Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Asynchrony of left ventricular systolic performance after the first acute myocardial infarction in patients with narrow QRS complexes: Doppler tissue imaging study.

BACKGROUND Left ventricular (LV) electromechanical delay results in asynchronized contraction. However, it is not known if the presence of cardiac diseases without QRS prolongation may result in interventricular or intraventricular asynchrony. Doppler tissue imaging is now established for detecting regional contractile abnormalities and asynchrony in the LV. OBJECTIVES The aim of the study was to assess the degree of LV asynchrony after the first acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in patients with a narrow QRS complex using Doppler tissue imaging and correlate this with the site and extent of the infarction. METHODS Echocardiography with Doppler tissue imaging was performed within 1 week of AMI in 155 patients and compared with 50 age- and sex-matched healthy volunteers. Regional myocardial velocities were assessed at the 4 mitral annular sites, and the corresponding systolic velocity (Sm), early diastolic velocity (Em), time to peak Sm (Ts), and time to peak Em (Te) were measured. To assess LV synchronicity, SDs of Ts (Ts-SD) and Te (Te-SD) of all the 4 mitral annular sites were computed. Location and size of infarct were confirmed by echocardiographic wall-motion score index. RESULTS QRS complex duration was normal in all patients. Wall-motion score index was significantly higher in patients with anterior than inferior AMI (2.02 +/- 0.34 vs 1.24 +/- 0.21, P < .001). Ts-SD was significantly higher in patient than control group, and in patients with anterior than inferior AMI (38.21 +/- 2.59 vs 21.06 +/- 0.52 milliseconds and 43.18 +/- 3.77 vs 33.24 +/- 1.4 milliseconds, respectively, P < .001 for each), whereas Te-SD did not differ significantly among these groups (20.35 +/- 1.77 vs 18.17 +/- 1.14 milliseconds and 21.6 +/- 1.35 vs 19.1 +/- 1.11 milliseconds, respectively, P > .05 for each). A strong positive correlation was detected between LV systolic asynchrony (Ts-SD) and wall-motion score index (r = .77), LV mass (r = .67), LV end-systolic dimension (r = .65), and LV end-diastolic dimension (r = .5). The correlation was negative with LV ejection fraction (r = -.70) and Sm (r = -.6); the correlation was weak with Em (r = -.33) (P < .001 for all). In multivariate logistic regression analysis, infarct size was found to be the most independent predictor for systolic asynchrony (odds ratio 3.59, 95% confidence interval [1.43-9.33], P < .001). CONCLUSION AMI has a significant impact on regional myocardial contractility and LV systolic (but not diastolic) synchronicity early in the course even in the absence of QRS widening or bundle branch block. The degree of LV systolic asynchrony is greater with anterior than inferior AMI and mainly determined by infarct size.
Folate intake and risk of oral and pharyngeal cancer.

BACKGROUND Diet has been recognised as having a role in the aetiology of oral and pharyngeal cancer, and dietary factors may account for 10-15% of cases in Europe. Folate deficiency has been linked to risk of several cancers, but has not been studied adequately with respect to oral cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS This case-control study, conducted in Italy and French-speaking Switzerland, included 749 patients with incident cancer of the oral cavity and pharynx, and 1772 hospital controls with acute, non-neoplastic conditions. The interviews used a validated food frequency questionnaire. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated using multiple logistic regression. RESULTS The ORs were 0.68 (95% CI 0.52-0.88) for the intermediate tertile and 0.53 (95% CI 0.40-0.69) for the highest tertile of dietary folate intake, compared with the lowest tertile. No heterogeneity was found in strata of gender, age, methionine intake or alcohol consumption. The combined OR for low-folate and high-alcohol intake versus high-folate and low-alcohol intake was 22.3 (95% CI 13.1-38). CONCLUSIONS Our study supports a protective role of folate against oral and pharyngeal carcinogenesis. Compared with low folate intake, a consistent reduction in risk was already observed from intermediate levels of intake, suggesting that cancer risk may be related to relative folate deficiency.
The STAT3-IGFBP5 axis is critical for IL-6/gp130-induced premature senescence in human fibroblasts

