Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Outcomes in Total Knee Arthroplasty Patients After Inpatient Rehabilitation: Influence of Age and Gender

Vincent KR, Vincent HK, Lee LW, Alfano AP: Outcomes in total knee arthroplasty patients after inpatient rehabilitation: Influence of age and gender. Am J Phys Med Rehabil 2006;85:482–489. Objectives:To examine age and gender effects on outcomes after inpatient rehabilitation in primary total knee arthroplasty (TKA) and revision TKA patients. Design:This retrospective, comparative study was conducted in a 50-bed, university-affiliated rehabilitation hospital. Patients included primary TKA patients (n = 286) and revision TKA patients (n = 138) placed into one of three age brackets: <60 yrs, 60–70 yrs, or >70 yrs. Measurements included length of stay (LOS), FIM™ scores, hospital charges, and discharge disposition location. Results:FIM™ scores improved from admission to discharge in both primary and revision patients (P = 0.015). LOS was shorter in primary than revision patients (8.3 vs. 10.4 days, P = 0.001), and the LOS was longest in patients >70 yrs compared with those <60 or 60–70 yrs (10.6 vs. 8.7 and 8.8 days, respectively; P = 0.004). FIM™ efficiency was greater in primary than in revision TKA patients (3.68 vs. 2.77 points/day, P = 0.001), and greater for men than women in each age bracket regardless of TKA type (3.68 vs. 2.78 points/day, P = 0.001). Total hospital charges were lower for men than women for both TKA types ($9,656 ± 823 vs. $11,544 ± 1,359; P = 0.015), and were highest in patients >70 yrs of age (P = 0.015). Conclusions:Primary and revision TKA patients make improvements in functional independence during inpatient rehabilitation. Although FIM™ gains were similar among age and gender groupings, FIM™ efficiency is lowest in women. Despite similar daily hospital costs among the groups, slower progress with functional gains (decreased FIM™ efficiency) increases the LOS and total hospital charges, especially in older women.
WRN, the protein deficient in Werner syndrome, plays a critical structural role in optimizing DNA repair

Werner syndrome (WS) predisposes patients to cancer and premature aging, owing to mutations in WRN. The WRN protein is a RECQ‐like helicase and is thought to participate in DNA double‐strand break (DSB) repair by non‐homologous end joining (NHEJ) or homologous recombination (HR). It has been previously shown that non‐homologous DNA ends develop extensive deletions during repair in WS cells, and that this WS phenotype was complemented by wild‐type (wt) WRN. WRN possesses both 3′ → 5′ exonuclease and 3′ → 5′ helicase activities. To determine the relative contributions of each of these distinct enzymatic activities to DSB repair, we examined NHEJ and HR in WS cells (WRN–/–) complemented with either wtWRN, exonuclease‐defective WRN (E–), helicase‐defective WRN (H–) or exonuclease/helicase‐defective WRN (E–H–). The single E– and H– mutants each partially complemented the NHEJ abnormality of WRN–/– cells. Strikingly, the E–H– double mutant complemented the WS deficiency nearly as efficiently as did wtWRN. Similarly, the double mutant complemented the moderate HR deficiency of WS cells nearly as well as did wtWRN, whereas the E– and H– single mutants increased HR to levels higher than those restored by either E–H– or wtWRN. These results suggest that balanced exonuclease and helicase activities of WRN are required for optimal HR. Moreover, WRN appears to play a structural role, independent of its enzymatic activities, in optimizing HR and efficient NHEJ repair. Another human RECQ helicase, BLM, suppressed HR but had little or no effect on NHEJ, suggesting that mammalian RECQ helicases have distinct functions that can finely regulate recombination events.
Registries as useful tools in characterization of allergic manifestations

