteritis and development of arthralgia (p = 0.001). The odds ratio (OR) for JPrea in an HLA-B27-positive individual was 2.62 (95% CI 1.67-3.93) for the entire group. A significant association between JPrea and HLA-B27 was found for Salmonella, Shigella, and Yersinia; not, however, for Campylobacter and E. coli. HLA-B27-positive patients had a significantly increased risk for severe joint symptoms. CONCLUSION Our study shows that JPrea after GI infection is positively correlated to severity of GI symptoms. HLA-B27 is not associated with joint pain after Campylobacter. Intestinal E. coli seems to be an arthritogenic pathogen. A significant association between HLA-B27 and severity of joint pain was observed.
Huntington’s disease masquerading as spinocerebellar ataxia

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disorder of the central nervous system characterised by the presence of choreic abnormal movements, behavioural or psychiatric disturbances and dementia. Noteworthy, despite atypical motor symptoms other than chorea have been reported as initial presentation in some patients, a very few number of HD patients, presenting at onset mostly cerebellar dysfunction masquerading dominant spinocerebellar ataxias (SCA), were occasionally reported. We report the case of a 42-year-old man with a 5-year history of gait disturbance, dysarthria and cognitive impairment and familial antecedents of dementia and movement disorders. Initially the clinical picture suggested the diagnosis of a dominant SCA, but finally a diagnosis of HD was made based on the molecular evidence of abnormal 39 Cytosine-Adenine-Guanine (CAG) repeats in exon 1 of Huntingtin gene. The authors highlight the importance of suspecting HD in the aetiology of spinocerebellar ataxias when dementia is a prominent feature in the proband or their family.
A Shared Execution Strategy for Multiple Pattern Mining Requests over Streaming Data

In diverse applications ranging from stock trading to traffic monitoring, popular data streams are typically monitored by multiple analysts for patterns of interest. These analysts may submit similar pattern mining requests, such as cluster detection queries, yet customized with different parameter settings. In this work, we present an efficient shared execution strategy for processing a large number of density-based cluster detection queries with arbitrary parameter settings. Given the high algorithmic complexity of the clustering process and the real-time responsiveness required by streaming applications, serving multiple such queries in a single system is extremely resource intensive. The naive method of detecting and maintaining clusters for different queries independently is often in-feasible in practice, as its demands on system resources increase dramatically with the cardinality of the query workload. To overcome this, we analyze the interrelations between the cluster sets identified by queries with different parameters settings, including both pattern-specific and window-specific parameters. We introduce the notion of the growth property among the cluster sets identified by different queries, and characterize the conditions under which it holds. By exploiting this growth property we propose a uniform solution, called Chandi, which represents identified cluster sets as one single compact structure and performs integrated maintenance on them -- resulting in significant sharing of computational and memory resources. Our comprehensive experimental study, using real data streams from domains of stock trades and moving object monitoring, demonstrates that Chandi is on average four times faster than the best alternative methods, while using 85% less memory space in our test cases. It also shows that Chandi scales in handling large numbers of queries on the order of hundreds or even thousands under high input data rates.
Reliable and Efficient flooding Algorithm for Broadcasting in VANET

In MANETs, each node is equipped with a wireless transmitter and receiver and is typically free to move around in an arbitrary fashion. The self-configuration ability of MANETs makes them suitable for a wide variety of applications. VANET research concentrates on roads, more so on roads with some reasonable node density. In This Paper the proposed algorithm has the concept of TTL through which it decreases the overhead and collision problem. The result of flooding can be improved by applying more optimized and intelligent
Fault prediction model for software using soft computing techniques