Cells undergo senescence in response to various conditions, including telomere erosion, oncogene activation and multiple cytokines. One of these cytokines, interleukin-6 (IL‑6), not only functions in the immune system, but also promotes cellular senescence and cancer. Here we demonstrate that IL‑6 and the soluble IL‑6 receptor (sIL‑6R) induce premature senescence in normal human fibroblasts by establishing a senescence-inducing circuit involving the signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) and insulin-like growth factor-binding protein 5 (IGFBP5). Stimulating TIG3 fibroblast cells with IL‑6/sIL‑6R sequentially caused an increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS) as early as day 1, followed by the DNA damage response, p53 accumulation and, finally, senescence on days 8–10. We found that STAT3 was required for the events leading to senescence, including the initial early-phase ROS increase and the induction of IL‑1α/β, IL‑6 and CXCL8 mRNAs 4–5 d after IL‑6/sIL‑6R stimulation, suggesting that STAT3’s role is indirect. We searched for STAT3-downstream molecule(s) responsible for the senescence-inducing activity in the supernatants of stimulated TIG3 and identified IGFBP5 as a major STAT3 mediator, because IGFBP5 was expressed from the early phase through the entire senescence process and was responsible for IL‑6/STAT3-induced ROS increase and premature senescence. Thus, IL‑6/sIL‑6R forms a senescence-inducing circuit involving the STAT3-IGFBP5 axis as a key triggering and reinforcing component.
Entering the Conversation

Much has been written recently about the role of talk in content-area learning, including science learning. However, there is still much to be learned about how teachers begin to engage students in the kinds of peer-to-peer conversations that help them make sense of their investigations in science and that advance their conceptual understandings. This study was designed to follow teachers as they received professional development about involving students in sense-making science talk and then attempted to enact the lessons of the professional development in an urban middle school science classroom. We present an analysis of the challenges that surrounded two teachers’ efforts to engage urban grade 6 and 7 students in sense-making talk around science concepts, as well as the conditions under which students began to engage in connected and evidence-rich talk.
Effect of phytase with or without multienzyme supplementation on performance and nutrient digestibility of young broiler chicks fed mash or crumble diets

A total of 210 unsexed 1-day old Arbor Acres broiler chicks were wing banded and randomly distributed among 30 cages of 7 birds per cage keeping equal initial BW during days 1–20 of age. A factorial design (2×3) was used in which there were two feed forms (mash vs crumble diet) and three enzyme treatments (unsupplemented, phytase, phytase plus multienzyme). Each treatment was replicated 5 times with 7 chicks per replicate. Body weight (BW), body weight gain (BWG) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) of fed chicks were significantly improved when the crumble diet was administered. However, feed intake of chicks fed on the crumble feeds was significantly lower than those fed the mash diet. Digestibility of ether extract and crude fiber was significantly greater in groups fed the crumble diet than those fed the mash diet. Enzyme supplementation significantly and similarly increased growth and production index, and improved FCR. Also greater digestibility of crude protein and crude ash was observed but growth during days 8–14 of age and crude fibre digestibility were significantly greater in chicks receiving the multienzyme plus phytase supplement than those receiving phytase alone. Crumble feed supplemented with multienzyme resulted in the highest performance and nutrient digestibility of broilers during days 1–20 of age.
Missing Information Reconstruction for Single Remote Sensing Images Using Structure-Preserving Global Optimization

