Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of Hymenoptera venom allergy and the effects of specific venom immunotherapy on mast cell metabolites in sensitized children.

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVE Mast cells (MC) are effector cells during severe systemic reactions (SR) to Hymenoptera stings. Venom specific immunotherapy (VIT) is the treatment of choice for prevention of SR to stings. Tryptase and prostaglandin D₂ metabolites (PGD₂) are the markers of MC activation. The study design was to 1. compare baseline values of serum tryptase concentration (BST) and PGD₂ metabolites in children with/without venom sensitization, 2. to evaluate an influence of rush VIT on MC markers in treated children. MATERIALS AND METHODS Sensitized group: 25 children with SR to Hymenoptera sting. CONTROL GROUP 19 healthy children. Active treatment: 5-day-rush-VIT. BST was evaluated by ImmunoCAP, PGD₂ metabolites in blood and urine by GC-NICI-MS. RESULTS The baseline blood levels of MC markers were significantly higher, while urinary concentration of 9α,11β-PGF₂ was significantly lower in the whole group of venom-sensitized children compared to controls. Severity of SR showed negative correlation with urinary PGD₂ metabolites, while positive with plasma 9α,11β-PGF₂ and BST concentration The highest sensitivity was obtained for plasma 9α,11β-PGF₂ whereas the highest specificity for urinary PGD-M. CONCLUSIONS In children with IgE-mediated SR to Hymenoptera stings, elevation of baseline values of PGD₂ metabolites in blood is accompanied by decreased excretion of its urinary metabolites. Assessment of stable PGD₂ metabolites might serve as an independent MC marker to identify allergic children. There is an association between urinary PGD₂ metabolites and severity of the SR to Hymenoptera stings.
The Utility of 1‐ and 3‐Month Protocol Biopsies on Renal Allograft Function: A Randomized Controlled Study

Identification of pathological events in the renal allograft using protocol biopsies at predetermined time intervals may yield useful information and improve outcomes. We examined the influence of decisions taken on the basis of 1‐ and 3‐month protocol biopsies findings on 1‐year renal allograft function in a prospective randomized study. Out of 102 living‐donor allograft recipients, 52 were randomized to undergo protocol biopsies and 50 controls had only indicated biopsies. All acute rejection (AR) episodes (clinical and subclinical) were treated. Calcineurin inhibitor (CNI) dose adjustments were made on clinical judgment. Baseline recipient and donor characteristics, immunosuppressive drug usage, HLA matches and 2‐h cyclosporine levels were similar in both groups. At 1 and 3 months, protocol biopsies revealed borderline (BL) changes in 11.5% and 14% patients, AR in 17.3% and 12% and chronic allograft nephropathy (CAN) in 3.8% and 10%. The incidence of clinically evident AR episodes was similar in the two groups, but biopsy group had lower serum creatinine at 6 months (p = 0.0003) and 1 year (p < 0.0001). The renal functions were similar in those with normal histology and BL changes. Protocol biopsies are helpful in detecting subclinical histological changes in the graft and improving short‐term renal allograft function.
Hybridization of an invasive shrub affects tolerance and resistance to defoliation by a biological control agent

Evolution has contributed to the successful invasion of exotic plant species in their introduced ranges, but how evolution affects particular control strategies is still under evaluation. For instance, classical biological control, a common strategy involving the utilization of highly specific natural enemies to control exotic pests, may be negatively affected by host hybridization because of shifts in plant traits, such as root allocation or chemical constituents. We investigated introgression between two parent species of the invasive shrub tamarisk (Tamarix spp.) in the western United States, and how differences in plant traits affect interactions with a biological control agent. Introgression varied strongly with latitude of origin and was highly correlated with plant performance. Increased levels of T. ramosissima introgression resulted in both higher investment in roots and tolerance to defoliation and less resistance to insect attack. Because tamarisk hybridization occurs predictably on the western U.S. landscape, managers may be able to exploit this information to maximize control efforts. Genetic differentiation in plant traits in this system underpins the importance of plant hybridization and may explain why some biological control releases are more successful than others.
Phylogeny to function: PE/PPE protein evolution and impact on Mycobacterium tuberculosis pathogenicity

