Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prognosis of 2,800 patients with epithelial ovarian cancer diagnosed during 1975‐94 and treated at the Norwegian Radium Hospital

BACKGROUND Ovarian cancer patients have a poor prognosis. In Norway, however, the prognosis has improved steadily since the 1950s, the age-adjusted 5-year relative survival reaching 37% in 1989 93. The aim of the present study was to explore the prognosis of patients with epithelial ovarian cancer diagnosed during 1975-94 (the prepaclitaxel period) and treated at The Norwegian Radium Hospital. METHOD Relative risks (RR) of dying and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were derived from multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression models. RESULTS A total of 2,769 patients with epithelial ovarian cancer were included in the present study. Altogether 54% of the patients were diagnosed with advanced stage disease (stages III and IV), whereas 32% were diagnosed with stage I disease. The prognosis of the patients improved from the 1970s to the 1990s, mainly due to increased short-term survival. In multivariate survival analysis, the RR of dying decreased with period of diagnosis. An RR of 0.77 (95% CI=0.66-0.89) was seen in 1990-94 compared with 1975-79. CONCLUSION The short-term survival of patients with epithelial ovarian cancer improved from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. However, no major improvement in the long-term survival was seen.
Genotypic Characterization of Salmonella enteritidis Phage Types by Plasmid Analysis, Ribotyping, and Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis

ABSTRACT Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) was used to resolveXbaI and SpeI macrorestriction fragments from 60 defined phage type (PT) reference strains of Salmonella enteritidis. The level of discrimination was compared to that afforded by plasmid profile analysis and ribotyping. Twenty-eight distinct XbaI pulsed-field profiles (PFPs) were observed, although a single type, PFP X1, predominated. Absence of the 57-kbspv-associated fragment was observed for three PT reference strains, and the profile was designated PFP X1A. The XbaI macrorestriction profiles of a further four PT reference strains were altered by the presence of plasmid-associated bands. Twenty-sixSpeI-generated PFPs (plus one subtype) were observed for the same strains. No SpeI fragment corresponding to the 38-MDa serovar-specific plasmid was detected. The distribution ofXbaI and SpeI profiles did not always correspond, producing a total of 32 combined PFPs for the 60 PT reference strains. This compared with a total of 18 different plasmid profiles and three PvuII ribotypes generated by the same strains. The results of this study indicate that PFGE may offer an improved level of discrimination over other genotypic typing methods for the epidemiological typing of S. enteritidis.
P‐selectin‐dependent leukocyte recruitment and intestinal mucosal injury induced by lactoferrin

Plasma concentrations of lactoferrin relevant to an inflammatory response are known to elicit leukocyteendothelial cell adhesion in mesenteric venules. The objectives of this study were (1) to determine whether exogenously administered lactoferrin causes microvascular and mucosal injury in rat intestine and (2) to assess the contribution of adherent leukocytes to a lactoferrinmediated injury process. Mucosal myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity and vascular protein clearance were monitored in the distal intestine of male Sprague‐Dawley rats. Macroscopic erosive lesions of the mucosa and increases in mucosal MPO and intestinal vascular protein were observed 2 h following the lactoferrin infusion, results consistent with granulocyte accumulation and microvascular protein leakage. These lactoferrin‐induced alterations were significantly attenuated in animals pretreated with a monoclonal antibody (mAb) directed against P‐selectin but not by an E‐selectin‐specific mAb. In another series of experiments, leukocyte adherence/emigration and leakage of fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)‐labeled albumin were measured in rat mesenteric venules using intravital video microscopy. Lactoferrin elicited increases in both leukocyte adhesion/emigration and albumin extravasation, which were attenuated by mAbs directed against P‐selectin but not E‐selectin. These observations indicate that (1) the lactoferrin released by activated neutrophils may lead to significant microvascular and mucosal injury or dysfunction and (2) the lactoferrininduced injury is related to P‐selectin‐mediated adhesion of leukocytes to microvascular endothelium. Our results raise the possibility that neutrophil‐derived lactoferrin contributes to the inflammatory response by promoting further granulocyte accumulation and activation and that mAbs to P‐selectin may be therapeutically beneficial in inflammatory disorders. J. Leukoc. Biol. 55: 771–777; 1994.
Delirium and Catatonia in Critically Ill Patients: The Delirium and Catatonia Prospective Cohort Investigation*