Filling missing information or removing special objects is often required in the applications of high spatial resolution images. A novel single-image reconstruction method is presented in this letter to solve this task, without the use of any complementary data. First, the spatial pattern of the image is obtained by the statistics of similar patch offsets in the known regions, which provide reliable information for reconstructing the image. The missing regions are then filled by combining a series of shifted pixels via global optimization. The proposed method was tested on a cloudy image for cloud removal and on a public image for military object concealment. The experimental results show that the proposed method can produce visually convincing and coherent reconstructed images, and the accuracy of the reconstruction is better than the existing noncomplementation methods.
Approaches to establishing multicast overlays

In the past a few years, provision of an Internet-scale multicast with the use of application-level routing components has generated a lots of interests both within the research community and in the commercial world. Overlay multicast is a concept representing such multicast scheme. Overlay multicast offers accelerated deployment, simplified configuration, and better access control. In this paper we present an overview of the existing overlay multicast solutions and classify them according to different criteria. Also we compared the performance between topology-independent and topology-aware end-system multicast and performance difference of topology-aware end-system multicast and proxy-based multicast.
Mice lacking the transcription factor CIITA--a second look.

We have generated a second line of mice lacking a transcription factor thought to be a critical regulator of MHC class II gene expression, CIITA (for class II transactivator). Our and the previously published lines differ in the deletion that was engineered and by the fact that we removed the neomycin-resistance promoter and structural gene via the cre-loxP recombination system. Characterization of our line led to two new findings. First, a substantial number of cells can express class II molecules in the absence of CIITA, albeit at 5-fold reduced levels, most notably dendritic cells in s.c. lymph nodes; therefore, the CIITA gene cannot be an absolute 'master gene' controlling the expression of class II molecules, as had been thought. Second, in contrast to recent results on human cell lines, CIITA is not critically involved in the IFN-gamma-induced up-regulation of MHC class I genes.
The dual quaternion approach to hand-eye calibration

In order to relate measurements made by a sensor mounted on a mechanical link to the robot's coordinate frame we must first estimate the transformation between the sensor and the link frame. In this paper we introduce the use of dual quaternions which are the algebraic counterpart of screws. We prove algebraically that if we consider the camera and motor transformations as screws, then only the line coefficients of the screw axes are relevant regarding the hand-eye calibration. This new parametrization enables us to simultaneously solve for the hand-eye rotation and translation using the singular value decomposition.
Speaker Age: A First Step From Analysis To Synthesis

A first tentative step towards synthesis of age was made in three pilot studies of speaker age. The first was a perceptual study, where results showed that some speakers are more typical for their age than others, and that listeners are able to age estimate single word stimuli considerably better than chance. In the second study an auditive and acoustic analysis of the same material indicated that older voices contain more variability, that some cues, including spectral quality and VOT, may be more important than others (e.g. F0), and that combinations of several cues are probably used for age perception. In the third study, natural, synthesized and resynthesized stimuli were used in a second listening test. Results indicated that spectral information and duration are more important than F0 for age perception. The results from these studies will be used in future research with more data and formant synthesis.
Habitual intake of flavonoid subclasses and incident hypertension in adults.

BACKGROUND Dietary flavonoids have beneficial effects on blood pressure in intervention settings, but there is limited information on habitual intake and risk of hypertension in population-based studies. OBJECTIVE We examined the association between habitual flavonoid intake and incident hypertension in a prospective study in men and women. DESIGN A total of 87,242 women from the Nurses' Health Study (NHS) II, 46,672 women from the NHS I, and 23,043 men from the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (HPFS) participated in the study. Total flavonoid and subclass intakes were calculated from semiquantitative food-frequency questionnaires collected every 4 y by using an updated and extended US Department of Agriculture database. RESULTS During 14 y of follow-up, 29,018 cases of hypertension in women and 5629 cases of hypertension in men were reported. In pooled multivariate-adjusted analyses, participants in the highest quintile of anthocyanin intake (predominantly from blueberries and strawberries) had an 8% reduction in risk of hypertension [relative risk (RR): 0.92; 95% CI: 0.86, 0.98; P < 0.03] compared with that for participants in the lowest quintile of anthocyanin intake; the risk reduction was 12% (RR: 0.88; 95% CI: 0.84, 0.93; P < 0.001) in participants ≤60 y of age and 0.96 (0.91, 1.02) in participants >60 y of age (P for age interaction = 0.02). Although intakes of other subclasses were not associated with hypertension, pooled analyses for individual compounds suggested a 5% (95% CI: 0.91, 0.99; P = 0.005) reduction in risk for the highest compared with the lowest quintiles of intake of the flavone apigenin. In participants ≤60 y of age, a 6% (95% CI: 0.88, 0.97; P = 0.002) reduction in risk was observed for the flavan-3-ol catechin when the highest and the lowest quintiles were compared. CONCLUSIONS Anthocyanins and some flavone and flavan-3-ol compounds may contribute to the prevention of hypertension. These vasodilatory properties may result from specific structural similarities (including the B-ring hydroxylation and methyoxylation pattern).
Characteristics and surgical outcomes of pediatric rhegmatogenous retinal detachment

