Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Can a thermally tolerant symbiont improve the future of Caribbean coral reefs?

The detrimental effect of climate change induced bleaching on Caribbean coral reefs has been widely documented in recent decades. Several studies have suggested that increases in the abundance of thermally tolerant endosymbionts may ameliorate the effect of climate change on reefs. Symbionts that confer tolerance to temperature also reduce the growth rate of their coral host. Here, we show, using a spatial ecosystem model, that an increment in the abundance of a thermally tolerant endosymbiont (D1a) is unlikely to ensure the persistence of Caribbean reefs, or to reduce their rate of decline, due to the concomitant reduction in growth rate under current thermal stress predictive scenarios. Furthermore, our results suggest that given the documented vital rates of D1a‐dominated corals, increasing dominance of D1a in coral hosts may have a detrimental effect by reducing the resilience of Caribbean reefs, and preventing their long‐term recovery. This is because Caribbean ecosystems appear to be highly sensitive to changes in the somatic growth rate of corals. Alternative outcomes might be expected in systems with different community‐level dynamics such as reefs in the Indo‐Pacific, where the ecological costs of reduced growth rate might be far smaller.
Inhibition of cyclin‐dependent kinases induces differentiation of supernumerary hair cells and Deiters' cells in the developing organ of Corti

In the embryonic day 19 organs of Corti, we showed that roscovitine, a chemical inhibitor of cyclin‐dependent kinases (CDKs), significantly increased the number of hair cells (HCs) and corresponding supporting cells (SCs) by triggering differentiation of precursor cells without interacting with cell proliferation. The effect of roscovitine was mimicked by other CDK1, 2, 5, and 7 inhibitors but not by CDK4/6 and mitogen‐activated protein kinase pathway antagonists. Immunohistochemical analysis indicated that roscovitine‐specific intracellular targets, CDK1, 2, 5, and 7, were expressed in the organ of Corti and especially in Hensen's cells. Affinity chromatography studies showed a tight correlation between the protein levels of CDK1/2 and 5 and the rate of roscovitine‐induced supernumerary cells in the organ of Corti. In addition, we demonstrated that basal CDK activity was higher and more roscovitine‐sensitive at developmental stages that are selectively permissive for the emergence of supernumerary cells. These results suggest that CDKs are involved in the normal development of the organ of Corti and that, at least in E19 embryos, inhibition of CDKs is sufficient to trigger the differentiation of HCs and corresponding SCs, presumably from the Hensen's cell progenitors and/or from progenitors located in the greater epithelial ridge area.
Effect of host age on experimental K virus infection in mice

Mice were inoculated by the oral route with K virus at 4, 8, 12, and 23 days and at 4 months of age. The effect of host age on the pathogenesis of infection was studied by immunofluorescence, virus assay, and histopathology. K virus produced a systemic infection in all animals, although the infection because progressively more limited as animals matured. In mice inoculated at 4 days of age, K virus infection resulted in a fatal interstitial pneumonia identical to that seen in newborn animals and was characterized by the presence of virus and viral antigen in pulmonary and extrapulmonary vascular endothelia, reticuloendothelial organs, and brains. In older animals, K virus infection was clinically inapparent; organ involvement was similar in distribution to that seen in fatally infected suckling ice, but cells exhibiting specific viral fluorescence were fewer in number and viral titers were lower. Although animals surviving K virus infection developed high titers of hemagglutination inhibition antibody to the virus, positive cells and infectious virus could still be detected in intestines 2 months after inoculation. In animals inoculated at 8 and 12 days of age, in which K virus produced an extensive initial infection, virus could also be detected 56 days after inoculation in lungs, livers, spleens, and brains. The present study indicates that murine K virus produces a systemic infection throughout the life of its host and that the maturation of host defenses and the development of specific humoral immunity, although they limit dissemination of virus during acute infection, may not eliminate viral persistence in intestines or other organs once infection has occurred.
Identification and segmentation of obscure pectoral muscle in mediolateral oblique mammograms.

OBJECTIVE X-ray mammography is a widely used and reliable method for detecting pre-symptomatic breast cancer. One of the difficulties in automatically computerized mammogram analysis is the presence of pectoral muscles in mediolateral oblique mammograms because the pectoral muscle does not belong to the scope of the breast. The objective of this study is to identify the boundary of obscure pectoral muscle in mediolateral oblique mammograms. METHODS Two tentative boundary curves are individually created to be the potential boundaries. To find the first tentative boundary, this study finds local extrema, prunes weak extrema and then determines an appropriate threshold for identifying the brighter tissue, whose edge is considered the first tentative boundary. The second tentative boundary is found by partitioning the breast into several regions, where each local threshold is tuned based on the local intensity. Subsequently, both of these tentative boundaries are used as the reference to create a refined boundary by Hough transform. Then, the refined boundary is partitioned into quadrilateral regions, in which the edge of this boundary is detected. Finally, these reliable edge points are collected to generate the genuine boundary by curve fitting. RESULTS The proposed method achieves the least mean square error 4.88 ± 2.47 (mean ± standard deviation) and the least misclassification error rate (MER) with 0.00466 ± 0.00191 in terms of MER. CONCLUSION The experimental results indicate that this method performs best and stably in boundary identification of the pectoral muscle. ADVANCES IN KNOWLEDGE The proposed method can identify the boundary from obscure pectoral muscle, which has not been solved by the previous studies.
Changing Patterns of Governance and Management in European Universities: Emerging Paradoxes in Spanish Universities