Objectives: Catatonia, a condition characterized by motor, behavioral, and emotional changes, can occur during critical illness and appear as clinically similar to delirium, yet its management differs from delirium. Traditional criteria for medical catatonia preclude its diagnosis in delirium. Our objective in this investigation was to understand the overlap and relationship between delirium and catatonia in ICU patients and determine diagnostic thresholds for catatonia. Design: Convenience cohort, nested within two ongoing randomized trials. Setting: Single academic medical center in Nashville, TN. Patients: We enrolled 136 critically ill patients on mechanical ventilation and/or vasopressors, randomized to two usual care sedation regimens. Measurements and Main Results: Patients were assessed for delirium and catatonia by independent and masked personnel using Confusion Assessment Method for the ICU and the Bush Francis Catatonia Rating Scale mapped to Diagnostic Statistical Manual 5 criterion A for catatonia. Of 136 patients, 58 patients (43%) had only delirium, four (3%) had only catatonia, 42 (31%) had both, and 32 (24%) had neither. In a logistic regression model, more catatonia signs were associated with greater odds of having delirium. For example, patient assessments with greater than or equal to three Diagnostic Statistical Manual 5 symptoms (75th percentile) had, on average, 27.8 times the odds (interquartile range, 12.7–60.6) of having delirium compared with patient assessments with zero Diagnostic Statistical Manual 5 criteria (25th percentile) present (p < 0.001). A cut-off of greater than or equal to 4 Bush Francis Catatonia Screening Instrument items was both sensitive (91%; 95% CI, 82.9–95.3) and specific (91%; 95% CI, 87.6–92.9) for Diagnostic Statistical Manual 5 catatonia. Conclusions: Given that about one in three patients had both catatonia and delirium, these data prompt reconsideration of Diagnostic Statistical Manual 5 criteria for “Catatonic Disorder Due to Another Medical Condition” that preclude diagnosing catatonia in the presence of delirium.
Impacts of a PECS Instructional Coaching Intervention on Practitioners and Children with Autism

Abstract There is a growing research literature on the potential benefits of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) for individuals with autism; however few studies have investigated implementation of AAC within real-life contexts. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of training for practitioners in implementation of aided AAC, and to examine implementation of Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) in real-life contexts. In particular, this study involved the implementation of instructional coaching to increase opportunities offered by behavioral therapists for their preschool-aged clients to use PECS to make requests. Results indicated increases in therapist implementation of AAC and client use of AAC in trained contexts, with limited generalization to untrained contexts.
The Examination Of Relationship Between Foreign Direct Investments And Carbondioxide Emissions In Turkey With ARDL Approach

Cevre, gelecek nesiller icin korunmasinin onemli olmasi bakimindan ilgi cekici konulardan biridir. Son yillarda, sera gazi emisyonlari cevre icin onemli bir tehdittir. Sera gazi emisyonlari icinde de karbondioksit emisyonlari buyuk pay almaktadir. Diger taraftan, kuresel dunyada sermaye hareketleri hiz kazanmaktadir ve Turkiye’ye gelen dogrudan yabanci yatirimlar giderek artmaktadir. Bu noktada, bu yatirimlarin ulkenin cevresel kalitesine olasi etkileri hakkinda dusunmemiz gerekir. Bu baglamda, bu calisma Turkiye icin dogrudan yabanci yatirim akimlari ile karbondioksit emisyonlari arasindaki iliskiyi incelemektedir. Calisma 1980-2011 periyodunu kapsamaktadir. Verilen zaman dilimi icin seriler arasindaki iliskinin incelenmesinde Pesaran vd (2001) tarafindan gelistirilen Sinir testi kullanilmistir. Sinir testi sonuclarina gore, Turkiye icin dogrudan yabanci yatirim akimlari ile CO 2 serileri arasinda esbutunlesme iliskisi yoktur. Diger bir deyisle, uzun donemde fdi akimlari ile CO 2 emisyonlari birlikte hareket etmezler.
A proteomic analysis of contextual fear conditioned rats reveals dynamic modifications in neuron and oligodendrocyte protein expression in the dentate gyrus