Purpose of reviewRegistries are useful to discover the applicability of data generated from randomized clinical trials (RCTs) into daily practice, and to search for real-life data usually not covered by them. Recent findingsIn allergy, registry research brought clues to important epidemiological and clinical problems hardly accessible with other methods. The increase in the asthma prevalence in Sweden in contrast with stabilization in Denmark; the association of the prevalence of asthma and environmental factors; the knowledge of existing rhinitis international guidelines, but the poorly complacence of some of their recommendations; the low epinephrine use in anaphylaxis and the difference among European and Latin American elicitors; the predominance of &bgr; lactams or NSAIDs as drug hypersensitivity reactions inducers in different regions; the fact that most of the hereditary angioedema patients were receiving long-term prophylaxis with attenuated androgens; all the mentioned are clear examples of relevant and important data provided by current registries. SummaryRegistries in allergy enlighten knowledge in areas not covered by classical investigational methods. As the number and importance of registries is growing, its contribution to the knowledge and management of allergic diseases will increase in the near future.
Design and implementation of a patient-specific cognitive engine for robotic needle insertion

In order to develop an effective and user-friendly control method for surgical robotic system, we propose a new framework of cognitive engine to supervise and regulate the surgical processes. The framework aims to make the surgical processes understandable by both human operators and robots. A prototype cognitive engine was implemented using ontology and SPARQL query language on JAVA and tested in ex-vivo phantom experiments with a robotic RF needle insertion system. The prototype cognitive engine has successfully guided the robot in execution of surgical procedures.
Implementation of LMP-FTR Mechanism in an AC-DC System

This paper analyzes the implementability of locational marginal price (LMP) and financial transmission right (FTR) mechanisms in the presence of high voltage DC (HVDC) lines in the regulated (i.e., under the control of system operator) network. The established framework of LMP-FTR mechanism assumes that the system under regulation is fully AC. Unregulated (or private) HVDC lines are taken into account within this framework through proxy-transaction bids from the line owners. However, as the flow over a regulated HVDC line has to be controlled by the system operator himself, the existing LMP-FTR framework becomes insufficient if the system contains or is expanded with regulated HVDC lines. The augmentation that should be made to the existing framework to include regulated HVDC lines is explained in this paper. It is shown that the flow over a regulated HVDC line can be modeled as a non-chargeable bilateral transaction without causing any threat of negative congestion surplus. For this power dispatch model, revenue adequacy of FTRs can be still ensured by means of the conventional simultaneous feasibility test (SFT) model. By utilizing the capacities of dc lines, a more general SFT model is further developed. The modified auction problem is discussed and tested for the non-negativity of net auction collection. The process of revenue adequate issuance of auction revenue rights is explained. Finally, the relative merit of a regulated HVDC line over a private HVDC line is discussed through a case study.
Wide-beam circularly polarized composite cavity-backed crossed scythe-shaped dipole

In this paper, a wide-beam circularly polarized (CP) composite cavity-backed crossed scythe-shaped dipole is proposed. Each dipole arm contains a meander line whose end is shaped like a scythe chine to accomplish a significant reduction in the radiator size. The scythe-shaped dipoles are crossed through a 90° phase delay line of a vacant-quarter printed ring in order to generate CP radiation and broadband impedance matching. The crossed scythe-shaped dipole is incorporated with a cavity-backed reflector to improve the radiation pattern in terms of the CP radiation beamwidth and front-to-back ratio. The proposed antenna yields broad impedance-matching and 3-dB axial-ratio bandwidths, a high front-to-back ratio, and a wide beamwidth.
Quantitative in vitro assessment of N‐alkyl sulphate‐induced cytotoxicity in human keratinocytes (HaCaT). Comparison with in vivo human irritation tests

Summary A spontaneously immortalized human keratinocyte line, HaCaT, was used as an in vitro model to predict the cutaneous irritation of anionic surfactants. For this purpose, a number of sodium salts of N‐alkyl sulphates with hydrocarbon chain lengths varying between C8 and C16 were studied for possible cytotoxic effects. The endpoints used to assess toxicity were uptake of the vital dye neutral red (NR) and cell morphology criteria 24 h after dosing. A linear proportionality between keratinocyte number and NR uptake was established. All tested surfactants had cytotoxic effects as demonstrated by a decreased NR uptake, which showed a clear dose–response relationship. Concentrations resulting in 50% inhibition of NR uptake (IC‐50) ranged from 0·15 mmol (sodium lauryl sulphate, C12) to 1·23 mmol (sodium octyl sulphate, C8). The in vitro cytotoxicity data were highly reproducible when the test was repeated after several weeks. The cytotoxicity data from these assays were compared with the irritant responses (as evaluated by measurement of erythema and transepidermal water loss) obtained after 24 h application of the same compounds (300 μ1 of 20 mmol aqueous solution) to the volar forearm of human volunteers. There were significant linear correlations between the IC‐50 values and both barrier damage (transepidermal water loss) and erythema (as evaluated by skin colour reflectance measurements). For the test substances, however, the sensitivity of the in vitro system was between 10 and 100 times higher than that observed in human skin in vivo. This quantitative difference can largely be ascribed to the effective permeability barrier of normal human skin in vivo, which protects living keratinocytes from the cytotoxic effects of surfactant molecules.
Prediction of segmental percent fat using anthropometric variables.

