Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A meta-analysis to determine the effect of anticoagulation on mortality in patients with blunt head trauma*

Introduction. Patients on warfarin are increasingly common in an ageing population. Previously published case series and cohort studies have resulted in conflicting conclusions with regard to the risk of fatal intracranial haemorrhage. The aim of this study was to undertake a meta-analysis in order to compare the mortality rate of anticoagulated head injured patients against the mortality rate of head injured patients not on coumarin anticoagulation. Methods. The databases Medline and EMBASE were searched via the ovid interface. The initial search strategy returned 364 results. A second search was performed using Pubmed to identify possible abstracts missed by the first search. Forty-seven full articles were reviewed if the abstract suggested that they were either case control studies or nested case control studies comparing the mortality rate of anticoagulated head injured patients against the mortality rate of head injured patients not on coumarin anticoagulation. Results. Eleven papers were identified, which met the criteria for the meta-analysis. Despite the heterogeneity between the studies (Q test: 27.421, 10 DF, P = 0.002), the fixed effects model may be the preferred model based on the fact that 10 out of the 11 studies had an odds ratio greater than one. The fixed effects model produced a common odds ratio for death in anticoagulated patients with blunt head trauma of 2.008 (95% CI 1.634 – 2.467). Conclusions. The results of this meta-analysis has shown that the cohort of patients who are anticoagulated and suffer blunt head trauma appear to have an increased risk of death compared to a similar cohort of head injured patients who are not anticoagulated.
New technique to deal with verbose queries in social book search

Verbose query reduction and query term weighting are automatic techniques to deal with verbose queries. The objective is either to assign an appropriate weight to query terms according to their importance in the topic, or outright remove unsuitable terms from the query and keep only the suitable terms to the topic and user's need. These techniques improve performance and provide good results for ad hoc information retrieval. In this paper we propose a new approach to deal with long verbose queries in Social Information Retrieval (SIR) by taking Social Book Search as an example. In this approach, a new statistical measure was introduced to reduce and weight terms of verbose queries. Next, we expand the query by exploiting the similar books mentioned by users in their queries. We find that the proposed approach improves significantly the results.
Functional consequence of the p53 codon 72 polymorphism in colorectal cancer

Background The codon 72 polymorphism in p53 has been implicated in colorectal cancer (CRC) risk, prognosis and CRC health disparities. We examined the functional consequence of this polymorphism in CRC. Experimental Design Plasmids (pCMV6) that express different phenotypes of p53 [p53 wild type (wt) at codon 72 (R72wt), R72wt with mutation at codon 273 cysteine (R72273Cys), p53 mutation at codon 72 (P72wt) and P72wt with mutation at codon 273 (P72273Cys)] were constructed. The CRC cell line Caco2, which does not express p53 for in vitro studies, was used as host. CRC xenografts were established in severe combined immunodeficient (SCID) mice using established cell lines. CRC surgical specimens, corresponding normal colon, and tumor xenografts were sequenced for codon 72 polymorphism of p53. Proteins signaling mechanisms were evaluated to assess the functional consequence of P72 phenotype of p53. Results This study demonstrated a significantly increased survival of cells expressing P72wt, mutant phenotype, versus R72wt phenotype. WB analyses revealed that P72wt induced activation of p38 and RAF/MEK/ extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) MAP kinases. Activation of CREB was found to be higher in tumors that exhibit P72 phenotype. Metastatic lesions of CRC expressed more phospho-CREB than non-metastatic lesions. The expression of P72wt promoted CRC metastasis. Conclusions P72 contributes to the aggressiveness of CRC. Because P72 is over-expressed in CRC, specifically in African-American patients, this suggests a role for P72 in cancer health disparities. This work was supported by NIH/NCI Workforce Diversity Grant R21-CA171251 & U54CA118948.
Functional alterations of human neutrophils by medium‐chain triglyceride emulsions: evaluation of phagocytosis, bacterial killing, and oxidative activity

Medium‐chain triglyceride (MCT) and long‐ chain triglyceride (LCT) emulsions currently used in nutritional therapy were evaluated for their in vitro effect on neutrophil oxidative metabolism, phagocytosis, and bacterial killing activities. Neutrophils from healthy adult male volunteers were assessed after blood incubation with commercially available fat emulsions containing LCT, MCT, or a mixture of 50% MCT and 50% LCT at a final triglyceride concentration of 20 mg/ml. It was observed that MCT‐containing emulsions stimulated nitroblue tetrazolium (NBT) dye reduction by neutrophils as determined by a cytochemical NBT test performed directly on whole blood. This effect was dose dependent. However, after lipid removal by cell washing, the MCT‐treated neutrophils showed decreased production of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and NBT reduction in response to bacterial lipopolysaccharide or phorbol my‐ ristate acetate stimuli as well as impaired phagocytosis and killing of Staphylococcus aureus. In contrast, the LCT emulsion did not alter any of the neutrophil functions evaluated. The present data suggest that MCTs elicit the oxidative metabolism of neutrophils, probably by phagocytosis of fat particles and, depending on the lipid concentration, this effect may not be reversible, leading to impairment of the cellular response to subsequent membrane stimuli.
Rehearsal of To-Be-Remembered Items Is Unnecessary to Perform Directed Forgetting Within Working Memory: Support for an Active Control Mechanism