Contextual memory is an intricate process involving synaptic plasticity and network rearrangement. Both are governed by many molecular processes including phosphorylation and modulation of protein expression. However, little is known about the molecules involved in it. Here, we exploited the advantages of a quantitative proteomic approach to identify a great number of molecules in the rat dentate gyrus after a contextual fear conditioning session. Our results allowed us to highlight protein expression patterns, not only related to neuroplasticity, but also to myelin structure, such as myelin basic protein and myelin proteolipid protein showing a decrease in expression. Validation of the modification in protein expression reveals a dynamic profile during the 48 h following the fear conditioning session. The expression of proteins involved in neurite outgrowth, such as BASP‐1 and calcineurin B1, and in synaptic structure and function, VAMP2 and RAB3C, was increased in the dentate gyrus of rats submitted to fear conditioning compared to controls. We showed that the increase in BASP‐1 protein was specific to fear conditioning learning as it was not present in immediate‐shock rats, neither in rats exposed to a novel environment without being shocked. As myelin is known to stabilise synaptic network, the decrease in myelin proteins suggests a neuroglia interactive process taking place in the dentate gyrus in the 24 h following contextual fear learning, which has never been demonstrated before. These results therefore open the way to the study of new plasticity mechanisms underlying learning and memory.
Food pulses increase longevity and induce cyclical egg production in Mediterranean fruit flies

Summary 1. Inasmuch as virtually all studies on mortality and reproduction in insects are conducted under conditions in which food availability is constant, little is known about the demographic response of insects to variable food environments. For example, it is not known if and to what extent the life expectancy of insects subjected to shortages of high-quality food will increase and/or whether this increase is associated with major decreases in lifetime reproduction. 2. Therefore cohorts of 100 individual female medflies were subjected to different sets of conditions of protein availability (interspersed with sugar-only diets) including ad libitum sugar-only (no protein), ad libitum protein and full (protein) diet either every 2nd, 4th, 6th, 11th or 21st day, as well as two lag-treatments (1 day full diet followed by 30 days sugar-only, followed by one of two cyclical treatments). 3. Both life expectancy and lifetime reproduction were strongly affected by specific treatments. Specifically (i) mortality was inversely related to frequency of protein availability whereas lifetime reproduction was directly related; (ii) distinct cycles in reproduction began to appear when food pulse cycles were as short as every 4 days. However, egg-laying peaks and troughs were particularly pronounced in the 10- and 20-day food pulse cycles; (iii) the peak and trough levels were inversely related to cycle length; and (iv) the within-cycle height was independent of cycle length, occurring 4 days after protein food was made available to the cohort whether the cycle length was 5, 10 or 20 days. 4. The results shed new light on the within- and between-cycle and lifetime dynamics of reproduction when insects are subjected to variable food environments and indicate that medfly females track food level very closely.
Attachment and invasion of Toxoplasma gondii and Neospora caninum to epithelial and fibroblast cell lines in vitro

Attachment and invasion of Toxoplasma gondii and Neospora caninum to a cat and a dog fibroblast cell line and 2 epithelial cell lines (a cat kidney and Vero) were compared in vitro using fluorescence antibody methodology. In addition, trypsin treatment of tachyzoites was used to determine whether protein molecules were essential to the process of invasion. The results show that both T. gondii and N. caninum invaded all 4 cell lines, and that pre-treatment of T. gondii tachyzoites with trypsin caused an increase in the ability of the parasite to invade these host cells. Furthermore T. gondii, in comparison to N. caninum, invaded all 4 cell lines at greater levels. The results here support the conclusion that both T. gondii and N. caninum have the ability to invade a variety of cell types including both dog and cat cells, and questions the utility of Vero cells as an appropriate host cell for in vitro studies on the biology of these taxa.
Wireless communication between wagons at 2.4GHz