The pe/ppe genes represent one of the most intriguing aspects of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis genome. These genes are especially abundant in pathogenic mycobacteria, with more than 160 members in M. tuberculosis. Despite being discovered over 15 years ago, their function remains unclear, although various lines of evidence implicate selected family members in mycobacterial virulence. In this review, we use PE/PPE phylogeny as a framework within which we examine the diversity and putative functions of these proteins. We report on the evolution and diversity of the respective gene families, as well as the implications thereof for function and host immune recognition. We summarize recent findings on pe/ppe gene regulation, also placing this in the context of PE/PPE phylogeny. We collate data from several large proteomics datasets, providing an overview of PE/PPE localization, and discuss the implications this may have for host responses. Assessment of the current knowledge of PE/PPE diversity suggests that these proteins are not variable antigens as has been so widely speculated; however, they do clearly play important roles in virulence. Viewing the growing body of pe/ppe literature through the lens of phylogeny reveals trends in features and function that may be associated with the evolution of mycobacterial pathogenicity.
Aortic Pulse Wave Velocity Predicts Cardiovascular Mortality in Subjects >70 Years of Age

Aortic pulse wave velocity (PWV) is a significant and independent predictor of cardiovascular mortality in subjects with essential hypertension and in patients with end-stage renal disease. Its contribution to cardiovascular risk in subjects 70 to 100 years old has never been tested. A cohort of 141 subjects (mean±SD age, 87.1±6.6 years) was studied in 3 geriatrics departments in a Paris suburb. Together with sphygmomanometric blood pressure measurements, aortic PWV was measured with a validated automatic device. During the 30-month follow-up, 56 patients died (27 from cardiovascular events). Logistic regressions indicated that age (P =0.005) and a loss of autonomy (P =0.01) were the best predictors of overall mortality. For cardiovascular mortality, aortic PWV was the major risk predictor (P =0.016). The odds ratio was 1.19 (95% confidence interval, 1.03 to 1.37). Antihypertensive drug treatment and blood pressure, including systolic and pulse pressure, had no additive role. In subjects 70 to 100 years old, aortic PWV is a strong, independent predictor of cardiovascular death, whereas systolic or pulse pressure was not. This prospective result will need to be confirmed in an intervention trial.
Determinants of Persistent Underweight among Children, Aged 6–35 Months, after Huge Economic Development and Improvements in Health Services in Oman

Over the last decades, health indicators have witnessed major improvements in the Sultanate of Oman. This study was aimed at factors associated with underweight among children in four regions of Oman, as, in 1998, underweight was prevalent among 17.9% of children aged less than five years. A case-control study was conducted in 2002: 190 cases were 6-35-month old children with weight-for-age <−2 z-scores. Controls were individually matched by village of residence, sex, and age. The questionnaire included anthropometry of children, child-feeding practices, morbidity, anthropometry of mothers, parity, birth-spacing, and socioeconomic characteristics. Conditional logistic regression was used for analyses. Birth-weight of <2,500 g was strongly associated with underweight and also were height of mother, low level of education of mother, bad quality of water in households, diarrhoea of children in the last two weeks, and regular use of infant formula. Factors, such as birth-weight, height of mother, supply of safe water in household, and care for mothers and children were the determinants of persistent underweight after huge economic development and improvements in health services. Further research is also needed to investigate further specific determinants of low birth-weight in the Omani context and try to disentangle emaciation and determinants of linear growth retardation.
Treatment decision making in early-stage breast cancer: should surgeons match patients' desired level of involvement?