Directed forgetting tasks instruct people to forget targeted memoranda. In the context of working memory, people attempt to forget representations that are currently held in mind. Here, we evaluated candidate mechanisms of directed forgetting within working memory, by (a) testing the influence of articulatory suppression, a rehearsal-reducing and attention-demanding secondary task, on directed forgetting efficacy, and by (b) assessing the ability of people to perform forgetting in the absence of to-be-remembered competitors to rehearse. In Experiment 1, articulatory suppression interfered with directed forgetting, increasing the proportion of false alarms to to-be-forgotten probes in the working memory phase and decreasing the magnitude of the directed forgetting effect as assessed by an incidental long-term memory recognition test. Experiment 2 replicated the effects of articulatory suppression and tested whether the simultaneous requirement to retain, and presumably rehearse, to-be-remembered items was necessary for successful forgetting. The long-term directed forgetting effect was equivalent whether or not participants had to-be-remembered items to rehearse during the working memory phase. Experiment 3 included an additional comparison condition and confirmed that articulatory suppression interfered with directed forgetting and that participants were as efficient at directed forgetting with and without competitors to remember. In combination, these experiments suggest that directed forgetting in working memory requires an active control process that is limited by articulatory suppression, and that the demand to remember a concurrent memory set is unnecessary for this control process to operate.
Management of Physical, Mental and Environmental Stress at the Workplace

We present the Fit4Work system for monitoring and management of physical, mental and environmental stress at the workplace. The system was designed specifically for older workers who are subject to sedentary stressful work in an office environment. It uses commercially available devices and intelligent methods, which utilize machine-learning models to monitor the three aspects of the users' lifestyle, and provide recommendations for improving them. The results show that the system can adequately recognize the user's physical activities, estimate energy expenditure and detect mental stress, as well as recognize and reason about unhealthy environment. The system provides recommendations according to the monitoring results.
Time series prediction QoS routing in software defined vehicular ad-hoc network

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a valuable and important wireless ad-hoc network which uses advanced wireless technologies. It has become most popular in this digital world of Internet Of Things(IOT) because of it wide verity of applications such as e-commerce on the fly in vehicles, sharing multimedia contents such as audio, video, playing games, multihop dissemination of emergency messages to other vehicles, accesing internet and cloud services on the move. However VANET suffer many challenges such as link failure because of high mobility of vehicles, and also current VANET architecture is not flexible for the wide range of IOT and cloud computing applications. Recently Ian Ku, You Lu, Mario Gerla et.al proposed a new architecture for VANET based on software Defined Networks (SDNs) and they discussed various new services and applications that can be supported by the new architecture. They proposed a new routing protocol for VANETS using SDN and compared with existing MANET/VANET protocols and showed better performance. In this paper we show that their protocol still suffers some problems in certain scenario which results performance degradation and an improved routing protocol is proposed and analyzed with better performance.
Microbiome symbionts and diet diversity incur costs on the immune system of insect larvae

ABSTRACT Communities of symbiotic microorganisms that colonize the gastrointestinal tract play an important role in food digestion and protection against opportunistic microbes. Diet diversity increases the number of symbionts in the intestines, a benefit that is considered to impose no cost for the host organism. However, less is known about the possible immunological investments that hosts have to make in order to control the infections caused by symbiont populations that increase because of diet diversity. Using taxonomical composition analysis of the 16S rRNA V3 region, we show that enterococci are the dominating group of bacteria in the midgut of the larvae of the greater wax moth (Galleria mellonella). We found that the number of colony-forming units of enterococci and expressions of certain immunity-related antimicrobial peptide (AMP) genes such as Gallerimycin, Gloverin, 6-tox, Cecropin-D and Galiomicin increased in response to a more diverse diet, which in turn decreased the encapsulation response of the larvae. Treatment with antibiotics significantly lowered the expression of all AMP genes. Diet and antibiotic treatment interaction did not affect the expression of Gloverin and Galiomicin AMP genes, but significantly influenced the expression of Gallerimycin, 6-tox and Cecropin-D. Taken together, our results suggest that diet diversity influences microbiome diversity and AMP gene expression, ultimately affecting an organism's capacity to mount an immune response. Elevated basal levels of immunity-related genes (Gloverin and Galiomicin) might act as a prophylactic against opportunistic infections and as a mechanism that controls the gut symbionts. This would indicate that a diverse diet imposes higher immunity costs on organisms. Summary: Having high numbers of midgut symbionts may bring costs to a host organism, which is a crucial finding for understanding the evolution of host–symbiont interactions.
Occurrence Risk and Structure of Depression in Parkinson Disease With and Without Dementia: Results From the GEPAD Study