Higher Education Institutions have to respond today to an increasing number of societal and economic demands. Supranational institutions, such as the European Commission and the Association of European Universities, as well as different national Governments are recommending and developing initiatives to provide universities with more institutional autonomy in order to allow them to better satisfy such needs. Two case studies –at two different Spanish universitieshave been analysed using Grounded Theory methodology, which show that real autonomy (not only legal) may be difficult to effectively implement without rethinking, and eventually changing, the university governance system. By analysing the Spanish case, the article shows that a number of interesting paradoxes emerge from the public discourse and argues that the governance styles based on a collegial decision-making process, particularly widespread in Southern European countries, may be a constraint on the necessary transformations and management changes.
Impact of uncertain transcranial magnetic stimulation coil position and orientation in the stimulation for a motor cortex

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique to modify neural excitability. The effectiveness of TMS experiments critically depends on precise TMS coil position and orientation. There are many TMS coil positioning methods have been used to optimal TMS efficiency. But, sometimes these data are not always precise, and it will make the results uncertainty. To quantify the uncertainty of induced electric field (E-field) in human brain, multi-variate generalized polynomial chaos expansions of the model solutions are used based on uncertain TMS coil position and orientation. Sensitivity of the quantities of interest is investigated for the induced E-field. The results demonstrate that the position of TMS coil has much more effect on induced E-field in human brain than the effect by the orientation of TMS coil. But the effect of TMS coil rotation on Z axis cannot be neglected.
A longitudinal test of impulsivity and depression pathways to early binge eating onset.

OBJECTIVE The very early engagement in bulimic behaviors, such as binge eating, may be influenced by factors that dispose individuals to impulsive action as well as by factors that dispose individuals to depressive symptomatology. Using a longitudinal design, we conducted the first test of the simultaneous operation of both risk factors as children transition from elementary to middle school. METHOD In a sample of 1,906 children, we assessed risk for impulsive action (negative urgency, which is the tendency to act rashly when distressed, and eating expectancies, which are learned anticipations that eating will alleviate negative mood) and risk for depression (negative affect and depressive symptomatology) and binge eating behavior at three time points using a longitudinal design: the end of fifth grade (last year of elementary school: T0), the beginning of sixth grade (first year of middle school: T1), and the end of sixth grade (T2). RESULTS Both the impulsive action and depression pathways predicted very early engagement in binge eating: each accounted for variance beyond the other. Mediation tests found that T1 eating expectancies mediated the predictive influence of T0 negative urgency on T2 binge eating (z = 2.45, p < .01) and that T1 depressive symptoms mediated the influence of T0 negative affect on T2 binge eating (z = 2.04, p < .05). DISCUSSION In children, elevated levels of both negative urgency and negative affect predict early binge eating. This finding has important clinical implications because there are different interventions for the two different risk processes.
Intravenous anti TNF-alpha antibody therapy leads to elevated triglyceride and reduced HDL-cholesterol levels in patients with rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis.

BACKGROUND & AIMS We investigated the effect of Infliximab, an anti TNF-alpha antibody, on plasma lipids and lipoproteins in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis. METHODS Five male and 10 female patients with a mean age of 56.7 years were included in this study. Seven of the patients were diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and 8 patients with psoriatic arthritis. All patients received infusions of 3 mg/kg Infliximab (at week 0, 2 and 6). Lipids, lipoproteins and standard clinical parameters were assessed at baseline (0 week), after 2 weeks, and in 4 patients after 6 weeks. RESULTS There was a significant increase in triglyceride levels during treatment with Infliximab (112 +/- 48 versus 133 +/- 53 mg/dl, p < 0.01). In contrast, HDL-cholesterol levels were significantly lowered (56 +/- 12 versus 50 +/- 13 mg/dl, p < 0.006) by the treatment. There was no significant difference in total cholesterol (209 +/- 25 versus 205 +/- 36 mg/dl) or in LDL-cholesterol (131 +/- 24 versus 118 +/- 43 mg/dl) before and after treatment. Similarly, lipoprotein(a) levels did not alter during treatment (median: 1.1 versus 1.4 mg/dl). CONCLUSION This study shows that intravenous Inflixmab therapy leads to changes in plasma lipid and lipoprotein levels in patients with rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis and may result in a more atherogenic lipid and lipoprotein profile. Although larger patient numbers need to be studied to confirm our findings, these results suggest that lipid levels should be checked and monitored in patients receiving infliximab therapy, particularly in patients with vascular disease.
Hodgkin's disease and the Epstein-Barr virus

