Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Induction therapy before surgery improves survival in patients with clinical T3N0 esophageal cancer: a nationwide study in Taiwan.

The utility of induction therapy (IT) in patients with resectable esophageal cancer remains controversial, especially when clinical evidence of nodal metastases is lacking. We sought to compare the survival impact of IT versus upfront surgery (US) in patients with cT3N0 esophageal cancer. We searched the Taiwan Cancer Registry for patients with cT3N0 esophageal cancer who underwent US or IT between 2008 and 2013. Multivariate Cox regression analysis was used to analyze the potential benefits of IT in terms of overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS). Of the 11752 patients with esophageal cancer included in the nationwide database, 762 (6.5%) had cT3N0 disease. Most cases (720 [94.5%]) had a histological diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma. Of them, 135 received IT (the IT group) and 237 received surgery first (the US group). In the US group, pretreatment clinical staging was accurate in 47.9% of patients. Twenty-one (8.97%) were clinically overstaged (pT1-2N0), whereas 101 (43.17%) were clinically understaged (pT4N0 or pTanyN1-3). The presence of unexpected nodal metastases was identified in 92.1% of clinically understaged patients. In the IT group, 28 (20.74%) patients did not proceed to surgery after IT. The use of IT was associated with higher R0 resection rates and fewer pathological nodal metastases, despite unexpected M1 disease being more common (all P< 0.05). The 5-year OS rate was significantly higher (42%) in the IT group than in the US group (33%, P= 0.032). Similar findings were observed in terms of 5-year DFS (37% in the IT group versus 29% in the US group, P= 0.009). Multivariate analysis identified US (hazard ratio: 1.42, P= 0.03) and non-R0 resection (hazard ratio: 1.58, P= 0.03) as independent adverse prognostic factors. We found that 43.17% of patients with cT3N0 disease undergoing primary surgery had their disease understaged. The use of IT before esophagectomy significantly improves OS and DFS in patients with clinical T3N0 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.
Reversing congestive heart failure with endothelin receptor antagonists.

Eight years have passed since endothelin-1 (ET-1) was isolated from the supernatant of cultured porcine endothelial cells.1 In addition to exerting potent and prolonged vasoconstrictor effects on both venous and arterial smooth muscle cells, ET-1 has a diverse set of biological activities (such as positive inotropic2 and chronotropic3 effects on cardiac myocytes, proliferative effects on various cells,4 and stimulation of hormone release and modulation of central nervous activities5 ). Moreover, it has recently been elucidated that the mice homozygous for ET-1 null mutation represent not only cardiovascular malformations but also morphological abnormalities of the pharyngeal arch–derived craniofacial tissues and organs,6 7 indicating that ET-1 is essential to normal embryonic development. To date, ET-1 is known to be the sole vasoactive peptide that is involved in normal morphogenesis. Furthermore, a recent in vitro study has confirmed the involvement of ET-1 as an autocrine factor in pressure overload–induced cardiac hypertrophy.8 Many studies have found that the ET-1 level is increased in the plasma of symptomatic congestive heart failure (CHF) patients,9 10 11 12 13 14 and the concentrations increase as the severity of CHF increases. Namely, the elevation of circulating ET-1 levels in CHF has been shown to be negatively correlated with left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) and cardiac index and positively correlated with New York Heart Association functional class, left ventricular (LV) end-diastolic volume index,15 left atrial pressure,16 and extent of pulmonary hypertension.10 Moreover, plasma ET-1 levels in the subacute phase after myocardial infarction provide prognostic information independent of clinical and biochemical variables including patient age, previous treatment for systemic hypertension, presence of clinical heart failure, and the levels of plasma atrial natriuretic factor that is an established neurohumoral prognostic marker of CHF.17 Plasma levels of big ET-1, which …
NRC-Canada at SMM4H Shared Task: Classifying Tweets Mentioning Adverse Drug Reactions and Medication Intake

