Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ISDR Pattern and Evolution in Patients with Chronic Hepatitis C Treated with Standard Or Peg-Ifn plus Ribavirin

The aim of the study was to characterize the interferon sensitivity determining region (ISDR) mutation pattern and its changes at 4 weeks of treatment in a population of patients infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 1b receiving standard or PEG-IFN plus ribavirin (RBV), to find possible early correlates of therapy outcome. Forty-five patients with chronic hepatitis due to HCV 1b were treated by PEG-IFN-α2b (n=23) or IFN-α2b (n=22) plus RBV 1000–1200 mg/day. They were classified 24 weeks after stopping therapy as sustained responders (SR), relapsers (REL) or non-responders (NR). Sixteen patients were SR, 12 REL and 17 NR. ISDR mutations were evaluated by direct sequencing at baseline in all and after 4 weeks in patients with detectable viraemia (n=30). The frequency of the three ISDR types was 26.7% wild-type, 64.4% intermediate-type and 8.9% mutant-type, without significant difference in their frequency in SR, REL and NR, independent of IFN formulation. Average numbers of mutations in SR, REL and NR were 1.88 ±0.54, 1.33 ±0.33 and 0.94 ±0.25, respectively, P>0.05. The baseline number of ISDR mutations was not related to the extent of viral load decline in the first month of therapy. Sequence analysis of ISDR region performed 4 weeks after starting therapy revealed qualitative or quantitative changes of ISDR sequence in only seven patients, without correlation with response. Thus, in our patients the baseline pattern of ISDR was unrelated to treatment outcome. Selection towards a dominant IFN-resistant strain did not occur under standard or PEG-IFN plus RBV.
Joint Transmit Antenna Selection with Rate Adaptation for Spatial Multiplexing Systems with Limited Feedback

Antenna selection, as a special case of power adaptation, can enhance the capacity of layered space time codes under rate control without any overhead feedback. To efficiently fight back rates quantization, this contribution considers a joint optimization of the best active transmit antennas associated to rate control together with antenna partitioning (i.e., layered multidimensional coding) and decoding order degrees of freedom. We propose an iterative antenna selection, which initializes the decoding order, so as to keep a low computational complexity while achieving near-optimal performance. Gains get all the more important as the signal-to-noise ratio increases.
Hyperventilation-Induced Non-epileptic Seizures in an Adolescent Boy with Pediatric Medical Traumatic Stress.

CASE HISTORY M is a 14-year-old boy presenting with non-epileptic seizures (which are common in children and adolescents) and other functional neurological symptoms in the context of pediatric medical traumatic stress and a complex neurosurgical history. M lives with his mother and 11-year-old brother in government housing in a working-class suburb of a major city. His parents separated when he was six years old. He visits his father on a weekly basis. Mwas born with chromosome 8q21.11 microdeletion syndrome; he has a slightly dysmorphic face, an IQ in the low-average range, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), treatedwith long-acting methylphenidate (30 mg/day). His cognitive difficulties include a slow processing speed (percentile rank of 2) and difficulties in short-term memory, abstract thinking, and forward-planning capabilities. Functionally, M becomes easily frustrated or angry, and gives up in the middle of tasks that he finds challenging.M has a past history of nocturnal enuresis, is farsighted, and wears glasses. In terms of family history, M’s brother and father suffer fromADHD, and his father has a history of learning disabilities as well as anxiety, depression,
Low-power multimedia RISC

Battery-powered multimedia systems challenge designers to pack enormous signal-processing power into a low-power chip. The V830 chip achieves this by combining a special instruction set and fast, 32-bit parallel multiply-adder with internal RAM for quicker memory accesses. This gives the newest entry in the V800 series signal-processing capabilities as fast as the latest fixed-point DSPs.
Using a MRF-BP model with color adaptive training for underwater color restoration