Faulty modules of any software can be problematic in terms of accuracy, hence may encounter more costly redevelopment efforts in later phases. These problems could be addressed by incorporating the ability of accurate prediction of fault prone modules in the development process. Such ability of the software enables developers to reduce the faults in the whole life cycle of software development, at the same time it benefits automation process, and reduces the overall cost and efforts of the software maintenance. In this paper, we propose to design fault prediction model by using a set of code and design metrics; applying various machine learning (ML) classifiers; also used transformation techniques for feature reduction and dealing class imbalance data to improve fault prediction model. The data sets were obtained from publicly available PROMISE repositories. The results of the study revealed that there was no significant impact on the ability to accurately predict the fault-proneness of modules by applying PCA in reducing the dimensions; the results were improved after balancing data by SMOTE, Resample techniques, and by applying PCA with Resample in combination. It has also been seen that Random Forest, Random Tree, Logistic Regression, and Kstar machine learning classifiers have relatively better consistency in prediction accuracy as compared to other techniques.
Vancomycin Concentration and Monitoring Practice in Pediatric Oncology and Nononcology Patients: A Retrospective Single Center Study

Objectives : Cancer patients may have higher clearance of vancomycin in comparison to the general population.This study is a retrospective chart reviewfrom a tertiary care center in Saudi Arabia. It explores whether plasma concentrations of vancomycin in pediatric oncology patients are different from those of other pediatric patients. Methods : Pediatric oncology and non-oncology patients treated with vancomycin during the period from January 2011 to December 2012 were included. Data were extracted about demographics, diagnosis, and vancomycin monitoring parameters. Linear regression models were constructed to test the effect of different variables on the log transformed vancomycin concentration adjusted for time of concentration determination. Results : One hundred cases (73 oncology and 27 non-oncology)were analysed. Mean predose vancomycin concentration was around 9 microgram/mL and there was no significant difference between oncology and non-oncology patients. Oncology patients had significantly higher creatinine clearance values and vancomycin doses (p < 0.001 and 0.003 respectively). Being an oncology patient, was shown to be an independent predictor for the concentration of vancomycin after adjustment of all other factors (beta: (0.283), 95%CI : (0.557) – (0.008), p=0.044). Conclusion: Pediatric oncology patients may need higher vancomycin doses to achieve plasma concentrations comparable to non-oncology patients.
Two-Stage Tensor Locality-Preserving Projection Face Recognition

Locality-preserving projection (LPP) is an efficient dimensionality reduction approach that preserves local relationships within data sets and uncovers essential manifold structures. In this paper, we develop a two-stage tensor locality-preserving projection for face recognition, in which first-stage tensor LPP is performed in the original tensor space of face images and second stage tensor LPP is performed in the reduced-dimension tensor subspace of the first-stage projection. For classification, we seek a non-negative sparse representation in the final low-dimensional tensor subspace and determine the class of an unknown face image by minimum sparse representation error. Experimental studies demonstrate that our proposed two-stage tensor LPP scheme along with the non-negative sparse representation classifier effectively exploits the locality structure of face images and outperforms existing state-of-the-art face recognition schemes.
A T Cell Receptor–specific Blockade of Positive Selection

To investigate the influence of endogenous peptides on the developmental processes that occur during thymocyte selection, we have used monoclonal antibodies that preferentially recognize the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecule I-Ek when it is bound to the moth cytochrome c peptide (88–103). One of these antibodies (G35) specifically blocks the positive selection of transgenic thymocytes expressing a T cell receptor that is reactive to this peptide– MHC complex. Furthermore, G35 does not block the differentiation of transgenic T cells bearing receptors for a different I-Ek–peptide complex. This antibody recognizes a subset of endogenous I-Ek–peptide complexes found on a significant fraction of thymic antigen-presenting cells, including cortical and medullary epithelial cells. The sensitivity of G35 to minor alterations in peptide sequence suggests that the thymic peptide–MHC complexes that mediate the positive selection of a particular class II MHC–restricted thymocyte are structurally related to the complexes that can activate it in the periphery.
The role of Myo2, a yeast class V myosin, in vesicular transport