AIM This study aimed to develop a prediction equation for segmental percent fat from anthropometric measurements. METHODS The subjects were 107 adults, consisting of 77 males and 30 females, aged from 21 to 82 years. Height, weight, waist circumference, hip circumference, body mass index, waist hip ratio and subcutaneous fat thickness (SFT) were used as anthropometric measurements. The SFTs were measured at 14 sites. Segmental percent fats in both arms (%SF(arms)), both legs (%SF(legs)) and trunk (%SF(trunk)) were measured by dual-energy absorptiometry (DXA) method, and these values were used as references. To predict the segmental percent fat measured by DXA, stepwise multiple regression analysis was conducted using sex, age and the anthropometric measurements as predictors. To examine the systematic error between the observed and predicted values, the error and the observed values were plotted based on Bland-Altman technique, and limits of agreement (LA) were also calculated. RESULTS The R, SEE and range of LA values in each prediction equation was as follows: %SF(arms): R=0.919, SEE=3.333%, LA=6.5%; %SF(legs): R=0.915, SEE=3.468, LA=6.5%; %SF(trunk): R=0.858, SEE=4.944, LA=9.7%. These prediction equations used 5 to 7 predictors and met the necessary standards for predicting body fat. Although the prediction accuracy of %SF(trunk) was inferior than those of %SF(arms) and %SF(legs), it was superior to those found in previous study reports predicting abdominal visceral fat mass and fat mass at the trunk from anthropometric measurements. CONCLUSIONS These prediction equations can be considered useful and practical for predicting segmental percent fat and assessing body fat distribution.
Phosphatase-Mediated Modulation of Actin-Myosin Interaction in Bovine Aortic Actomyosin and Skinned Porcine Carotid Artery

Abstract. Since the Ca2+-regulatory mechanism for actin-myosin interaction in smooth muscle involves phosphorylation of the 20,000-Da myosin light chains, it was hypothesized that such interaction should be influenced by myosin phosphatase. Accordingly, we studied the effects of an aortic myosin light-chain phosphatase on Ca1+-dependent actin-myosin interaction in detergent-skinned porcine carotid artery and bovine aortic native actomyosin. In skinned preparations, the aortic phosphatase (16 U/ml) markedly inhibited the rate of isometric contraction in low Ca2+ (6.8 × 10-7 M) and responsiveness to Ca2+ (force attained with 6.8 × 10-7 Ca2+/force attained with 1.6 × 10-6 MCa2+), whereas relaxation was accelerated. Ca2+-dependent actomyosin ATPase activity and phosphorylation of the light chains were significantly and progressively depressed in the presence of increasing concentrations of phosphatase (0.1-0.9 U/ml). The concentration of Ca2+ (1.1 × 10-6 M) required for half-maximal activation of either ATPase activity or light-chain phosphorylation increased by 70% in the presence of 0.1 U phosphatase/ml. Neither the maximal rate of Ca2+-sensitive ATP hydrolysis (39 ± 0.8 nmole/ min/mg actomyosin) nor the extent of phosphorylation (0.68 ± 0.05 mole PO4/mole light chain) was altered at >5 × 10-6 M Ca2+. ATPase activity was correlated to light-chain phosphorylation under diverse conditions including the presence or absence of 1 μM calmodulin, different concentrations of phosphatase (0-0.9 U/ml), and different concentrations of Ca2+ (10-8to 1.25 × 10-5 M). However, significant phosphorylation was present (20-25% of maximum) in the absence of Ca2+-dependent ATPase activity and only 15% of the maximal rate of ATP hydrolysis was expressed until phosphorylation attained 50% of its maximal value. These findings are consistent with the ordered model of myosin phosphorylation suggested by A. Persechini and D. J. Hartshorne (Science (Washington, DC), 213:1383-285, 1961] (36). They also suggest that myosin phosphatase may participate in modulating actin-myosin interactions in vascular smooth muscle.
Early Cannabis Use, Polygenic Risk Score for Schizophrenia and Brain Maturation in Adolescence.