Background: This study examined the age- and gender-specific risk of depression in demented and non-demented participants, its symptom structure, and associated clinical factors in a nationwide random sample of n = 1449 outpatients with Parkinson disease (PD). Methods: Depression ratings were based on a cross-sectional clinical assessment including the clinical Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS ≥ 14). Parkinson disease severity was rated according to Hoehn and Yahr (HY) and the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale. Diagnosis of dementia was based on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition; DSM-IV) criteria. Results: 25.2% (CI: 22.8-27.5) of all patients met study criteria for depression. Additionally, 8.4% of patients did not exceed the MADRS cut-off but were currently being treated with antidepressants, possibly suggesting a corrected (upper limit) total prevalence of 33.6%. Females were more likely depressive than males (29.3% vs 22.4%). In both genders, depression risk was elevated 2- to 4-fold depending on HY stage. Overall, highest rates in non-demented patients were found in females at stages IV to V (53.7%, CI: 37.7-69.6). Demented patients were more likely to meet depression criteria than non-demented (up to 76.2%, 95% CI: 60.5-87.9). Depression symptom profiles for demented PD patients (as compared to non-demented) revealed no structural differences but consistently higher symptom scores. Neither age at onset of PD nor duration of disease were significantly linked with depression. Conclusions: Depression rates are already substantially elevated at early PD stages, emphasizing the need for a thorough examination of mood disorders in all patients with PD. Depression is associated with PD severity and dementia but not with age, age at onset of PD, or disease duration. The differential associations with dementia and the statistical independence of dementia and depression also suggest that depression could not be regarded as a mere demoralisation syndrome.
The ambient dose equivalent at flight altitudes: a fit to a large set of data using a Bayesian approach

The problem of finding a simple, generally applicable description of worldwide measured ambient dose equivalent rates at aviation altitudes between 8 and 12 km is difficult to solve due to the large variety of functional forms and parametrisations that are possible. We present an approach that uses Bayesian statistics and Monte Carlo methods to fit mathematical models to a large set of data and to compare the different models. About 2500 data points measured in the periods 1997–1999 and 2003–2006 were used. Since the data cover wide ranges of barometric altitude, vertical cut-off rigidity and phases in the solar cycle 23, we developed functions which depend on these three variables. Whereas the dependence on the vertical cut-off rigidity is described by an exponential, the dependences on barometric altitude and solar activity may be approximated by linear functions in the ranges under consideration. Therefore, a simple Taylor expansion was used to define different models and to investigate the relevance of the different expansion coefficients. With the method presented here, it is possible to obtain probability distributions for each expansion coefficient and thus to extract reliable uncertainties even for the dose rate evaluated. The resulting function agrees well with new measurements made at fixed geographic positions and during long haul flights covering a wide range of latitudes.
Catalase Regulates Cell Growth in HL60 Human Promyelocytic Cells: Evidence for Growth Regulation by H2O2

Abstract Hachiya, M. and Akashi, M. Catalase Regulates Cell Growth in HL60 Human Promyelocytic Cells: Evidence for Growth Regulation by H2O2. Radiat. Res. 163, 271–282 (2005). Reactive oxygen species (ROS) including hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) are generated constitutively in mammalian cells. Because of its relatively long life and high permeability across membranes, H2O2 is thought to be an important second messenger. Generation of H2O2 is increased in response to external insults, including radiation. Catalase is located at the peroxisome and scavenges H2O2. In this study, we investigated the role of catalase in cell growth using the H2O2-resistant variant HP100-1 of human promyelocytic HL60 cells. HP100-1 cells had an almost 10-fold higher activity of catalase than HL60 cells without differences in levels of glutathione peroxidase, manganese superoxide dismutase (MnSOD), and copper-zinc SOD (CuZnSOD). HP100-1 cells had higher proliferative activity than HL60 cells. Treatment with catalase or the introduction of catalase cDNA into HL60 cells stimulated cell growth. Exposure of HP100-1 cells to a catalase inhibitor resulted in suppression of cell growth with concomitant increased levels of intracellular H2O2. Moreover, exogenously added H2O2 or depletion of glutathione suppressed cell growth in HL60 cells. Extracellular signal regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) was constitutively phosphorylated in HP100-1 cells but not in HL60 cells. Inhibition of the ERK1/2 pathway suppressed the growth of HP100-1 cells, but inhibition of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (p38MAPK) did not affect growth. Moreover, inhibition of catalase blocked the phosphorylation of ERK1/2 but not of p38MAPK in HP100-1 cells. Thus our results suggest that catalase activates the growth of HL60 cells through dismutation of H2O2, leading to activation of the ERK1/2 pathway; H2O2 is an important regulator of growth in HL60 cells.
Predictive value of fragmented QRS in primary prevention implantable cardioverter defibrillator recipients with left ventricular dysfunction