Our team, NRC-Canada, participated in two shared tasks at the AMIA-2017 Workshop on Social Media Mining for Health Applications (SMM4H): Task 1 - classification of tweets mentioning adverse drug reactions, and Task 2 - classification of tweets describing personal medication intake. For both tasks, we trained Support Vector Machine classifiers using a variety of surface-form, sentiment, and domain-specific features. With nine teams participating in each task, our submissions ranked first on Task 1 and third on Task 2. Handling considerable class imbalance proved crucial for Task 1. We applied an under-sampling technique to reduce class imbalance (from about 1:10 to 1:2). Standard n-gram features, n-grams generalized over domain terms, as well as general-domain and domain-specific word embeddings had a substantial impact on the overall performance in both tasks. On the other hand, including sentiment lexicon features did not result in any improvement.
In Situ Caries Models

By using in situ models, we have the potential to study both fundamental aspects of the caries process as well as more applied research problems such as the effect of food on dental caries and the role of fluoride in caries prevention in human subjects without actually causing caries in the natural dentition. The key experimental parameters that need to be considered in the development of an in situ model are the characteristics of the subject panel, the physical design of the model, the type of hard tissue substrate and the method of assessing mineral status, and the study design and clinical protocol. Each parameter must be carefully considered in relation to the objectives of the research, study design requirements, ethical considerations, impact on clinical relevance, and impact on the control of variation. The major source of variation associated with in situ models should be of biological and not experimental origin. The design and conduct of proper in situ model studies require a clear understanding of the caries process, sound analytical support, and a knowledge of how to work with research subjects to achieve a high level of compliance. Given the complex nature of caries, a combination of hard tissue substrates-including sound, surface-softened lesions and subsurface lesions-may be necessary to model all aspects of caries progression and prevention successfully. Internal validation of in situ models using fluoride dose-response controls is considered to be necessary for studies evaluating the efficacy of new fluoride dentifrice formulations.
Adiponectin Prevents Cerebral Ischemic Injury Through Endothelial Nitric Oxide Synthase–Dependent Mechanisms

Background— Adiponectin is a fat-derived plasma protein that has beneficial actions on cardiovascular disorders. A low level of plasma adiponectin is associated with increased mortality after ischemic stroke; however, the causal role of adiponectin in ischemic stroke is unknown. Methods and Results— To explore the role of adiponectin in the development of acute cerebral injury, we subjected adiponectin-deficient (APN-KO) and wild-type (WT) mice to 1 hour of middle cerebral artery occlusion followed by 23 hours of reperfusion. APN-KO mice exhibited enlarged brain infarction and increased neurological deficits after ischemia-reperfusion compared with WT mice. Conversely, adenovirus-mediated supplementation of adiponectin significantly reduced cerebral infarct size in WT and APN-KO mice. APN-KO mice showed decreased cerebral blood flow during ischemia by laser speckle flowmetry methods. Adiponectin colocalized within the cerebral vascular endothelium under transient ischemic conditions by immunohistochemical analysis. Phosphorylation of endothelial nitric oxide synthase in ischemic brain tissues and the production of nitric oxide metabolites in plasma were attenuated in APN-KO mice compared with WT mice. Adenovirus-mediated administration of adiponectin stimulated endothelial nitric oxide synthase phosphorylation and nitric oxide metabolites during cerebral ischemia in both WT and APN-KO mice. Neuronal nitric oxide synthase expression during ischemia did not differ between WT and APN-KO mice. Adenovirus-mediated delivery of adiponectin did not affect brain infarction in mice deficient in endothelial nitric oxide synthase. Conclusions— These data provide causal evidence that adiponectin exerts a cerebroprotective action through an endothelial nitric oxide synthase–dependent mechanism. Adiponectin could represent a molecular target for the prevention of ischemic stroke.
Error analysis for determination of accuracy of an ultrasound navigation system for head and neck surgery