For underwater robotics applications involving monitoring and inspection tasks, it is important to capture quality color images in real time. In this paper, we propose a statistically learning method with an automatic selection of the training set for restoring the color of underwater images. Our statistical model is a Markov Random Field with Belief Propagation (MRF-BP). The quality of the results depends strongly on the trained correlations between the degraded image and its corresponding color image. However, it is not possible to have color ground truth data given the inherent conditions of underwater environments. Thus, we build a color adaptive training set by applying a multiple color space analysis to those frames that present a high change in its distribution from the previous frame and use only those frames for training. Experimental results in real underwater video sequences demonstrate that our approach is feasible, even when visibility conditions are poor, as our method can recover and discriminate between different colors in objects that may seem similar to the human eye.
Rheb GTPase Regulates β-Secretase Levels and Amyloid β Generation*

Background: BACE1 (β-secretase) is an important enzyme in Alzheimer disease pathology, but how it is regulated remains unclear. Results: Rheb GTPase binds and regulates BACE1 levels and its activity, in an mTOR independent manner. Conclusion: Rheb GTPase is a novel physiological regulator of BACE1 pathway. Significance: This study establishes a novel molecular link between Rheb and BACE1 that may have a role in age-related biology and disease. The β-site amyloid precursor protein (APP)-cleaving enzyme 1 (β-secretase, BACE1) initiates amyloidogenic processing of APP to generate amyloid β (Aβ), which is a hallmark of Alzheimer disease (AD) pathology. Cerebral levels of BACE1 are elevated in individuals with AD, but the molecular mechanisms are not completely understood. We demonstrate that Rheb GTPase (Ras homolog enriched in brain), which induces mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) activity, is a physiological regulator of BACE1 stability and activity. Rheb overexpression depletes BACE1 protein levels and reduces Aβ generation, whereas the RNAi knockdown of endogenous Rheb promotes BACE1 accumulation, and this effect by Rheb is independent of its mTOR signaling. Moreover, GTP-bound Rheb interacts with BACE1 and degrades it through proteasomal and lysosomal pathways. Finally, we demonstrate that Rheb levels are down-regulated in the AD brain, which is consistent with an increased BACE1 expression. Altogether, our study defines Rheb as a novel physiological regulator of BACE1 levels and Aβ generation, and the Rheb-BACE1 circuitry may have a role in brain biology and disease.
Referent Selection in Case-Crossover Analyses of Acute Health Effects of Air Pollution

The case-crossover design was proposed for the study of a transient effect of an intermittent exposure on the subsequent occurrence of a rare acute-onset disease. This design can be an alternative to Poisson time series regression for studying the health effects of fine particulate matter air pollution. Characteristics of time-series of particulate matter, including long-term time trends, seasonal trends, and short-term autocorrelations, require that referent selection in the case-crossover design be considered carefully and adapted to minimize bias. We performed simulations to evaluate the bias associated with various referent selection strategies for a proposed case-crossover study of associations between particulate matter and primary cardiac arrest. Some a priori reasonable strategies were associated with a relative bias as large as 10%, but for most strategies the relative bias was less than 2% with confidence interval coverage within 1% of the nominal level. We show that referent selection for case–crossover designs raises the same issues as selection of smoothing method for time series analyses. In addition, conditional logistic regression analysis is not strictly valid for some case–crossover designs, introducing further bias.
[Optical biometry of eyes corrected by phakic intraocular lenses].

PURPOSE The aim of this study was to determine whether eye length measurements obtained with the IOL Master (Zeiss Humphrey) before and after phakic IOL implantation would show any changes. METHODS In a prospective study, we used the IOL Master to measure optical biometry in 25 myopic eyes of 15 patients before and after phakic IOL implantation (PRL, ICL, Artisan). The differences between both axial length measurements were calculated and compared using a nonparametric Wilcoxon test. RESULTS The difference between the preoperative and postoperative measurements ranged from -0.16 mm to 0.06 mm and averaged -0.016 mm, which was not statistically significant (p=0.20). Both measurements correlated in a highly positive manner (r=0.999; p<0.0001). The reproducibility of the preoperative and postoperative axial length measurements was very high (coefficient of variation=0.09% and 0.07%, respectively). The precision was 26 microm for preoperative measurements and 19 microm for postoperative measurements. CONCLUSION Our results showed that postoperative measurements of axial length are highly comparable to preoperative measurements and that optical biometry can achieve highly precise and reliable axial length measurements in eyes with phakic IOLs. This application becomes clinically relevant in evaluating eyes with phakic IOLs that might require cataract surgery. Hence, accurate axial length measurements in eyes with phakic IOLs will be extremely important when cataract occurs in these eyes and when the preoperative measurements are no longer available.
Chronic alcohol exposure alters gene expression in HepG2 cells.