Hodgkin's disease is an unusual cancer because the malignant cells constitute only a minority of the total tumour mass and, as a consequence, the study of these cells has been a major challenge. Recently, the application of newer technologies, such as single cell polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and gene expression array analysis, to the study of Hodgkin's disease have yielded new insights into the pathogenesis of this tumour. In addition, the recognition that a proportion of Hodgkin's disease tumours harbour the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and that its genome is monoclonal in these tumours suggests that the virus contributes to the development of Hodgkin's disease in some cases. This review summarises current knowledge of the pathogenesis of Hodgkin's disease with particular emphasis on the association with EBV. J Clin Pathol: Mol Pathol
Joint design in OFDM systems using constellation extension

In this paper, a joint optimal design is investigated to reduce peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), peak interference-to-carrier ratio (PICR), and out-of-band power (OBP) radiations of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals and thus to improve performance of OFDM systems. The constellation extension approach is proposed to convert this joint design problem into a second order cone programming (SOCP) problem, whose global optimal solution has been shown to exist and can be obtained efficiently. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate efficacy of the proposed algorithm in joint PAPR, PICR, and OBP reduction.
Cytomegalovirus infection after organ transplantation: an update with special emphasis on renal transplantation

Cytomegalovirus infections are still the most important infectious complications after organ transplantation. Besides historical notes this review will deal with new aspects concerning the epidemiology of the CMV, diagnostic modalities of CMV infection, the delicate counterbalance between the immune system and the CMV, as well as the symptomatology of this infection. Furthermore, aspects like prophylaxis and new, promising therapeutic regimes for treatment of infection will be dealt with. Although this update is applicable for all types of solid organ transplantation, emphasis will be on renal transplantation.
ART-EMAP: A neural network architecture for object recognition by evidence accumulation

A new neural network architecture is introduced for the recognition of pattern classes after supervised and unsupervised learning. Applications include spatio-temporal image understanding and prediction and 3D object recognition from a series of ambiguous 2D views. The architecture, called ART-EMAP, achieves a synthesis of adaptive resonance theory (ART) and spatial and temporal evidence integration for dynamic predictive mapping (EMAP). ART-EMAP extends the capabilities of fuzzy ARTMAP in four incremental stages. Stage 1 introduces distributed pattern representation at a view category field. Stage 2 adds a decision criterion to the mapping between view and object categories, delaying identification of ambiguous objects when faced with a low confidence prediction. Stage 3 augments the system with a field where evidence accumulates in medium-term memory. Stage 4 adds an unsupervised learning process to fine-tune performance after the limited initial period of supervised network training. Each ART-EMAP stage is illustrated with a benchmark simulation example, using both noisy and noise-free data.
Evaluation of the Carcinogenic Potential of Clofibrate in the p53+ / − Mouse

This study was conducted as part of International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) program to evaluate the carcinogenic potential of clofibrate, a nongenotoxic, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) α agonist, following oral administration to p53+ / − heterozygous mice for a minimum of 26 weeks. p-Cresidine, a urinary bladder carcinogen, was given orally at 400 mg/kg/day as a positive control. Initial clofibrate doses were 50, 250, and 400 mg/kg/day for males and 50, 200, and 500 mg/kg/day for females. Due to unexpected mortality during the first week of dosing, clofibrate doses were lowered to 25, 75, and 100 mg/kg/day for males and 25, 75, and 125 mg/kg/day for females. Clinical signs and mortality were greater in p53+ / − than wild-type (WT) mice. With the exception of liver weights, no marked differences in any other parameters either between the sexes or between WT and p53+ / − mice were noted. Moderate increases in liver weights noted in WT males given 100 mg/kg/day clofibrate were not associated with any microscopic changes. No neoplastic response was observed in p53+ / −mice after 6 months of exposure to clofibrate at doses up to 100 mg/kg/day for males and 125 mg/kg/day for females. Transitional-cell hyperplasia and carcinoma of the urinary bladder were noted in both sexes given p-cresidine, demonstrating that the p53+ / − mouse responded to a known mouse carcinogen as expected. Clofibrate produced non-neoplastic findings in the adrenals, pancreas, and prostate, whereas p-cresidine affected the kidney, liver, pancreas, and spleen.
Relapse after withdrawal from anti-TNF therapy for inflammatory bowel disease