Previous studies have shown that temperature-sensitive, myo2-66 yeast arrest as large, unbudded cells that accumulate vesicles within their cytoplasm (Johnston, G. C., J. A. Prendergast, and R. A. Singer. 1991. J. Cell Biol. 113:539-551). In this study we show that myo2-66 is synthetically lethal in combination with a subset of the late-acting sec mutations. Thin section electron microscopy shows that the post- Golgi blocked secretory mutants, sec1-1 and sec6-4, rapidly accumulate vesicles in the bud, upon brief incubations at the restrictive temperature. In contrast, myo2-66 cells accumulate vesicles predominantly in the mother cell. Double mutant analysis also places Myo2 function in a post-Golgi stage of the secretory pathway. Despite the accumulation of vesicles in myo2-66 cells, pulse-chase studies show that the transit times of several secreted proteins, including invertase and alpha factor, as well as the vacuolar proteins, carboxy- peptidase Y and alkaline phosphatase, are normal. Therefore the vesicles which accumulate in this mutant may function on an exocytic pathway that transports a set of cargo proteins that is distinct from those analyzed. Our observations are consistent with a role for Myo2 in transporting a class of secretory vesicles from the mother cell along actin cables into the bud.
Association of “Weekend Warrior” and Other Leisure Time Physical Activity Patterns With Risks for All-Cause, Cardiovascular Disease, and Cancer Mortality

Importance More research is required to clarify the association between physical activity and health in “weekend warriors” who perform all their exercise in 1 or 2 sessions per week. Objective To investigate associations between the weekend warrior and other physical activity patterns and the risks for all-cause, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and cancer mortality. Design, Setting, and Participants This pooled analysis of household-based surveillance studies included 11 cohorts of respondents to the Health Survey for England and Scottish Health Survey with prospective linkage to mortality records. Respondents 40 years or older were included in the analysis. Data were collected from 1994 to 2012 and analyzed in 2016. Exposures Self-reported leisure time physical activity, with activity patterns defined as inactive (reporting no moderate- or vigorous-intensity activities), insufficiently active (reporting <150 min/wk in moderate-intensity and <75 min/wk in vigorous-intensity activities), weekend warrior (reporting ≥150 min/wk in moderate-intensity or ≥75 min/wk in vigorous-intensity activities from 1 or 2 sessions), and regularly active (reporting ≥150 min/wk in moderate-intensity or ≥75 min/wk in vigorous-intensity activities from ≥3 sessions). The insufficiently active participants were also characterized by physical activity frequency. Main Outcomes and Measures All-cause, CVD, and cancer mortality ascertained from death certificates. Results Among the 63 591 adult respondents (45.9% male; 44.1% female; mean [SD] age, 58.6 [11.9] years), 8802 deaths from all causes, 2780 deaths from CVD, and 2526 from cancer occurred during 561 159 person-years of follow-up. Compared with the inactive participants, the hazard ratio (HR) for all-cause mortality was 0.66 (95% CI, 0.62-0.72) in insufficiently active participants who reported 1 to 2 sessions per week, 0.70 (95% CI, 0.60-0.82) in weekend warrior participants, and 0.65 (95% CI, 0.58-0.73) in regularly active participants. Compared with the inactive participants, the HR for CVD mortality was 0.60 (95% CI, 0.52-0.69) in insufficiently active participants who reported 1 or 2 sessions per week, 0.60 (95% CI, 0.45-0.82) in weekend warrior participants, and 0.59 (95% CI, 0.48-0.73) in regularly active participants. Compared with the inactive participants, the HR for cancer mortality was 0.83 (95% CI, 0.73-0.94) in insufficiently active participants who reported 1 or 2 sessions per week, 0.82 (95% CI, 0.63-1.06) in weekend warrior participants, and 0.79 (95% CI, 0.66-0.94) in regularly active participants. Conclusions and Relevance Weekend warrior and other leisure time physical activity patterns characterized by 1 or 2 sessions per week may be sufficient to reduce all-cause, CVD, and cancer mortality risks regardless of adherence to prevailing physical activity guidelines.
Induction of Brain Region-Specific Forms of Obesity by Agouti