BACKGROUND The liver is the primary site of alcohol metabolism and is highly vulnerable to injuries due to chronic alcohol abuse. Several molecular mechanisms, including oxidative stress and altered cellular metabolism, have been implicated in the development and progression of alcoholic liver disease. We sought to gain further insight into the molecular pathogenesis by studying the effects of ethanol exposure on the global gene expression in HepG2 cells. METHODS HepG2 cells were cultured in the presence or absence of 75 mM ethanol for 9 days, with fresh media daily. Global gene expression changes were studied using Affymetrix GeneChip(®) Human Exon 1.0 ST Arrays. Gene expression differences were validated for 13 genes by quantitative real-time RT-PCR. To identify biological pathways affected by ethanol treatment, differentially expressed genes were analyzed by Ingenuity Pathway Analysis software. RESULTS Long-term ethanol exposure altered the expression of 1,093 genes (false discovery rate ≤ 3%); many of these changes were modest. Long-term ethanol exposure affected several pathways, including acute phase response, amino acid metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism, and lipid metabolism. CONCLUSIONS Global measurements of gene expression show that a large number of genes are affected by chronic ethanol, although most show modest effect. These data provide insight into the molecular pathology resulting from extended alcohol exposure.
Synthetic-ripple modulator for synchronous buck converter

Comprising a hysteretic comparator and a ripple synthesizer, the synthetic-ripple modulator (SRM) allows voltage-hysteretic modulation to be realized in low-voltage buck converters where the natural voltage ripple is too small for reliable hysteretic operation. Circuit implementation, steady-state operation, and design equations are described for an SRM controlling a buck dc-dc converter. The basics are verified experimentally by a buck converter switched at 420 kHz and delivering 10 A at 1.8 V.
LAK: Lasso and K-Means Based Single-Cell RNA-Seq Data Clustering Analysis

The single-cell RNA sequencing provides a way to obtain marker genes of different cells, which lays the foundation for discovering new cell types. The general strategy of achieving this goal is to build a clustering pipeline and derive differentially expressed genes, followed by the cell type enrichment analysis and driving force analysis. Throughout the entire analysis process, clustering models and appropriate methods of dimension reduction are two vital and challenging tasks. In this study, we present a novel method LAK (a computational pipeline for single-cell RNA-seq data clustering analysis using Lasso and K-means based feature selection method) that can be applied to single-cell RNA-seq data by selecting the candidate genes. To deal with the sparse high-dimensional data, we integrated Lasso penalty into clustering method for single-cell RNA-seq data as the feature selection method, which extracts out the genes that have an actual effect on clustering. We also improved the parameter selection algorithm to search the appropriate parameters automatically by binary search according to the size of the data. Compared with other computational approaches, LAK obtains a better performance in reliability, stability, convenience and accuracy applied to the real datasets, the simulation data, and the datasets with a large number of dropout events.
Ultra-thin broadband OMT with turnstile junction

This paper presents an ultra-thin broadband waveguide orthomode transducer (OMT) for low profile reflector antenna feed systems. The presented OMT is composed of a turnstile junction with a metallic pyramid, a circular-to-square waveguide step, and thin combiners/dividers. A broadband design of the OMT is performed by applying a circular-to-square waveguide step to obtain good match. An ultra-thin Ku-band OMT fabricated with the aid of the design techniques has realized wideband excellent performance with very low height, that is, VSWR less than 1.18 over 30% bandwidth and reducing the height to 20.2 mm.
Performance Analysis of Multi-Branch Decode-and-Forward Cooperative Diversity Networks over Nakagami-m Fading Channels