Citation for published version: Kennedy, NA, Warner, B, Johnston, EL, Flanders, L, Hendy, P, Ding, NS, Harris, R, Fadra, AS, Basquill, C, Lamb, CA, Cameron, FL, Murray, CD, Parkes, M, Gooding, I, Ahmad, T, Gaya, DR, Mann, S, Lindsay, JO, Gordon, J, Satsangi, J, Hart, A, McCartney, S, Irving, P, Lees, CW & UK Anti-TNF withdrawal study group 2016, 'Relapse after withdrawal from anti-TNF therapy for inflammatory bowel disease: an observational study, plus systematic review and meta-analysis', Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics. https://doi.org/10.1111/apt.13547
Space-time multiuser detection with alternating soft interference cancellation in highly loaded CDMA systems

This paper presents an iterative, yet effective minimum mean square error (MMSE) space-time multiuser detector (MUD) with the assistance of soft interference to enhance the performance in the multipath code division multiple access (CDMA) systems. The proposed space-time MUD is of rank one and comprises of a spatial filter and a temporal filter. To offset the performance loss due to such a constraint, the new MUD alternatively updates the spatial filter or the temporal filter with the soft interference cancellation in between so as to refine the received signal. Computer simulations show that the new MUD can drastically enhance the performance compared to previous works with modest computations, especially in highly loaded scenarios.
Robust Weighted Sum-Rate Maximization for the Multi-Stream MIMO Interference Channel With Sparse Equalization

In this paper, we study the problem of per-stream maximum sum-rate joint precoder and minimum mean-squared error equalizer design for the multi-input multi-output interference channel. We consider the general case of more than three users with more than one stream per user. We propose a generalized iterative algorithm which directly maximizes the sum-rate without assuming the signal-to-noise ratio to be infinite. To reduce complexity, which can become prohibitive for large network size, we examine the performance-complexity tradeoffs involved in a sparse equalizer design. Joint precoder and equalizer optimization requires alternation between the forward and reverse links and assumes perfect synchronization between the transmitters and receivers at each network node, resulting in extensive overhead and spectral efficiency loss. To overcome this serious drawback, we propose a new design approach based on weighted-sum-rate maximization assuming a virtual equalizer type at the transmitter to limit the optimization process to the transmitter side. In addition, we quantify the sum-rate loss due to mismatched equalizer types and demonstrate the robustness of our proposed sum-rate weighting strategy to such mismatches with perfect or imperfect channel knowledge. Finally, we derive asymptotic performance expressions and verify their accuracy numerically even for a moderate number of users.
Prior Shape Level Set Segmentation on Multistep Generated Probability Maps of MR Datasets for Fully Automatic Kidney Parenchyma Volumetry

Fully automatic 3-D segmentation techniques for clinical applications or epidemiological studies have proven to be a very challenging task in the domain of medical image analysis. 3-D organ segmentation on magnetic resonance (MR) datasets requires a well-designed segmentation strategy due to imaging artifacts, partial volume effects, and similar tissue properties of adjacent tissues. We developed a 3-D segmentation framework for fully automatic kidney parenchyma volumetry that uses Bayesian concepts for probability map generation. The probability map quality is improved in a multistep refinement approach. An extended prior shape level set segmentation method is then applied on the refined probability maps. The segmentation quality is improved by incorporating an exterior cortex edge alignment technique using cortex probability maps. In contrast to previous approaches, we combine several relevant kidney parenchyma features in a sequence of segmentation techniques for successful parenchyma delineation on native MR datasets. Furthermore, the proposed method is able to recognize and exclude parenchymal cysts from the parenchymal volume. We analyzed four different quality measures showing better results for right parenchymal tissue than for left parenchymal tissue due to an incorporated liver part removal in the segmentation framework. The results show that the outer cortex edge alignment approach successfully improves the quality measures.
SisPorto 2.0: A Program for Automated Analysis of Cardiotocograms

Objective: To describe the latest version of SisPorto, a program for automated analysis of cardiotocograms that closely follows the FIGO guidelines, analyses ante- and intrapartum tracings, performs no signal reduction, and has the possibility of simultaneously recording twins. Methods: A detailed description of the program's processing algorithms and operation is provided, as well as the main results of the studies performed to-date with this system. Results: Considering both current and previous versions of the program, SisPorto has been tested in over 6000 pregnancies. The system's FHR baseline was compared with an average of three experts' estimates, and the difference was under 8 bpm in all cases. A fair to good agreement was found with experts' identification of accelerations, decelerations, contractions, and normal/reduced variability (proportions of agreement 0.64-0.89). In a preliminary validity study (n = 85), a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 99% were obtained in prediction of poor neonatal outcome. The system is currently undergoing an international multicentre validation study. Conclusions: Although still at the research level, a considerable experience has now been gathered with this system. Promising results have been achieved in studies comparing SisPorto with experts' analysis and in those evaluating the validity of the system.