Disruption of melanocortin (MC) signaling, such as by ectopic Agouti overexpression, leads to an obesity syndrome with hyperphagia, obesity, and accelerated body weight gain during high-fat diet. To investigate where in the brain disruption of MC signaling results in obesity, long-term Agouti expression was induced after local injections of recombinant adeno-associated viral particles in selected brain nuclei of adult rats. Agouti expression in the paraventricular nucleus, a hypothalamic region with a high density of MC receptors, induced acute onset hyperphagia and rapid weight gain that persisted for at least 6 weeks. In contrast, obesity and hyperphagia developed with a 3 week delay when Agouti was expressed in the dorsal medial hypothalamus. Agouti expression in the lateral hypothalamus (LH) did not affect food intake and body weight during regular diet, despite the presence of MC receptors in this region. However, during exposure to a high-fat diet, animals with Agouti expression in the LH exhibited a marked increase in body weight. Here we show that the LH is important for the protection against diet-induced obesity by controlling caloric intake during consumption of a high-fat diet. Together, this study provides evidence that different aspects of the Agouti-induced obesity syndrome, such as hyperphagia and diet responsiveness, are mediated by distinct brain regions and opens challenging opportunities for further understanding of pathophysiological processes in the development of the obesity syndrome.
Characterization and Evaluation of In-Vehicle Power Line Channels

This paper presents a statistical characterization of in-vehicle power lines, based on channel measurements carried out in a automobile. In particular, the impact of the engine speed on the characteristics of the channels is analyzed. Performance of an Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) system is assessed using the channel measurements.
B1‐insensitive T2 preparation for improved coronary magnetic resonance angiography at 3 T

At 3 T, the effective wavelength of the RF field is comparable to the dimension of the human body, resulting in B1 standing wave effects and extra variations in phase. This effect is accompanied by an increase in B0 field inhomogeneity compared to 1.5 T. This combination results in nonuniform magnetization preparation by the composite MLEV weighted T2 preparation (T2 Prep) sequence used for coronary magnetic resonance angiography (MRA). A new adiabatic refocusing T2 Prep sequence is presented in which the magnetization is tipped into the transverse plane with a hard RF pulse and refocused using a pair of adiabatic fast‐passage RF pulses. The isochromats are subsequently returned to the longitudinal axis using a hard RF pulse. Numerical simulations predict an excellent suppression of artifacts originating from B1 inhomogeneity while achieving good contrast enhancement between coronary arteries and surrounding tissue. This was confirmed by an in vivo study, in which coronary MR angiograms were obtained without a T2 Prep, with an MLEV weighted T2 Prep and the proposed adiabatic T2 Prep. Improved quantitative and qualitative coronary MRA image measurement was achieved using the adiabatic T2 Prep at 3 T. Magn Reson Med, 2006. Published 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Long-term follow-up of changes in fibrillation waves in patients with persistent atrial fibrillation: spectral analysis of surface ECG.

BACKGROUND Little is known about the shortening of atrial refractoriness as a result of electrical remodeling in atrial fibrillation (AF) in clinical cases, especially in terms of long-term follow-up, because of a lack of noninvasive testing methods. METHODS AND RESULTS The present study population comprised 38 consecutive patients with persistent AF (PAF, >1 month). Before and after the follow-up period of 1-14 months, surface ECGs were recorded for analysis. In each case, the fibrillation wave was purified by subtracting the QRS-T complex template and then power spectral analysis was performed. The mean fibrillation cycle length (FCL) and FCL coefficient of variation (FCL-CV) were determined from peak power frequency in 20 epochs in each recording. The change in FCL (FCL) was calculated by subtracting the baseline FCL from the FCL after the follow-up period. To correct for the difference in the follow-up period, DeltaFCL was divided by the follow-up period in each case. In 38 cases, mean FCL decreased from 160+/-20 ms to 151+/-19 ms (p<0.05), and the FCL-CV also decreased from 15+/-9% to 12+/-5% (p<0.05). The corrected DeltaFCL was -2.4+/-7.6 (ms/month) and there was a significant negative correlation between corrected DeltaFCL and baseline FCL (p<0.01). CONCLUSION Shortening of the FCL during a relatively long-term follow-up period was observed in patients with PAF.
Comparison of the size of perivitelline space in mouse oocytes cultured with and without cumulus cells and possible hyaluronan production in oocytes.