Purpose To describe the characteristics and surgical outcomes of pediatric rhegmatogenous retinal detachment. Methods A retrospective study of pediatric patients (15 years old or younger) who had undergone primary surgery for rhegmatogenous retinal detachment was conducted. Patients were divided into five groups according to the predisposing factors: trauma (group 1), myopia (group 2), atopic dermatitis (group 3), congenital or developmental anomalies (group 4), and others (group 5). Results A total of 48 eyes of 44 patients were included in this study. There were 18 eyes (37.5%) in group 1, twelve eyes (25.0%) in group 2, six eyes (12.5%) in group 3, five eyes (10.4%) in group 4, and seven eyes (14.6%) in group 5. The initial retinal reattachment rate was 89% in group 1, 100% in group 2, 83% in group 3, 20% in group 4, and 86% in group 5 (P = 0.002). The final retinal reattachment rate was 100% in group 1, 100% in group 2, 100% in group 3, 80% in group 4, and 86% in group 5 (P = 0.16). The frequency of visual acuity of 0.1 or better after surgery was 100% in group 1, 92% in group 2, 83% in group 3, 40% in group 4, and 71% in group 5 (P = 0.01). Conclusion The overall surgical outcome was successful, but the patients in group 4 had the lowest initial reattachment rate and the worst visual prognosis.
LexSubNC: A Dataset of Lexical Substitution for Nominal Compounds

In the context of NLP tasks such as text simplification, lexicons containing information about semantically related words are an important resource for evaluating the quality of the system output. Existing resources containing lexical substitutes have been built with a focus on single words. In this paper, we present a lexical substitution dataset for Portuguese nominal compounds. The compounds have varying degrees of compositionality, conventionality and frequency, and we investigate the impact of these characteristics on the suggestions of lexical substitution made by native speakers. No strong correlations are found for these factors on the number or type of responses provided. However, a significant effect of compositionality is found in the use of one of the component words (head or modifier) as a substitute. The resulting resource, LexSubNC, contains over 1,500 manually validated substitutes for 180 compounds, further classified according to the type of response.
English in Argentina: attitudes of MBA students

This paper addresses the issue of English in South America through the investigation of attitudes towards English by a group of MBA students in Argentina. To investigate their attitudes, a survey questionnaire was administered. Its analysis and the relationship between attitudes and the socio–political environment are explored in this paper. The findings suggest a close association between English and the job market, while they also indicate a lack of sociolinguistic awareness vis–a–vis non–native users of English elsewhere. As part of the discussion, I make connections between the historical moment of Argentina and the perceptions of the role of a world language such as English. The paper concludes with a call for a more conscientious inclusion of issues pertaining to the sociolinguistics of the global spread of English as part of the classroom curriculum.
Appraising Public Television Programs: Toward an Interpretive and Comparative Evaluation Model