In this paper, the performances analysis of cooperative-diversity networks using adaptive decode-and-forward (DF) relaying over independent non-identical flat Nakagami-m fading channels is investigated. We derive closed-form expressions for the error probability, outage probability and average channel capacity, and analyze their dependence on the channel parameters. In adaptive DF relaying, among M relays that can participate, only C relays (C ≤ M), with good channels to the source, decode and forward (retransmit) the source information to the destination. Then, the destination combines the direct and the indirect signals using maximum ratio combining (MRC) technique. We derive a closed-form expression for the the moment generating function (MGF) of the total signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the destination node. Then, we find a closed-form expression for the probability density function (PDF) of the total SNR at the destination. This PDF is used to derive the closed-form expressions of the performance metrics. Computer simulations are used to validate our analytical results. Results show the significant performance improvement due to the use of the adaptive DF cooperative diversity. Also, results indicate that increasing the number of relays will not always decrease the outage probability.
Experimental Study on the Antihyperlipidemia Effect of Ethanol Extracts from Pericarpium Granati

Objective To observe the lipid-lowering effect of ethanol extracts from Pericarpium Granati(EEPG). Methods Seventy SD rats were randomly divided into control group,model group,low-dose EEPG group(400 mg/kg),middle-dose EEPG group(800 mg/kg),high-dose EEPG group(1600 mg/kg),and positive control group.The medication groups were given corresponding drugs according to the experimental design,and the normal control group and the model group was administered with the same volume of physical saline.After treatment for 4 continuous weeks,the rats were killed with anesthesia,and the serum levels of triglyceride(TG),total cholesterol(TC),high-density lipoprotein cholesterol(HDL-C),low-density lipoprotein cholesterol(LDL-C),superoxide dismutase(SOD),malondialdehyde(MDA),tumor necrosis factor(TNF-α)were measured in rats of each group.Results Compared with the normal control group,the outcomes of TC,TG,LDL-C,MDA and TNF-α in the model group were increased apparently(P 0.05),and HDL-C and SOD decreased apparently(P 0.05). Compared with the model group,the outcomes Of TC,TG,LDL-C,MDA and TNF-α were deceased apparently(P 0.05),and HDL-C,SOD increased apparently(P 0.05)in high-and middle-dose groups and positive control group.Compared with the positive control group,there was no significant differences in the outcomes of TC,TG,LDL-C,HDL-C and MDA in high and middle dosage groups(P 0.05),but there was significant differences in the outcomes of SODand TNF-α. Conclusion EEPG exerts certain lipid-lowering effect,and its mechanism may be related with the increase of anti-oxidation and with the reduction of lipid peroxidation.
Prior-to- and Post-Impact Fall Detection Using Inertial and Barometric Altimeter Measurements

This paper investigates a fall detection system based on the integration of an inertial measurement unit with a barometric altimeter (BIMU). The vertical motion of the body part the BIMU was attached to was monitored on-line using a method that delivered drift-free estimates of the vertical velocity and estimates of the height change from the floor. The experimental study included activities of daily living of seven types and falls of five types, simulated by a cohort of 25 young healthy adults. The downward vertical velocity was thresholded at 1.38 m/s, yielding 80% sensitivity (SE), 100% specificity (SP) and a mean prior-to-impact time of 157 ms (range 40-300 ms). The soft falls, i.e., those with downward vertical velocity above 0.55 m/s and below 1.38 m/s were analyzed post-impact. Six fall detection methods, tuned to achieve 100% SE, were considered to include features of impact, change of posture and height, singularly or in association with one another. No single feature allowed for 100% SP. The detection accuracy marginally improved when the height change was considered in association with either the impact or the change of posture; the post-impact fall detection method that analyzed the impact and the change of posture together achieved 100% SP.
Comparison of FFT/IFFT Designs Utilizing Different Low Power Techniques