Objective: The use of conventional CT- or MRI-based navigation systems for head and neck surgery is unsatisfactory due to tissue shift. Moreover, changes occurring during surgical procedures cannot be visualized. To overcome these drawbacks, we developed a novel ultrasound-guided navigation system for head and neck surgery. A comprehensive error analysis was undertaken to determine the accuracy of this new system. Materials and Methods: The evaluation of the system accuracy was essentially based on the method of error definition for well-established fiducial marker registration methods (point-pair matching) as used in, for example, CT- or MRI-based navigation. This method was modified in accordance with the specific requirements of ultrasound-guided navigation. The Fiducial Localization Error (FLE), Fiducial Registration Error (FRE) and Target Registration Error (TRE) were determined. Results: In our navigation system, the real error (the TRE actually measured) did not exceed a volume of 1.58 mm3 with a probability of 0.9. A mean value of 0.8 mm (standard deviation: 0.25 mm) was found for the FRE. The quality of the coordinate tracking system (Polaris localizer) could be defined with an FLE of 0.4 ± 0.11 mm (mean ± standard deviation). The quality of the coordinates of the crosshairs of the phantom was determined with a deviation of 0.5 mm (standard deviation: 0.07 mm). Conclusion: The results demonstrate that our newly developed ultrasound-guided navigation system shows only very small system deviations and therefore provides very accurate data for practical applications.
Cytokine IL‐1 beta but not IL‐1 alpha promoter polymorphism is associated with Alzheimer disease in a population from the Canary Islands, Spain

Aims: Previous studies have reported the presence of low‐grade inflammation in Alzheimer disease (AD). Based on these data, our work attempts to investigate the effects of some promoter polymorphisms of pro‐inflammatory cytokines [interleukin (IL)‐1 alpha and IL‐1 beta] on AD.
I/Q imbalance modeling of quadrature wireless transceiver analog front-ends in SIMULINK

Quadrature transceivers utilize complex signal processing in the analog front-end (AFE) to tackle the image problem in frequency up/downconversion. The image-rejection performance is limited by the unavoidable I/Q imbalance throughout the AFE. In this paper, an in-depth analysis and modeling of I/Q mismatch effects in 3 different AFE frequency up/downconverters in SIMULINK are presented to better illustrate their image-rejection performance and to establish the most effective solution to improve it. The modeled AFEs include the conventional quadrature up/down-converter, double-quadrature up/downconverter with passive quadrature generator and the analog-double quadrature sampling (A-DQS) scheme for IF-to-baseband downconversion in complex-IF receiver path.
Shear stress increases endothelial hyaluronan synthase 2 and hyaluronan synthesis especially in regard to an atheroprotective flow profile

Recent studies revealed that in vivo the inner blood vessel surface is lined with an endothelial surface layer at least 0.5 μm thick, which serves as an aegis, protecting the vessel wall from arteriosclerosis. Hyaluronan seems to be a constitutive component in regard to the atheroprotective properties of this surface structure. It has been shown that arterial pulsatile laminar blood flow increases the thickness of this surface layer in vivo, while it is significantly reduced at atheroprone regions with disturbed flow. This study was undertaken to reveal whether endothelial hyaluronan synthesis via hyaluronan synthase 2 (HAS2) can be changed by different shear stress conditions in vitro, especially in regard to an undisturbed, arterial‐like pulsatile flow profile. Human umbilical vein endothelial cells, exposed to constant or pulsatile shear stress in a cone‐and‐plate system, were analysed for HAS2 expression by real‐time RT‐PCR and immunoblotting, and for hyaluronan by ELISA. Hyaluronan synthase 2 mRNA and protein were found to be transiently increased in a shear stress‐dependent manner via the phosphatidylinositol 3‐kinase–Akt pathway. Especially pulsatile, arterial‐like shear stress conditions induced enzyme and hyaluronan effectively, while lower shear stress that continuously changed its direction did not induce any differences in comparison with control cultures not exposed to shear stress. These experiments provide a link between the production of a constitutive component of the endothelial surface layer by endothelial cells and blood flow.
Improving the Performance of Computer Systems that Hide Information In Audio Signal from Specific Musical Genres