PURPOSE To describe desired and actual roles in treatment decision making among patients with early-stage breast cancer, identify how often patients' actual roles matched their desired roles, and examine whether matching of actual and desired roles was associated with type of treatment received and satisfaction. PATIENTS AND METHODS We surveyed 1,081 women (response, 70%) diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer in Massachusetts or Minnesota about their desired and actual roles in treatment decision making with their surgeon and used logistic regression to assess whether matching of actual to desired roles was associated with type of surgery and satisfaction. RESULTS Most patients (64%) desired a collaborative role in decision making, but only 33% reported actually having such a collaborative role when they discussed treatments with their surgeons. Overall, 49% of women reported an actual role that matched the desired role they reported, 25% had a less active role than desired, and 26% had a more active role than desired. In adjusted analyses, patients whose reported actual role matched their desired role were no more likely than others to undergo breast-conserving surgery (P >.2), but these women were more satisfied with their treatment choice (83.5% very satisfied; reference) than those whose role was less active than desired (72.9% very satisfied; P =.02) or more active than desired (72.2% very satisfied; P =.005). CONCLUSION Only approximately half of patients reported an actual role in decision making that matched the desired role they reported. These patients were more satisfied with their treatment choice than other patients, suggesting that women with early-stage breast cancer may benefit from surgeons' efforts to identify their preferences for participation in decisions and tailor the decision-making process to them.
Probabilistic road estimation and lane association using radar detections

Knowledge about the course of a road is an important prerequisite for numerous advanced driver assistance systems. Current approaches for lane recognition and estimation are usually utilizing camera sensors in order to detect and process lane markings on the road surface. In this paper, it is investigated if it is feasible to estimate the course of a road using an automotive radar sensor, only. For that purpose, a data fusion approach is proposed which processes stationary radar detections from the road border as well as tracked vehicles. Furthermore, a probabilistic algorithm for associating vehicles to particular lanes is presented. Both techniques are empirically evaluated against a classical camera-based approach.
Multipath routing for multiple description video in wireless ad hoc networks

As developments in wireless ad hoc networks continue, there is an increasing expectation with regard to supporting content-rich multimedia communications (e.g., video) in such networks, in addition to simple data communications. The recent advances in multiple description (MD) video coding have made it highly suitable for multimedia applications in such networks. In this paper, we study the important problem of multipath routing for MD video in wireless ad hoc networks. We follow an application-centric cross-layer approach and formulate an optimal routing problem that minimizes the application layer video distortion. We show that the optimization problem has a highly complex objective function and an exact analytic solution is not obtainable. However, we find that a meta-heuristic approach such as genetic algorithms (GAs) is eminently effective in addressing this type of complex cross-layer optimization problems. We provide a detailed solution procedure for the GA-based approach, as well as a tight lower bound for video distortion. We use numerical results to demonstrate the superior performance of the GA-based approach and compare it to several other approaches. Our efforts in this work provide an important methodology for addressing complex cross-layer optimization problems, particularly those involving application and network layers.
EXIT-Chart Based Labeling Design for Type-I HARQ in BICM-ID Systems

This paper investigates the issue of labeling design in the BICM-ID (bit- interleaved coded modulation-iterative decoding) systems with Type-I HARQ (hybrid auto-retransmission request). Based on the EXIT (extrinsic information transfer) chart, an algorithm is developed in search of good labelings that well match with the outer code. The concept of link adaptation is realized by using different labelings at different SINR (signal-to-noise ratio) to achieve a better performance. Numerical results show that the new design outperforms the existing ones.
Multi-generational persistence of traditions in neighbouring meerkat groups

Reports of socially transmitted traditions based on behavioural differences between geographically separated groups of conspecifics are contentious because they cannot exclude genetic or environmental causes. Here, we report persistent differences between neighbouring groups of meerkats (Suricata suricatta) where extensive gene flow precludes genetic differentiation. Over 11 years, some groups consistently emerged later from their sleeping burrows in the morning than others, despite complete turnovers in group membership and the influx of immigrants. Group territories overlapped and, in many cases, the same sleeping burrows were used by different groups. Differences persisted even after accounting for effects of group size, weather and burrow characteristics, and were unrelated to food availability within territories. These results provide compelling evidence that the emergence times of meerkat groups represent conservative traditions.
Constraint satisfaction problems with isolated solutions are hard