The work presented in this paper is part of general study concerning the connected wagon. The objective is to ensure communications of data associated to wagon (contents, location The aim of this study is to find the most appropriate technology to design a wireless communication between wagons or between wagon and infrastructure. This analysis takes into account railway and embedded systems constraints such as severe electromagnetic environment and low power consumption. The paper presents, at the first part, a state of the art of existing technologies. The second part describes the used technology (ZigBee) and their performances in propagation environment.
Design and Implementation of Plug-ins for JCrypTool - Visualization of the Cryptographic SPA and DPA Attacks

The security of cryptographic system is based on difficult mathematical problems. However, since the publication of side channel attacks in 1995 more and more researchers have turned their attention to the hardware environment of the algorithms’ implementation. An adversary invades a cryptographic system by skirting the mathematical entities and analyzing the side channel information of the underlying implementation environment. Instead of breaking the cryptographic system at the mathematical level directly, it proves to be easier and more efficient by cracking with side channel information. Power analysis attack is one of the most popular side channel attacks which have already been researched and discussed by many cryptographic scholars for many years. In this thesis the procedure of power analysis attack and its corresponding countermeasures on the JCrypTool platform are introduced and visualized. Two plug-ins, the SPA plug-in against RSA and the DPA plug-in against elliptic curve cryptographic system are implemented. We propose with the visualization plug-ins, the principle and process of power analysis attack and its countermeasures will be more intelligible, understandable, and suitable for the usage of teaching.
Mining of Massive Datasets

Big data is a relative term describing a situation where the volume, velocity and variety of data exceed an organizations storage or compute capacity for accurate and timely decision making . Big data is not a single technology but a combination of old and new technologies that helps companies gain actionable insight. Therefore, big data is the capability to manage a huge volume of disparate data, at the right speed, and within the right time frame to allow real-time analysis and reaction. As we note earlier in this chapter, big data is typically broken down by three characteristics: Volume:How much data Velocity:How fast that data is processed Variety:The various types of data Although its convenient to simplify big data into the three Vs, it can be misleading and overly simplistic. For example, you may be managing a relatively small amount of very disparate, complex data or you may be processing a huge volume of very simple data. That simple data may be all structured or all unstructured. Even more important is the fourth V:veracity. How accurate is that data in predicting business value? Do the results of a big data analysis actually make sense? Determining relevant data is key to delivering value from massive amounts of data. However, big data is defined less by volume which is a constantly moving target than by its ever-increasing variety, velocity, variability and complexity .
SWEET17, a Facilitative Transporter, Mediates Fructose Transport across the Tonoplast of Arabidopsis Roots and Leaves1[W][OPEN]

SWEET17 plays a key role in facilitating fructose transport in response to metabolic demand. Fructose (Fru) is a major storage form of sugars found in vacuoles, yet the molecular regulation of vacuolar Fru transport is poorly studied. Although SWEET17 (for SUGARS WILL EVENTUALLY BE EXPORTED TRANSPORTERS17) has been characterized as a vacuolar Fru exporter in leaves, its expression in leaves is low. Here, RNA analysis and SWEET17-β-glucuronidase/-GREEN FLUORESCENT PROTEIN fusions expressed in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) reveal that SWEET17 is highly expressed in the cortex of roots and localizes to the tonoplast of root cells. Expression of SWEET17 in roots was inducible by Fru and darkness, treatments that activate accumulation and release of vacuolar Fru, respectively. Mutation and ectopic expression of SWEET17 led to increased and decreased root growth in the presence of Fru, respectively. Overexpression of SWEET17 specifically reduced the Fru content in leaves by 80% during cold stress. These results intimate that SWEET17 functions as a Fru-specific uniporter on the root tonoplast. Vacuoles overexpressing SWEET17 showed increased [14C]Fru uptake compared with the wild type. SWEET17-mediated Fru uptake was insensitive to ATP or treatment with NH4Cl or carbonyl cyanide m-chlorophenyl hydrazone, indicating that SWEET17 functions as an energy-independent facilitative carrier. The Arabidopsis genome contains a close paralog of SWEET17 in clade IV, SWEET16. The predominant expression of SWEET16 in root vacuoles and reduced root growth of mutants under Fru excess indicate that SWEET16 also functions as a vacuolar transporter in roots. We propose that in addition to a role in leaves, SWEET17 plays a key role in facilitating bidirectional Fru transport across the tonoplast of roots in response to metabolic demand to maintain cytosolic Fru homeostasis.
Data mining methods for prediction of air pollution

