Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Beneficial drugs for liver diseases

Liver diseases are a major problem of worldwide proportions. However, the number of drugs actually used successfully in humans is very small. In this review some of the most promising/studied drugs utilized for liver diseases were chosen and analysed critically from the basic to the clinical point of view. Antiviral agents are not discussed because excellent reviews have appeared on this topic. The compounds/preparations described herein are, alphabetically: colchicine, corticosteroids, curcumin, glycyrrhizin, interferons (for their antifibrotic properties), Liv 52, nitric oxide, resveratrol, silymarin, sulfoadenosylmethionine, and thalidomide. Colchicine and corticosteroids have been studied extensively in animals and humans; most clinical studies suggest that these compounds are not useful in the treatment of liver diseases. Glycyrrhizin is an herbal medicine with several components that has interesting hepatoprotective properties in patients with subacute liver failure but deserves more prospective controlled trials. Interferon has shown interesting antifibrotic properties in animals and humans; prospective studies on their antifibrotic/fibrolytic activity are required. Curcumin, resveratrol and thalidomide are very attractive newly discovered protective and curative compounds on experimental hepatic diseases. Their mechanism of action is associated with the ability to down‐regulate NF‐κB and to decrease pronecrotic and profibrotic cytokines. Unfortunately, clinical studies are lacking. Sulfoadenosylmethionine and silymarin are also promising drugs utilized mainly in cholestasis but the benefits can be expanded if more controlled trials are performed. The future is to carry out controlled prospective double‐blind multicenter studies with the newly discovered drugs with proven beneficial effects on animals. Fundamental hepatobiology should also be encouraged. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Elastic properties of water under negative pressures

Using Brillouin scattering we have investigated the elastic properties of water under negative pressures. The samples were H2O liquid–vapor inclusions in α‐quartz which could be heated to their homogenization temperatures (in the range 120–370 °C); on cooling, negative pressures as high as 1000 bars were reached before a vapor bubble nucleated. The velocity of sound results obtained from our Brillouin experiments indicate that nucleation occurs long before reaching the mechanical instability region where the bulk modulus is zero.
Anomaly Detection in Healthcare: Detecting Erroneous Treatment Plans in Time Series Radiotherapy Data

Adverse events in healthcare and medical errors result in thousands of accidental deaths and over one million excess injuries each year. Anomaly detection in medicine is an important task, especially in the area of radiation oncology where errors are very rare, but can be extremely dangerous, and even deadly. To avoid medical errors in radiation cancer treatment, careful attention needs to be made to ensure accurate implementation of the intended treatment plan. In this paper, we describe the work that resulted in a valuable predictive analytics tool for automatic detection of catastrophic errors in cancer radiotherapy, adding an important safeguard for patient safety. We designed a method for Dynamic Modeling and Prediction of Radiotherapy Treatment Deviations from Intended Plans (SmartTool) to automatically detect and highlight potential errors in a radiotherapy treatment plan, based on the data from several thousand prostate cancer treatments that were used to build the model. SmartTool determines if the treatment parameters are valid, against a previously built Predictive Model of a Medical Error (PMME). SmartTool communicates with a radiotherapy treatment management system, checking all the treatment parameters in the background prior to execution, and after the human expert QA is completed. Any anomalous treatment parameters are detected using an innovative intelligent algorithm in a completely automatic and unsupervised manner, and it flags the operator by highlighting the suspect parameter(s) for human intervention. Furthermore, the system is self-learning and constantly evolving, and the model is dynamically updated with the new treatment data.
Increased brainstem volume in panic disorder: a voxel-based morphometric study

Neurocircuitry models of panic disorder have hypothesized that the panic attack itself stems from loci in the brainstem including the ascending reticular system and respiratory and cardiovascular control centers. Voxel-based morphometry with acobian modulation was used to examine gray matter volume changes in 10 panic disorder patients and 23 healthy controls. The panic disorder patients had a relatively increased gray matter volume in the midbrain and rostral pons of the brainstem. Increased ventral hippocampal and decreased regional prefrontal cortex volumes were also noted at a lower significance threshold. This finding has implications for pathophysiologic models of panic disorder, and provides structural evidence for the role of the brainstem in neurocircuitry models of panic disorder.
Enhancer-Dependent Transcriptional Oscillations in Mouse Erythroleukemia Cells