IMPORTANCE Cannabis use during adolescence is known to increase the risk for schizophrenia in men. Sex differences in the dynamics of brain maturation during adolescence may be of particular importance with regard to vulnerability of the male brain to cannabis exposure. OBJECTIVE To evaluate whether the association between cannabis use and cortical maturation in adolescents is moderated by a polygenic risk score for schizophrenia. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Observation of 3 population-based samples included initial analysis in 1024 adolescents of both sexes from the Canadian Saguenay Youth Study (SYS) and follow-up in 426 adolescents of both sexes from the IMAGEN Study from 8 European cities and 504 male youth from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) based in England. A total of 1577 participants (aged 12-21 years; 899 [57.0%] male) had (1) information about cannabis use; (2) imaging studies of the brain; and (3) a polygenic risk score for schizophrenia across 108 genetic loci identified by the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. Data analysis was performed from March 1 through December 31, 2014. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Cortical thickness derived from T1-weighted magnetic resonance images. Linear regression tests were used to assess the relationships between cannabis use, cortical thickness, and risk score. RESULTS Across the 3 samples of 1574 participants, a negative association was observed between cannabis use in early adolescence and cortical thickness in male participants with a high polygenic risk score. This observation was not the case for low-risk male participants or for the low- or high-risk female participants. Thus, in SYS male participants, cannabis use interacted with risk score vis-à-vis cortical thickness (P = .009); higher scores were associated with lower thickness only in males who used cannabis. Similarly, in the IMAGEN male participants, cannabis use interacted with increased risk score vis-à-vis a change in decreasing cortical thickness from 14.5 to 18.5 years of age (t137 = -2.36; P = .02). Finally, in the ALSPAC high-risk group of male participants, those who used cannabis most frequently (≥61 occasions) had lower cortical thickness than those who never used cannabis (difference in cortical thickness, 0.07 [95% CI, 0.01-0.12]; P = .02) and those with light use (<5 occasions) (difference in cortical thickness, 0.11 [95% CI, 0.03-0.18]; P = .004). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Cannabis use in early adolescence moderates the association between the genetic risk for schizophrenia and cortical maturation among male individuals. This finding implicates processes underlying cortical maturation in mediating the link between cannabis use and liability to schizophrenia.
Nasal inoculation of an adenovirus vector encoding 11 tandem repeats of Aβ1‐6 upregulates IL‐10 expression and reduces amyloid load in a Mo/Hu APPswe PS1dE9 mouse model of Alzheimer's disease

One of the pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is deposits of amyloid β‐peptide (Aβ) in neuritic plaques and cerebral vessels. Immunization of AD mouse models with Aβ reduces Aβ deposits and improves memory and learning deficits. Because recent clinical trials of immunization with Aβ were halted due to brain inflammation that was presumably induced by a T‐cell‐mediated autoimmune response, vaccination modalities that elicit predominantly humoral immune responses are currently being developed.
Improving the Performance of Adopted Approaches for Extracting Arabic Keyphrases

In this work the improvement of automatic keyphrases extraction using deep linguistic features and supervised machine learning algorithm is discussed. The n-gram method for extracting important keyphrases produces huge number of candidate terms. Many of those terms are non-keyphrases either because they are linguistically non expressive terms or due to redundancy in sense. The objective is to restrict the number of candidate terms and keeping the relevant ones. This work is an extension to a previous one in keyphrase extraction for Arabic documents. The proposed work covers the deep linguistic features of the candidate terms. To capture the well-structured terms a new-added definite structure feature is introduced and tested. A set of linguistic features of the previously assigned candidate terms are applied to a supervised machine learning technique to classify the candidates as keyphrases or not. The experiments carried out showed that the proposed technique improves the accuracy of extracting keyphrases relative to the previous version and other available extractors.
Growth and photosynthesis of two Mediterranean corals, Cladocora caespitosa and Oculina patagonica, under normal and elevated temperatures