Public television programs are clearly unique from those produced for commercial broadcast. However, unique appraisal guidelines for evaluating public television programs do not exist for archivists. Critical in developing an appraisal model for such programs is an understanding of the history of public broadcasting in the United States, the politics underlying that history, and the entities responsible for the production of public television programs. Past and current appraisal theories also inform the criteria used in the author's appraisal model for public television programs, the application of which is demonstrated for four different types of public television programs.
XFIS: an XML filtering system based on string representation and matching

Information-filtering systems constitute a critical component of modern information-seeking applications. As the number of users grows and the amount of information available becomes even bigger, it is imperative to employ scalable and efficient representation and filtering techniques. Typically, the use of eXtensible Markup Language (XML) representation entails profile representation with the use of the XPath query language and the employment of efficient heuristic techniques for constraining the complexity of the filtering mechanism. In this paper, we propose an efficient technique for matching user profiles that is based on the use of holistic twig-matching algorithms and is more effective, in terms of time and space complexities, in comparison with previous techniques. The proposed algorithm is able to handle order matching of user profiles, while its main positive aspect is the envisaging of a representation based on Prufer sequences that permits the effective investigation of node relationships. Experimental results showed that the proposed algorithm outperforms the previous algorithms in XML filtering both in space and time aspects.
Publishing, Linking and Annotating Events via Interactive Timelines: an Earth Sciences Case Study

Events are a critical entity for documenting information within many domains - and yet they are one class of information that, to date, has been relatively neglected with regard to both publishing on the Semantic Web and semantically annotating. In this paper we describe how we enable the interoperable integration, annotation and linking of information about major events from the earth sciences domain, by adopting a Linked Data approach to major events (earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions) and the timelines and annotations that capture additional domain-expert knowledge. Firstly we describe the common Event, Timeline, Annotation and TemporalRelation ontologies that we use to enable interoperability and exchange of information about events and the relationships between them. We then harvest data describing major geological events from multiple authoritative sources, map it to our model(s) and publish it as RDF triples to the Web of Linked Data. We then describe the semantic annotation system that we have developed that enables the discovery, retrieval and ontology-based markup of such event data via interactive timelines. The resulting annotations significantly enhance the discovery and re-use of information about major geological events. More importantly these annotation tools enable scientists to document, share and discuss their hypotheses about the temporal relationships between such events.
Measurement and Analysis of Current Noise in Chopper Amplifiers

This paper presents a theoretical analysis and measurements of the current noise of several chopper instrumentation amplifiers, which demonstrate that the charge injection and clock feed-through associated with the MOSFETs of the input chopper give rise to significant input current and current noise. In combination with high source impedances, this “chopper noise” is converted to voltage noise, which may then be a significant contributor to the amplifier's total input-referred voltage noise. Chopper noise has a white power spectral density, whose magnitude is roughly proportional to the chopping frequency. Design guidelines are proposed to reduce chopper noise, as well as the use of a clock-bootstrapped chopper, which generates significantly less noise than a traditional chopper.
Sensitive Periods for Developing a Robust Trait of Appetitive Aggression

Violent behavior can be intrinsically rewarding; especially combatants fighting in current civil wars present with elevated traits of appetitive aggression. The majority of these fighters were recruited as children or adolescents. In the present study, we test whether there is a developmental period where combatants are sensitive for developing a robust trait of appetitive aggression. We investigated 95 combatants in their demobilization process that were recruited at different ages in the Kivu regions of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Using random forest with conditional inference trees, we identified recruitment at the ages from 16 and 17 years as being predictive of the level of appetitive aggression; the number of lifetime, perpetrated acts was the most important predictor. We conclude that high levels of appetitive aggression develop in ex-combatants, especially in those recruited during their middle to late teenage, which is a developmental period marked by a natural inclination to exercise physical force. Consequently, ex-combatants may remain vulnerable for aggressive behavior patterns and re-recruitment unless they are provided alternative strategies for dealing with their aggression.