ABSTRACT By using recombinase-mediated cassette exchange, a method that allows integration of single copies of different constructs at the same predetermined chromosomal location, several expression cassettes have been integrated at a randomly chosen locus in the genome of mouse erythroleukemia cells. The cassettes studied contain the human β-globin promoter fused to lacZ coding sequences either alone or linked to DNase I-hypersensitive site HS2, HS3, or HS234 (a large locus control region fragment containing HS2, HS3, and HS4) of the human β-globin locus control region. Analysis of expression of these cassettes revealed mosaic expression patterns reminiscent of, but clearly different from, position effect variegation. Further investigations demonstrated that these mosaic expression patterns are caused by dynamic activation and inactivation of the transcription unit, resulting in oscillations of expression. These oscillations occur once in every few cell cycles at a rate specific for the enhancer present at the locus. DNase I sensitivity studies revealed that the chromatin is accessible and that DNase-hypersensitive sites were present whether or not the transcription unit is active, suggesting that the oscillations occur between transcriptionally competent and transcriptionally active chromatin conformations, rather than between open and closed chromatin conformations. Treatment of oscillating cells with trichostatin A eliminates the oscillations only after the cells have passed through late G1 or early S, suggesting that these oscillations might be caused by changes in histone acetylation patterns.
Image Fusion Analysis of Volumetric Changes after Interstitial Low-Dose-Rate Iodine-125 Irradiation of Supratentorial Low-Grade Gliomas

Abstract Julow, J., Major, T. , Mangel, L. , Bajzik, L. and Viola, A. Image Fusion Analysis of Volumetric Changes after Interstitial Low-Dose-Rate Iodine-125 Irradiation of Supratentorial Low-Grade Gliomas. Radiat. Res. 167, 438–444 (2007). The aim of this study was to compare the volumes of tumor necrosis, reactive zone and edema with the three-dimensional dose distributions after brachytherapy treatments of gliomas. The investigation was performed an average of 14.2 months after low-dose-rate 125I interstitial irradiation of 25 inoperable low-grade gliomas. The prescribed dose was 50–60 Gy to the tumor surface. Dose planning and image fusion were performed with the BrainLab-Target 1.19 software. In the CT/ MRI images, the “triple ring” (tumor necrosis, reactive ring and edema) developing after the interstitial irradiation of the brain tumors was examined. The images with the triple ring were fused with the planning images, and the isodose curves were superimposed on them. The volumes of the three regions were measured. The average dose at the necrosis border was determined from the isodose distribution. For quantitative assessment of the dose distributions, the dose nonuniformity ratio (DNR), homogeneity index (HI), coverage index (CI) and conformal index (COIN) were calculated. The relative volumes of the different parts of the triple ring after the interstitial irradiation compared to the reference dose volume were the following: necrosis, 40.9%, reactive zone, 47.1%, and edema, 367%. The tumor necrosis developed at 79.1 Gy on average. The average DNR, HI, CI and COIN were 0.45, 0.24, 0.94 and 0.57, respectively. The image fusion analysis of the volume of tumor necrosis, reactive ring and edema caused by interstitial irradiation and their correlation with the dose distribution provide valuable information for patient follow-up, treatment options, and effects and side effects of radio therapy.
Automatic volumetric registration of NCCT and CTA brain images using intensity based image registration

In this paper we present a pre-processing stage for an automated volumetric CT stroke image diagnosis system. It concerns the automatic intensity-based 3D image registration of non-contrast CT (NCCT) to CT angiography (CTA) images. The NCCT were acquired with a gantry tilt and hence they are first tilt corrected. After the tilt correction process, the NCCT images are then registered to the CTA image. The accuracy of image registration is measured by the overlap of the segmented skull from both images. The limitation of the current implementation is computing time which should be improved for a clinical application of the method.
In silico analyses of mammalian lactate dehydrogenases: human, mouse, opossum and platypus LDHs

Three major mammalian lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) genes and proteins have been extensively investigate d, including LDHA (major muscle isozyme); LDHB (major heart isozyme); and LDHC (major sperm isozyme), and another ( LDH6B ) has been reported in humans. In this study, in silico methods were used to predict the amino acid sequences, structures and gene locations for LDH genes and proteins using genome sequence databanks for human, mouse, opossum and platypus mammalian species. Amino acid sequence alignments and predicted secondary and tertiary structures enabled observati on (by similarity) of key residues previously repor ted for human and mouse LDHA, LDHB and LDHC subunits. The human genome contained at least 4 LDH genes encoding LDH A, B, C and 6B subunits, with the predicted LDH6B gene showing no evidence of introns. Two other human LDH6 -like genes were also observed, including LDH6A (7 introns) and LDH6C (single exon). Human LDHA , LDHC and LDH6A genes were located in tandem on chromosome 11, while LDH6B and LDH6C genes were on chromosomes 15 and 12, respectively. In silico evidence was obtained for at least 13 human LDH pseudogenes located on 10 separate chromosomes of the human genome, of which seven were imbedded within introns of other genes involved in distinct but unrelated functions. Opossum LDHC and LDH6B genes were located in tandem with the opossum LDHA gene on chromosome 5 and contained 7 ( LDHA and LDHC ) or 8 ( LDH6B ) exons. An amino acid sequence prediction for the opossum LDH6B subunit gave an extended N-terminal sequence, similar to the human and mouse LDH6B sequences, which may support the export of this enzyme into mitochondria. The platyp us genome contained at least 3 LDH genes encoding LDHA, LDHB and LDH6B subunits. Phylogenetic studies and sequence analyses indicated that LDHA , LDHB and LDH6B genes are present in all mammalian genomes examined, including a monotreme species (platypus), whereas the LDHC gene may have arisen more recently in marsupial mammals.
Learning Algorithms with Neighboring Inputs in Self-organizing Maps for Image Restoration