Hiding secret information in music data and transporting them over the Internet is a common practice in many defense related applications. However, knowing what music the system should hide the secret information in to allow optimal information retrieval in the face of various attacks can be difficult. A recent paper has shown that under its purposed method classical and country music are the two best genres for hidden information retrieval. Hence the automated systems that are used for secret information hiding may require sophisticated processing requirements to classify and select classical and country music data on-demand. We proposed a simple data expansion algorithm with SVM application and conducted an empirical study to evaluate the classification performance. We used GTZAN data set, 1517-Artist data set and a variety of mp3s from our personal collection to evaluate the performance. We also used the Lagrangian Support Vector Machine to extract low-dimensional structures from the high-dimensional music data sets. Finally we present a high performance hybrid system using Java and Single node Apache-Hadoop genres classification.
Jamming in slotted ALOHA multihop packet radio networks

The properties of a packet radio network in the presence of active interference are discussed. Both the jammer and the network nodes are subject to an average power constraint. The network uses slotted ALOHA multiple access schemes and some simple fixed routing strategies with constant transmitter power. By using a game-theoretic approach the situation is considered as a two-person constant-sum game. The author defines network performance as the values of the game in terms of the expected forward progress of a packet. Both the performance and the optimum strategies for access and jamming are investigated. >
Effects of Red Palm Oil on Myocardial Antioxidant Enzymes, Nitric Oxide Synthase and Heart Function in Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of antioxidants rich red palm oil (RPO) supplementation on cardiac oxidative stress known as crucial factor deteriorating heart function in hypertension. 3-month-old, male spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and normotensive Wistar Kyoto rats (WKY) were fed standard rat chow without or with RPO (0.2 mL/day/5 weeks). General characteristic of rats were registered. Left ventricular tissue (LV) was used to determine expression of superoxide dismutases (SOD1, SOD2) and glutathione peroxidases (Gpx) as well as activity of nitric oxide synthase (NOS). Functional parameters of the heart were examined during basal conditions and at the early-phase of post-ischemic reperfusion using Langendorff-perfused system. RPO intake significantly reduced elevated blood pressure and total NOS activity as well as increased lowered expression of mitochondrial SOD2 in SHR hearts during basal condition. Moreover, RPO supplementation resulted in suppression of elevated heart rate, increase of reduced coronary flow and enhancement of systolic and diastolic heart function at the early-phase of post-ischemic reperfusion. It is concluded that SHR benefit from RPO intake due to decrease of blood pressure, amelioration of oxidative stress and protection of heart function that was deteriorated by post-ischemic reperfusion.
Role of the lipid rafts in the life cycle of canine coronavirus

Coronaviruses are enveloped RNA viruses that have evolved complex relationships with their host cells, and modulate their lipid composition, lipid synthesis and signalling. Lipid rafts, enriched in sphingolipids, cholesterol and associated proteins, are special plasma membrane microdomains involved in several processes in viral infections. The extraction of cholesterol leads to disorganization of lipid microdomains and to dissociation of proteins bound to lipid rafts. Because cholesterol-rich microdomains appear to be a general feature of the entry mechanism of non-eneveloped viruses and of several coronaviruses, the purpose of this study was to analyse the contribution of lipids to the infectivity of canine coronavirus (CCoV). The CCoV life cycle is closely connected to plasma membrane cholesterol, from cell entry to viral particle production. The methyl-β-cyclodextrin (MβCD) was employed to remove cholesterol and to disrupt the lipid rafts. Cholesterol depletion from the cell membrane resulted in a dose-dependent reduction, but not abolishment, of virus infectivity, and at a concentration of 15 mM, the reduction in the infection rate was about 68 %. MβCD treatment was used to verify if cholesterol in the envelope was required for CCoV infection. This resulted in a dose-dependent inhibitory effect, and at a concentration of 9 mM MβCD, infectivity was reduced by about 73 %. Since viral entry would constitute a target for antiviral strategies, inhibitory molecules interacting with viral and/or cell membranes, or interfering with lipid metabolism, may have strong antiviral potential. It will be interesting in the future to analyse the membrane microdomains in the CCoV envelope.
Online-Calibrated CS-Based Indoor Localization Over IEEE 802.11 Wireless Infrastructure