We study the phase diagram and the algorithmic hardness of the random ‘locked’ constraint satisfaction problems, and compare them to the commonly studied ‘non-locked’ problems like satisfiability of Boolean formulae or graph coloring. The special property of the locked problems is that clusters of solutions are isolated points. This simplifies significantly the determination of the phase diagram, which makes the locked problems particularly appealing from the mathematical point of view. On the other hand, we show empirically that the clustered phase of these problems is extremely hard from the algorithmic point of view: the best known algorithms all fail to find solutions. Our results suggest that the easy/hard transition (for currently known algorithms) in the locked problems coincides with the clustering transition. These should thus be regarded as new benchmarks of really hard constraint satisfaction problems.
Dynamic Imaging of Cerebral Blood Flow Using Laser Speckle

A method for dynamic, high-resolution cerebral blood flow (CBF) imaging is presented in this article. By illuminating the cortex with laser light and imaging the resulting speckle pattern, relative CBF images with tens of microns spatial and millisecond temporal resolution are obtained. The regional CBF changes measured with the speckle technique are validated through direct comparison with conventional laser-Doppler measurements. Using this method, dynamic images of the relative CBF changes during focal cerebral ischemia and cortical spreading depression were obtained along with electrophysiologic recordings. Upon middle cerebral artery (MCA) occlusion, the speckle technique yielded high-resolution images of the residual CBF gradient encompassing the ischemic core, penumbra, oligemic, and normally perfused tissues over a 6 × 4 mm cortical area. Successive speckle images demonstrated a further decrease in residual CBF indicating an expansion of the ischemic zone with finely delineated borders. Dynamic CBF images during cortical spreading depression revealed a 2 to 3 mm area of increased CBF (160% to 250%) that propagated with a velocity of 2 to 3 mm/min. This technique is easy to implement and can be used to monitor the spatial and temporal evolution of CBF changes with high resolution in studies of cerebral pathophysiology.
Elastic network models for RNA: a comparative assessment with molecular dynamics and SHAPE experiments

Elastic network models (ENMs) are valuable and efficient tools for characterizing the collective internal dynamics of proteins based on the knowledge of their native structures. The increasing evidence that the biological functionality of RNAs is often linked to their innate internal motions poses the question of whether ENM approaches can be successfully extended to this class of biomolecules. This issue is tackled here by considering various families of elastic networks of increasing complexity applied to a representative set of RNAs. The fluctuations predicted by the alternative ENMs are stringently validated by comparison against extensive molecular dynamics simulations and SHAPE experiments. We find that simulations and experimental data are systematically best reproduced by either an all-atom or a three-beads-per-nucleotide representation (sugar-base-phosphate), with the latter arguably providing the best balance of accuracy and computational complexity.
Handling Rapid Interference Detection of Progressive Meshes Using Active Bounding Trees

We introduce multiresolution collision detection, a novel approach for fast and exact interference detection on continuous level-of-detail (LOD) representations of arbitrary triangle meshes undergoing rigid-body motion. A new algorithm, active bounding tree (AB-Tree), is presented to accelerate interference queries of three-dimensional models, which dynamically change LODs at runtime. The idea behind the approach is to selectively adjust the LODs of objects in a virtual environment to maintain an overall low complexity of collision detection, therefore guaranteeing an interactive frame rate. On the one hand the utilization of computational resources is maximized; on the other hand a consistent and realistic virtual environment is presented to the user. We also introduce a LOD selection method for collision detection. Our implementation of the collision-detection algorithm demonstrates significant performance improvement over existing algorithms for static LOD meshes. The complexity of the algorithm is analyzed and proved. Measurements are taken to compare with the analytical results of three sample models and strong agreements are achieved.
Isolation and Characterization of Lactobacillus brevis Phages