This paper presents learning algorithms with neighboring inputs in self-organizing maps for image restoration. Novel approaches are described that neighboring pixels as well as a notice pixel are prepared as an input, and a degraded image is restored according to an algorithm of self-organizing maps. The algorithm creates a map containing one unit for each pixel. Utilizing pixel values as input, image inference is conducted by selforganizing maps. An updating function with threshold according to the difference between input value and inferred value is introduced, so as not to respond to noisy input sensitively. The inference of an original image proceeds appropriately since any pixel is influenced by neighboring pixels corresponding to the neighboring setting. Experimental results are presented in order to show that our approaches are effective in quality for image restoration.
An Adaptive RTRL Based Neurocontroller for Damping Power System Oscillations

The main objective of this paper is to present the design of an adaptive neuro-controller for series connected FACTS devices like Thyristor Controlled Series Capacitor(TCSC) and Thyristor controlled Power Angle Regulator (TCPAR). This control scheme is suitable for non-linear system control, in which the exact linearised mathematical model of the system is not required. The proposed controller design is based on Real Time Recurrent Learning (RTRL) algorithm in which the Neural Network (NN) is trained in real time. This control scheme requires two sets of neural networks. The first set is a neuro-identifier and the second set is a neuro-controller which generate the required control signals for the thyristors. Performance of the system is analysed with the proposed controller using standard simulation environments like MATLAB/SIMULINK and it has been observed that the controller is robust and the response is very fast. Performance of the system with proposed controller is compared with conventional PI controllers and GA based PI controllers. Performace of the proposed controller is extremely good. Full Text: PDF
Improving the performance of speech perception in noisy environment based on an FAME strategy

Background noise is a significant factor influencing the performance of speech perception. Previous studies showed that the temporal fine structure (TFS) plays an important role in speech perception for normal hearing (NH) and hearing loss individuals. The frequency amplitude modulation encoding (FAME) is a successful approach to enhance the TFS information for cochlear implant (CI) recipients. Following the success of FAME for CI recipients, this study aims to evaluate the speech perception performance of FAME for NH listeners in noisy conditions. Experimental results from the present study confirmed that FAME provides better speech perception performance and lower listening effort for NH listeners than noisy speech. In particular, FAME improved Mandarin disyllabic words recognition by as much as 16.7 percentage points and the ease of listening by 1.6 (MOS scale). This demonstrates that the FAME strategy is promising for improving speech recognition performance for NH listeners in noisy environment.
A Novel Synchronization between SQL Server and Mobile Client Databases

It is progressively important for mobile device databases to achieve smooth coordination of diverse computerized operations. Many research works have been conducted to attain more compatible solutions that can be used to synchronize data between the mobile device and the server side databases. In the last few decades, software systems use SQL database to handle structured data between server and clients that hold text and integer value in column-wise format. Nowadays, the emergence of media entertainment has introduced unstructured data like images that requires big memory allocation to be stored in database. Hence, some of software and mobile application developers tend to implement schema-less databases, which is known as NoSQL to handle the synchronization process for unstructured data simpler and faster. However, dissimilar database structure and framework make software developers tend to implement only either one type of databases: SQL or NoSQL, but not both. No interaction between SQL and NoSQL databases will prevent data sharing and accessibility between server and mobile clients. In this paper, one-way synchronization framework for heterogeneous databases in mobile environment has been developed and new sync gateway is introduced to synchronize images from client NoSQL database to server SQL database regardless of their differences in schema or database
AMeshfree Method for SimulatingMyocardial Electrical Activity

An element-free Galerkin method (EFGM) is proposed to simulate the propagation of myocardial electrical activation without explicit mesh constraints using a monodomain model. In our framework the geometry of myocardium is first defined by a meshfree particle representation that is, a sufficient number of sample nodes without explicit connectivities are placed in and inside the surface of myocardium. Fiber orientations and other material properties of myocardium are then attached to sample nodes according to their geometrical locations, and over the meshfree particle representation spatial variation of these properties is approximated using the shape function of EFGM. After the monodomain equations are converted to their Galerkin weak form and solved using EFGM, the propagation of myocardial activation can be simulated over the meshfree particle representation. The derivation of this solution technique is presented along a series of numerical experiments and a solution of monodomain model using a FitzHugh-Nagumo (FHN) membrane model in a canine ventricular model and a human-heart model which is constructed from digitized virtual Chinese dataset.
A novel method for measuring health care system performance: experience from QIDS in the Philippines.