Perivitelline space is the gap between the plasma membrane and zona pellucida of oocytes. Recently, it has been reported that the incidence of polyspermy in porcine and mouse oocytes with larger perivitelline space is significantly lower than those with small perivitelline space (Funahashi et al., 1994; Wang et al., 1998; Kitagawa and Niimura, 2006; Ueno and Niimura, 2008). Therefore, it has been suggested that there could be a relationship between the size of perivitelline space and the incidence of polyspermy in porcine and mouse oocytes. It is known that glycosaminoglycans including hyaluronan synthesized in cumulus cells by the stimulation of FSH and LH are secreted (Eppig, 1982; Ball et al., 1985) and the matrix of cumulus cells is occupied by the secreted hyaluronan (Eppig, 1979; 1980; Ball et al., 1982; Salustri et al., 1992). Hyaluronan has been found to also exist in the perivitelline space (Talbot and Dicarlantonio, 1984a; Dandekar and Talbot, 1992; Dandekar et al., 1992; Talbot and Dandekar, 2003), and one of its properties is retention of large volumes of water (Talbot and Dandekar, 2003). Therefore, when hyaluronan accumulates in the perivitelline space, its role is to absorb water causing the perivitelline space to enlarge. On the other hand, with regard to the secretory source of hyaluronan in the perivitelline space, it has been confirmed by electron microscopy that hyaluronan exists in the pore of the zona pellucida (Talbot and Dicarlantonio, 1984b). From these results, it was suggested that hyaluronan secreted from cumulus cells enters the perivitelline space through the zona pellucida (Talbot,1984). However, when the stimulation of FSH and LH occurs, glycosaminoglycans including hyaluronan are secreted not only from cumulus cells but also from oocytes (Pivko et al., 1982; Tesarik and Kopecny, 1986; Flechon et al., 2003). In addition the mRNA of HAS3, which is a hyaluronan synthase, is present in porcine oocytes (Kimura et al., 2002). Moreover, when ultra thin sections of hamster cumulus-oocyte complex were stained with immunogoldlabeled hyaluronidase, deposition of gold particles was observed in cumulus cells, perivitelline space and the matrix
Go with the flow: profiling copies to find runtime bloat

Many large-scale Java applications suffer from runtime bloat. They execute large volumes of methods, and create many temporary objects, all to execute relatively simple operations. There are large opportunities for performance optimizations in these applications, but most are being missed by existing optimization and tooling technology. While JIT optimizations struggle for a few percent, performance experts analyze deployed applications and regularly find gains of 2x or more. Finding such big gains is difficult, for both humans and compilers, because of the diffuse nature of runtime bloat. Time is spread thinly across calling contexts, making it difficult to judge how to improve performance. Bloat results from a pile-up of seemingly harmless decisions. Each adds temporary objects and method calls, and often copies values between those temporary objects. While data copies are not the entirety of bloat, we have observed that they are excellent indicators of regions of excessive activity. By optimizing copies, one is likely to remove the objects that carry copied values, and the method calls that allocate and populate them. We introduce copy profiling, a technique that summarizes runtime activity in terms of chains of data copies. A flat copy profile counts copies by method. We show how flat profiles alone can be helpful. In many cases, diagnosing a problem requires data flow context. Tracking and making sense of raw copy chains does not scale, so we introduce a summarizing abstraction called the copy graph. We implement three clients analyses that, using the copy graph, expose common patterns of bloat, such as finding hot copy chains and discovering temporary data structures. We demonstrate, with examples from a large-scale commercial application and several benchmarks, that copy profiling can be used by a programmer to quickly find opportunities for large performance gains.