Lactobacillus brevis has been widely used in industry for fermentation purposes. However, it is also associated with the spoilage of foods and beverages, in particular, beer. There is an increasing demand for natural food preservation methods, and in this context, bacteriophages possess the potential to control such spoilage bacteria. Just a few studies on phages infecting Lactobacillus brevis have been performed to date and in the present study, we report the isolation and characterization of five virulent phages capable of infecting Lb. brevis strains. The analysis reveals a high diversity among the isolates, with members belonging to both, the Myoviridae and Siphoviridae families. One isolate, designated phage 3-521, possesses a genome of 140.8 kb, thus representing the largest Lb. brevis phage genome sequenced to date. While the isolated phages do not propagate on Lb. brevis beer-spoiling strains, phages showed activity against these strains, impairing the growth of some Lb. brevis strains. The results highlight the potential of bacteriophage-based treatments as an effective approach to prevent bacterial spoilage of beer.
Damping rates and frequency corrections of Kepler LEGACY stars

Linear damping rates and modal frequency corrections of radial oscillation modes in selected LEGACY main-sequence stars are estimated by means of a non-adiabatic stability analysis. The selected stellar sample covers stars observed by Kepler with a large range of surface temperatures and surface gravities. A non-local, time-dependent convection model is perturbed to assess stability against pulsation modes. The mixing-length parameter is calibrated to the surface-convection-zone depth of a stellar model obtained from fitting adiabatic frequencies to the LEGACY observations, and two of the non-local convection parameters are calibrated to the corresponding LEGACY linewidth measurements. The remaining non-local convection parameters in the 1D calculations are calibrated so as to reproduce profiles of turbulent pressure and of the anisotropy of the turbulent velocity field of corresponding 3D hydrodynamical simulations. The atmospheric structure in the 1D stability analysis adopts a temperature–optical–depth relation derived from 3D hydrodynamical simulations. Despite the small number of parameters to adjust, we find good agreement with detailed shapes of both turbulent pressure profiles and anisotropy profiles with depth, and with damping rates as a function of frequency. Furthermore, we find the absolute modal frequency corrections, relative to a standard adiabatic pulsation calculation, to increase with surface temperature and surface gravity.
Interaction of Nefopam and Orphenadrine with the Cytochrome P‐450 and the Glutathione System in Rat Liver

Nefopam, a cyclic analogue of orphenadrine, exhibits a type I (substrate) and a type II (ligand) interaction with ferri‐cytochrome P‐450 in control and phenobarbitone induced rat hepatic microsomes respectively. In‐vitro metabolism of nefopam in phenobarbitone‐induced microsomes leads to the production of a reactive metabolite which complexes with cytochrome P‐450. In contrast to the known complexation of orphenadrine, complexation by nefopam can be inhibited by glutathione (GSH, 0·1‐1·0 mm). However, in‐vivo administration of nefopam to rats does not diminish the GSH content of liver cytosol nor increase oxidized glutathione levels nor alter the activities of GSH transferase and GSH peroxidase. In‐vivo administration does not lead to cytochrome P‐450 induction nor cytochrome P‐450 complexation as has been shown for orphenadrine. Finally, nefopam inhibits the NADPH dependent endogenous H2O2 production in both control and phenobarbitone‐induced microsomes.
Human-centric partitioning of the environment

In this paper, we present an object based approach for human-centric partitioning of the environment. Our approach for determining the human-centric regions is to detect the objects that are commonly associated with frequent human presence. In order to detect these objects, we employ state of the art perception techniques. The detected objects are stored with their spatio-temporal information in the robot's memory to be later used for generating the regions. The advantages of our method is that it is autonomous, requires only a small set of perceptual data and does not even require people to be present while generating the regions. The generated regions are validated using a 1-month dataset collected in an indoor office environment. The experimental results show that although a small set of perceptual data is used, the regions are generated at densely occupied locations.