Introduction In primary prevention implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) patients, the incidence of appropriate ICD therapy is relatively low, prompting better risk stratification. Fragmented QRS (fQRS) on a 12-lead ECG has been associated with adverse outcomes. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prognostic value of fQRS in ICD recipients. Methods Consecutive ICD patients implanted at our institution for primary prevention of sudden cardiac death (SCD) were retrospectively evaluated. Patients were divided in two groups based on the presence or the absence of fQRS on the ECG obtained before ICD implantation. The endpoint of the study was all-cause mortality or the occurrence of any appropriate ICD-delivered therapy, whether shock or antitachycardia pacing. Results Among 394 ICD recipients (334 men, age 66.4 ± 11.0), fQRS was observed in 103 patients (26.1%). There were 189 patients (48.0%) with wide QRS at the time of implantation. Among these patients, fQRS was found in 29 individuals (28.2%). Patients in fQRS(+) group were more likely to have coronary artery disease and a lower QRS duration than those without fQRS. During a mean follow-up of 26.3 ± 17.5 months, mortality or ICD therapy were 19.4 and 22.4%, respectively, for fQRS(+) patients, and 15.2 and 22.8% for fQRS(−) patients (P = NS). By Kaplan–Meier analysis, event-free survival was similar in the two groups. Conclusion In ICD recipients for primary prevention of SCD, fQRS is not helpful in selecting a subgroup of patients who benefit from prophylactic ICD implantation.
Age and amyloid effects on human central nervous system amyloid‐beta kinetics

Age is the single greatest risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD), with the incidence doubling every 5 years after age 65. However, our understanding of the mechanistic relationship between increasing age and the risk for AD is currently limited. We therefore sought to determine the relationship between age, amyloidosis, and amyloid‐beta (Aβ) kinetics in the central nervous system (CNS) of humans.
Some observations on the structure of the filamentous particles of several plant viruses.

Summary Several plant viruses with filamentous particles ranging in modal lengths from 0.48 µ to 1.25 µ were negatively stained with uranyl formate, examined in the electron microscope, and the electron micrographs analysed in various ways. The particles of all the viruses were helically constructed with a basic pitch of 33 to 37 A (mean 34 A), but could be separated into groups by other features of their particles. Various measurements of the particles of five of the viruses suggest that there were 10 to 14 subunits in each turn of the basic helix of their particles. All plant viruses with elongated particles seem to fall into one of two groups; those with modal lengths of 0.3 µ or less seem rigid and have a basic helix of pitch 23 to 25 A, and those with longer particles are filamentous and have a basic helix of pitch 33 to 37 A.
A 0.23 mW, On-Chip, self-calibrating RF amplitude detector in 65 nm CMOS

We present an RF amplitude detector with a conversion gain of −3 V/V for RF amplitude range 0 to 0.6 Vp in 65nm CMOS. On-chip self-calibration structure that automatically corrects the variations within the RF detector itself is proposed. Silicon measurement results show the self-calibration structure improves the detection error of the non-calibrated RF amplitude detector to less than 10% at only 0.23mW power consumption.
Mutation‐based growth charts for SEDC and other COL2A1 related dysplasias

From data collected via a large international collaborative study, we have constructed a growth chart for patients with molecularly confirmed congenital spondylo‐epiphyseal dysplasia (SEDC) and other COL2A1 related dysplasias. The growth chart is based on longitudinal height measurements of 79 patients with glycine substitutions in the triple‐helical domain of COL2A1. In addition, measurements of 27 patients with other molecular defects, such as arginine to cysteine substitutions, splice mutations, and mutations in the C‐terminal propeptide have been plotted on the chart. Height of the patients progressively deviate from that of normal children: compared to normal WHO charts, the mean length/height is −2.6 SD at birth, −4.2 SD at 5 years, and −5.8 SD in adulthood. The mean adult height (male and female combined) of patients with glycine substitutions in the triple‐helical region is 138.2 cm but there is a large variation. Patients with glycine to cysteine substitutions tend to cluster within the upper part of the chart, while patients with glycine to serine or valine substitutions are situated between +1 SD and −1 SD. Patients with carboxy‐terminal glycine substitutions tend to be shorter than patients with amino‐terminal substitutions, while patients with splice mutations are relatively tall. However, there are exceptions and specific mutations can have a strong or a relatively mild negative effect on growth. The observation of significant difference in adult height between affected members of the same family indicates that height remains a multifactorial trait even in the presence of a mutation with a strong dominant effect. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.