Different techniques of power savings in CMOS circuits have been investigated through the years. This work compares the asynchronous approach, the superthreshold approach, and the subthreshold approach in a 128 point FFT processor. The subthreshold design, made in TSMC 65 nm technology, utilizes a 4 kb SRAM with 8T unit cells. The sizing requirements for the 8T cell operated in subthreshold regime is explored as a function of static write margin. The subthreshold processor runs at 1 MHz with an energy consumption of 31 nJ/FFT. Subthreshold approach is seen to be the most energy efficient low power method of the three approaches.
The effects of infertility on sexual functions and dyadic adjustment in couples that present for infertility treatment.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to determine the effects of infertility on sexual functions and dyadic adjustment in infertile couples that seek infertility treatment. MATERIALS AND METHODS The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Golombok-Rust Inventory of Sexual Satisfaction (GRISS), and Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) were administered to the infertility group (n = 220) and control group (n = 110). None of the study participants had an Axis I psychiatric disorder. RESULTS There wasn't a significant difference in BDI score between the 2 groups. None of the study participants had clinical depression. Men in both groups reported more problems according to GRISS total scale and subscale scores (except the avoidance subscale) than the women. Women in both groups reported more problems according to GRISS avoidance subscale score than did the men. Men in the control group reported more problems on the GRISS frequency subscale, as compared men in the infertile group. Women in the control group reported more problems based on GRISS total score, and GRISS frequency, satisfaction, touch, and avoidance subscale scores, as compared to the women in the infertile group. The men in the infertile group were more satisfied with dyadic adjustment than the women in the infertile group. The men and women in the control group had higher DAS total score, and DAS consensus and emotional expression subscale scores. CONCLUSION The differences in sexual functions between the infertile and control groups were not significant. Both women and men in the infertility group reported more dyadic adjustment problems than those in the control group.
Evolutionary Expansion of the Amidohydrolase Superfamily in Bacteria in Response to the Synthetic Compounds Molinate and Diuron

ABSTRACT The amidohydrolase superfamily has remarkable functional diversity, with considerable structural and functional annotation of known sequences. In microbes, the recent evolution of several members of this family to catalyze the breakdown of environmental xenobiotics is not well understood. An evolutionary transition from binuclear to mononuclear metal ion coordination at the active sites of these enzymes could produce large functional changes such as those observed in nature, but there are few clear examples available to support this hypothesis. To investigate the role of binuclear-mononuclear active-site transitions in the evolution of new function in this superfamily, we have characterized two recently evolved enzymes that catalyze the hydrolysis of the synthetic herbicides molinate (MolA) and phenylurea (PuhB). In this work, the crystal structures, mutagenesis, metal ion analysis, and enzyme kinetics of both MolA and PuhB establish that these enzymes utilize a mononuclear active site. However, bioinformatics and structural comparisons reveal that the closest putative ancestor of these enzymes had a binuclear active site, indicating that a binuclear-mononuclear transition has occurred. These proteins may represent examples of evolution modifying the characteristics of existing catalysts to satisfy new requirements, specifically, metal ion rearrangement leading to large leaps in activity that would not otherwise be possible.
Statistical Information Characterization of conserved Non-Coding Elements in vertebrates

Recently, a set of highly conserved non-coding elements (CNEs) has been derived from a comparison between the genomes of the puffer fish, Takifugu or Fugu rubripes, and man. In order to facilitate the identification of these conserved elements in silico, we characterize them by a number of statistical features. We found a pronounced information pattern around CNE borders; although the CNEs themselves are AT rich and have high entropy (complexity), they are flanked by GC-rich regions of low entropy (complexity). We also identified the most abundant motifs within and around of CNEs, and identified those that group around their borders. Like in human promoter regions, the TBP, NF-Y and some other binding motifs are clustered around CNE boundaries, which may suggest a possible transcription regulatory function of CNEs.