Recent technological achievements have made it low cost to realize indoor localization using the received signal strength (RSS) information from Wi-Fi signals. However, the current RSS-based indoor localization techniques have two major challenges: one is that the RSS signal is quite sensitive to channel conditions, and the other is that sufficient number of access points (APs) is needed to provide enough RSS measurements for guaranteeing good performance. To solve these problems, this paper proposes an adaptive compressive sensing (CS) based indoor localization method based on the IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi standard. The novel feature of this method is to dynamically adjust both the dictionary and the sparse solution using an online dictionary learning (DL) technology so that the location solution can better match the real-time RSS scenario. Meanwhile, an improved approximate l0 norm minimization algorithm is presented to enhance sparse recovery speed and reduce the number of APs required by indoor localization systems. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is demonstrated by experimental results where the proposed algorithm yields substantial improvement for localization performance and reduces computation complexity.
Effects of Wharton's jelly cells of the human umbilical cord on acute spinal cord injury in rats, and expression of interleukin-1β and nerve growth factor in spinal cord tissues

To study the effects of Wharton's jelly cells (WJCs) on acute spinal cord injury (SCI), 81 rats were divided into a sham surgery group, a model group, and a WJC transplantation group (n = 27). Motor functions of the model and WJC transplantation groups were partially recovered, and the recovery was better in the latter group. The WJC transplantation group had integral spinal cord tissues. Compared with the model group, the WJC transplantation group expressed significantly less interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and more nerve growth factor (NGF) (P < 0.05). WJC transplantation changed the microenvironment of the SCI site, inhibited IL-1β expression, increased NGF expression, promoted the recovery of neurological function, and relieved secondary SCI.
CMOS Power Amplifier Integrated Circuit With Dual-Mode Supply Modulator for Mobile Terminals

A CMOS power amplifier integrated circuit with an optimized dual-mode supply modulator is presented. The dual-mode supply modulator, based on a hybrid buck converter consisting of a wideband linear amplifier and a highly efficient switching amplifier, provides two operation modes: envelope tracking (ET) for high average output power and average power tracking (APT) for low output power. For the APT mode, the linear amplifier is switched off and the switching amplifier operates as a normal buck converter to supply DC voltage to the power amplifier according to the average output power. The optimum switch sizes of the switching amplifier were analyzed and applied for each operation mode for higher efficiency. An integrated circuit with a power amplifier and the dual-mode supply modulator was designed and fabricated using a 0.18-μm CMOS process for LTE applications at a frequency of 0.78 GHz. For the 16-QAM uplink LTE signal, the measured efficiency with an ET mode is as high as 45.4%, which is 7.0% higher than that from the stand-alone power amplifier at an average output power of 24 dBm. An efficiency of 14.1% was achieved with an APT mode at an average output power of 9 dBm. This is 3.2% higher than that with the ET mode.
Examination of Recovery In Vitro and In Vivo of Nonculturable Escherichia coli O157:H7

ABSTRACT Escherichia coli O157:H7 (strains ATCC 43895 and FO46) became nonculturable in sterile, distilled, deionized water or after exposure to chlorine. Recovery of nonculturable E. coli O157:H7 was examined by in vitro and in vivo methods. The decline in culturability of starved E. coli O157:H7 was measured by plate count on rich medium. Recovery in vitro of nonculturable cells was conducted with media amended with catalase or sodium pyruvate; however, there was no apparent increase over culturable cell counts on amended versus nonamended media. Although nonculturable E. coli O157:H7 did not recover under in vitro conditions, a mouse model was used to determine if in vivo conditions would provide sufficient conditions for recovery of nonculturable E. coli O157:H7. In separate studies, mice were orally challenged with starvation-induced nonculturable cells (FO46) or chlorine-induced nonculturable cells (43895 and FO46). Passage through the mouse gastrointestinal tract had no effect on recovery of nonculturable (starvation or chlorine induced)E. coli O157:H7 (43895 or FO46), based on analysis of fecal samples. Mouse kidneys were assayed for the presence of Shiga toxin using the Vero cell assay. Differences in cytotoxicity towards Vero cells from kidney samples of mice receiving nonculturable cells and control mice were not significant, suggesting a loss of virulence.