OBJECTIVES Measuring and monitoring health system performance is important albeit controversial. Technical, logistic and financial challenges are formidable. We introduced a system of measurement, which we call Q, to measure the quality of hospital clinical performance across a range of facilities. This paper describes how Q was developed, implemented in hospitals in the Philippines and how it compares with typical measures. METHODS Q consists of measures of clinical performance, patient satisfaction and volume of physician services. We evaluate Q using experimental data from the Quality Improvement Demonstration Study (QIDS), a randomized policy experiment. We determined its responsiveness over time and to changes in structural measures such as staffing and supplies. We also examined the operational costs of implementing Q. RESULTS Q was sustainable, minimally disruptive and readily grafted into existing routines in 30 hospitals in 10 provinces semi-annually for a period of 2(1/2) years. We found Q to be more responsive to immediate impacts of policy change than standard structural measures. The operational costs totalled USD2133 or USD305 per assessment per site. CONCLUSION Q appears to be an achievable assessment tool that is a comprehensive and responsive measure of system level quality at a limited cost in resource-poor settings.
Blueprint for a deliberative public forum on biobanking policy: were theoretical principles achievable in practice?

Background: Public deliberation is recommended for obtaining citizen input to policy development when policies involve contested ethical dimensions, diverse perspectives on how to trade‐off competing public interests and low public awareness of these perspectives. Several norms have been proposed for the design of deliberative methods. Evidence is scarce regarding whether such norms are achievable in practice.
How can we write software that can communicate creatively

Communication is often deﬁned as the ability to transmit information. We can employ creativity in many ways and to various degrees when communicating information. From a computational creativity perspective, how can we model such communicative creativity, so that we can make software that can communicate creatively? To answer this question, we need to tackle a more spe-ciﬁc question: how can we better understand what entails creativity, enhances creativity and/or contributes to creativity in the context of communication? Then we can use this information to inform our models and/or evaluate their creativity. This paper tackles this question by analysing how creativity is perceived to be manifested in communication by participants with experience in studying communication and information. It uses a recent characterisation of key components of creativity to identify aspects that are particularly important for making communication more creative. Overall, the components that relate to autonomous and informed involvement in the communicative process seem to be prioritised most for creativity, alongside the unsurprising requirement for originality and novelty in this process. Our ﬁndings can help us create better computational models of creative communication, and guide us to a more informed evaluation strategy for assessing creative systems that perform communication tasks.
Oxysterols Are Novel Activators of the Hedgehog Signaling Pathway in Pluripotent Mesenchymal Cells*

Pluripotent mesenchymal cells form a population of precursors to a variety of cell types, including osteoblasts and adipocytes. Aging tilts the balance in favor of adipocyte differentiation at the expense of osteoblast differentiation, resulting in reduced bone formation and osteopenic disorders, including osteoporosis, in humans and animals. Understanding the mechanisms involved in causing this apparent shift in differentiation and identifying factors that stimulate osteoblast formation while inhibiting adipogenesis are of great therapeutic interest. In this study we report that specific, naturally occurring oxysterols, previously shown to direct pluripotent mesenchymal cells toward an osteoblast lineage, exert their osteoinductive effects through activation of Hedgehog signaling pathway. This was demonstrated by 1) oxysterol-induced expression of the Hh target genes Gli-1 and Patched, 2) oxysterol-induced activation of a luciferase reporter driven by a multimerized Gli-responsive element, 3) inhibition of oxysterol effects by the hedgehog pathway inhibitor, cyclopamine, and 4) unresponsiveness of Smoothened-/- mouse embryonic fibroblasts to oxysterols. Using Patched-/- cells that possess high baseline Gli activity, we found that oxysterols did not dramatically shift the IC50 concentration of cyclopamine needed to inhibit Gli activity in these cells. Furthermore, binding studies showed that oxysterols did not compete with fluorescently labeled cyclopamine, BODIPY-cyclopamine, for direct binding to Smoothened. These findings demonstrate that oxysterols stimulate hedgehog pathway activity by indirectly activating the seven-transmembrane pathway component Smoothened. Osteoinductive oxysterols are, therefore, novel activators of the hedgehog pathway in pluripotent mesenchymal cells, and they may be important modulators of this critical signaling pathway that regulates numerous developmental and post-developmental processes.