SUMMARY The Ligurian Sea (NW Mediterranean) experienced warm summers in 1998, 1999 and from 2003 to 2005. The temperature was 1-3°C higher than the mean summer value (24°C) and remained high over a long period. During these summers, mass-mortality events, affecting several sessile benthic species, were reported. In the present study, we tested the long-term (3-7 weeks) effect of different temperatures (20°C measured in spring and autumn, 24°C observed in summer, and 26°C and 28°C abnormal summer values) on two Mediterranean corals, Cladocora caespitosa and Oculina patagonica. Growth rate, photosynthetic efficiency (Fv/Fm), relative electron transport rate (ETR), zooxanthellae and chlorophyll (chl) contents were measured during 48 days incubation. At 20°C, all parameters remained constant during the whole experiment for both species. At higher temperatures, most physiological parameters were affected by only 2-5 weeks at 24°C, and were severely depressed at higher temperatures. Small replicate samples (nubbins) of O. patagonica significantly decreased their zooxanthellae and chl concentrations at all temperatures, after 2 weeks of incubation. Their Fv/Fm values, as well as their growth rates, were also gradually reduced during the incubation at all temperatures. However, only a few nubbins maintained at 28°C showed signs of tissue necrosis after 34 days, and these gradually recovered tissue when temperature was returned to normal. In nubbins of C. caespitosa, chl and zooxanthellae concentrations decreased only after 34 days of incubation at 26°C and 28°C. At the same time, tissue necrosis was observed, explaining the loss of the symbionts. Fv/Fm was reduced only after 34 days of incubation at the different temperatures, and growth rate was first enhanced, before collapsing by 30% at 24°C and by 90-100% at 26°C and 28°C. All samples maintained at 26°C and 28°C had died, due to tissue necrosis, by the end of the experiment. Results obtained suggest that O. patagonica is more able than C. caespitosa to resist high temperature conditions because of its rapid bleaching capacity. In contrast, it seems that C. caespitosa is living close to its thermal limit during the summer period; therefore, a long-term increase at 24°C or above could be lethal for this coral, just as was observed in situ during the recent warm summers.
Obesity, Adiponectin and Inflammation as Predictors of New‐Onset Diabetes Mellitus After Kidney Transplantation

The high incidence of new‐onset diabetes mellitus after transplantation (NODAT) suggests the need to find new factors to explain the pathogenesis. Our objectives were (1) to confirm that low levels of pre‐transplant adiponectin are an independent risk factor for the development of NODAT in a larger transplanted population; (2) to analyze whether adiponectin is a better predictor of NODAT than other inflammatory markers (C‐reactive protein (CRP), interleukin‐6 (IL‐6), tumor necrosis factor‐alpha (TNF‐α) and pregnancy‐associated plasma protein A (PAPP‐A)) and (3) to assess the relationship between obesity, inflammatory markers and NODAT. One hundred ninety‐nine non‐diabetic patients (128 men; age: 53 ± 11 years; body mass index (BMI) 24.98 ± 3.76 kg/m2) were included. Pre‐transplant plasma glucose, insulin, adiponectin, CRP, TNF‐α, IL‐6 and PAPP‐A were measured. Forty‐five patients developed NODAT. Patients with NODAT had a greater BMI (p = 0.005). Adiponectin was lower (p < 0.001) and CRP higher (p = 0.032) in patients with NODAT. Multivariate logistic regression and Cox analysis showed that the calcineurin inhibitor used, pre‐transplant BMI and adiponectin were predictors of NODAT. ROC analysis showed that an adiponectin concentration of 11.4 μg/mL had a significant negative prediction for NODAT risk (sensitivity: 81% and specificity: 70%). Of the inflammatory markers studied, adiponectin proved to be an independent predictor of NODAT.