Abstract The paper discusses methods of data mining for prediction of air pollution. Two tasks in such a problem are important: generation and selection of the prognostic features, and the final prognostic system of the pollution for the next day. An advanced set of features, created on the basis of the atmospheric parameters, is proposed. This set is subject to analysis and selection of the most important features from the prediction point of view. Two methods of feature selection are compared. One applies a genetic algorithm (a global approach), and the other-a linear method of stepwise fit (a locally optimized approach). On the basis of such analysis, two sets of the most predictive features are selected. These sets take part in prediction of the atmospheric pollutants PM10, SO2, NO2 and O3. Two approaches to prediction are compared. In the first one, the features selected are directly applied to the random forest (RF), which forms an ensemble of decision trees. In the second case, intermediate predictors built on the basis of neural networks (the multilayer perceptron, the radial basis function and the support vector machine) are used. They create an ensemble integrated into the final prognosis. The paper shows that preselection of the most important features, cooperating with an ensemble of predictors, allows increasing the forecasting accuracy of atmospheric pollution in a significant way.
Duration and distance of exposure are important predictors of transmission among community contacts of Ontario SARS cases

SUMMARY We report attack rates and contact-related predictors among community contacts of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) cases from the 2003 Toronto-area outbreak. Community contact data was extracted from public health records for single, well-defined exposures to a SARS case. In total, 8662 community-acquired exposures resulted in 61 probable cases; a crude attack rate of 0·70% [95% confidence interval (CI) 0·54–0·90]. Persons aged 55–69 years were at higher risk of acquiring SARS (1·14%) than those either younger (0·60%) or older (0·70%). In multivariable analysis exposures for at least 30 min at a distance of ⩽1 m increased the likelihood of becoming a SARS case 20·4-fold (95% CI 11·8–35·1). Risk related to duration of illness in the source case at time of exposure was greatest for illness duration of 7–10 days (rate ratio 3·4, 95% CI 1·9–6·1). Longer and closer proximity exposures incurred the highest rate of disease. Separate measures of time and distance from source cases should be added to minimum datasets for the assessment of interventions for SARS and other emerging diseases.
Discrete Curve Evolution Based Skeleton Pruning for Character Recognition

This paper deals with the recognition of handwritten Malayalam characters using discrete features. The features are extracted from skeletonizsed images. But the presence of parasitic components in the image will degrade the performance of the pattern recognition system. So there arise needs for a pruning method to produce skeletons that are in accordance with human visual perception. The skeleton pruning by contour portioning with discrete curve evolution (DCE) showed that it never produce spurious branches. Moreover, this method doesn’t displace skeleton points. Consequently, all skeleton points are centers of maximal disks. Even in the presence of significant noise and shape variations, this approach gave same topology as that of original skeletons. As a result, we have obtained excellent results in feature extraction which in turn gave a better recognition accuracy of 90.18 percent for 33 classes.
A Document Image Retrieval Method Based on Multi-feature Fusion

With the rising popularity of mobile devices, recent years have witnessed a growing interest in document image retrieval (DIR). In conventional Bag-of-Visual-Words (BoVW) based document image retrieval method, only SIFT or SURF feature is used to locate feature points and produce a codebook, which has a low discriminative power. Though several multiple feature based BoVW methods are proposed, these methods are based on multiple codebooks. However, some features can not train a codebook, such as connected-component feature. So this paper propose a new multi-feature fusion method, considering these features. Experimental results show that the proposed method has better performance.