Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Soft Tissue Facial Angles in Individuals with Ectodermal Dysplasia: A Three-Dimensional Noninvasive Study

Objective To supply quantitative information about the facial soft tissues of patients with hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia. Design Prospective assessment. Setting National meetings of hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia patients and families. Patients and Main Outcome Measures Facial and mandibular corpus convexities in the horizontal plane; facial convexity in the sagittal plane; interlabial, naso-labial, nasal convexity, and left and right soft tissue gonial angles were calculated from the three-dimensional coordinates of 11 soft tissue facial landmarks obtained in 18 male and 17 female hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia patients aged 3 to 41 years and in 504 reference healthy individuals. In addition, z-scores were computed and the patients were grouped by cluster analysis. Results Male and female z-scores did not differ. In the pooled group, facial convexities in the horizontal and sagittal planes were significantly (Student's t, p < .01) increased (flatter) in hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia patients, compared with normal controls. The naso-labial angle was significantly reduced (more acute). Upper and lower facial convexity and mandibular corpus convexity in the horizontal plane deviated less from the norm with increasing age. Facial convexity in the horizontal and sagittal planes, soft tissue gonial angles, and naso-labial and interlabial angles deviated less from the norm with increasing number of teeth present in the mouth. Cluster analysis identified three homogeneous groups, all characterized by a peculiar facial phenotype. Modifications in facial convexity and gonial and interlabial angles differentiated each cluster. Conclusions Patients with hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia had flatter faces in the horizontal and sagittal planes than normal controls had. Cluster analysis revealed patterned differences in facial phenotype.
Reasons for Schizophrenia Patients Remaining out of Treatment: Results from a Prospective Study in a Rural South Indian Community

Background: A few studies have examined the factors associated with schizophrenia patients remaining untreated in India. Materials and Methods: We identified 184 schizophrenia patients in a rural community, offered the treatment with antipsychotics and followed them up in their Primary Health Centers for 1-year. Twenty-nine (15.8%) patients remained untreated at both the baseline and 1-year follow-up despite our best attempts to keep them under the treatment umbrella. They were interviewed in detail regarding the reasons for remaining untreated. This group was compared with another group of patients (n = 69) who had stopped the treatment at baseline but were successfully brought under the treatment umbrella throughout the 1-year follow-up period. Results: The reasons for remaining untreated were (n; %): (a) Unsatisfactory improvement with previous treatment attempts (19; 65.5%), (b) poor bond between the patients and the families (6; 20.7%), (c) active symptoms not allowing any treatment efforts from the family members (6; 20.7%), (d) magico-religious beliefs about the illness and its treatment (4; 13.8%), (e) poor social support (3; 10.3%), (f) adverse effects of the medications (2; 6.9%), and (g) perception of recovery and cure (1; 3.4%). For many patients, a constellation of these reasons was responsible for them remaining untreated. In contrast, the common reasons for those who restarted medications to have stopped the treatment at some time were the lack of awareness, the need to continue medications (47; 68.1%), and the financial constraints (28; 40.6%). Conclusion: The predominant reason for schizophrenia patients not remaining on the treatment in this rural community was the families’ lack of faith in antipsychotic treatment. Provision of comprehensive treatment package including medical, psychosocial and rehabilitative services, and sensitizing the community about benefits of the treatment may help in ensuring that all patients with psychosis receive the best care.
COSPLAY: An expandable toolbox for combinatorial and swift generation of expression plasmids in yeast

A large number of genetic studies in yeast rely on the use of expression vectors. To facilitate the experimental approach of these studies, several collections of expression vectors have been generated (YXplac, pRS series, etc.). Subsequently, these collections have been expanded by adding more diversity to many of the plasmid features, including new selection markers and new promoter sequences. However, the ever growing number of plasmid feature makes it unrealistic for research labs to maintain an up-to-date collection of plasmids. Here, we developed the COSPLAY toolbox: a Golden Gate approach based on the scheme of a simple modular plasmid that recapitulates and completes all the properties of the pRS plasmids. The COSPLAY toolbox contains a basal collection of individual functional modules. Moreover we standardized a simple and rapid, software-assisted protocol which facilitates the addition of new personalized modules. Finally, our toolbox includes the possibility to select a genomic target location and to perform a single copy integration of the expression vector.
Subtle memory and attentional deficits revealed in an Irish stroke patient sample using domain-specific cognitive tasks

Stroke disrupts motor, sensory, and cognitive systems in survivors. Unlike in physical impairments, assessment of cognitive function is often inadequate, as no standardized procedure to monitor cognitive recovery post stroke exists. We evaluated a number of novel task-orientated tools designed to assess subtle cognitive deficits (including memory, attention, and executive functioning) in a sample of stroke patients. Although unimpaired on MMSE (Mini-Mental State Examination)-based indices of cognition, memory, and intelligence, stroke survivors were significantly impaired on tasks testing visual attention, spatial/relational processing, and associative memory. We recommend a standardized multidomain cognitive assessment and propose that cognitive deficits post stroke require in-depth assessment to inform patient-orientated rehabilitation.
Constructing phylogenetic tree and analysis using information retrieval approach for MYB tfr's of rice genome

Compel to construction of optimal phylogenetic tree context to biologist. Phylogenetic analyses are vital to research thrust in characteristics of functional biology engross the recognition of homologous sequences, their multiple alignments, the phylogenetic tree reform and the geometrical depiction of the deduced tree. The phylogenetic tree construction methods can be seen as optimal construction algorithm for the tree that best fits the observed data. However, the zest of accuracy resulted in high cost and prolonged time taking analysis when dealing with large dataset containing sequences and hence a number of species were ignored in determining the phylogenies. Diverse distance methods were employed and underlying software were built like PHYLIP, BLAST, Bio Edit etc. Research current literature indicates that accuracy is achieved up to 87% in MYB tfr's. Algorithms were employed like maximum likelihood method and neighbourhood joining to the MYB transcription factors of rice genome and maximum accuracy is attempt to gain and validated against the original set.
An improved LSB-based RDH technique with better reversibility

Lossless image recovery has significant importance in image transmission and security. In this aspect, lots of reversible data hiding (RDH) techniques are available as literature. Still ample measures can be adhered to achieve better reversibility. This paper presents an improved reversible RDH technique to perform a quantitative study to evaluate the recovery of sent image without any distortion. In reversible data hiding, the original image has to go through the encryption and embedding process before transmitting to the receiver. In the proposed RDH technique, a series of computations are done on the three LSB to embed secret bits in the encrypted image. Similarly, the reverse computations are performed on the LSBs to extract the original image content from the decrypted image. Experimental analysis proves the achievement of the proposed technique through different parameters like, PSNR, SSIM, etc.
An Empirical Study of Software Metrics for Assessing the Phases of an Agile Project

We present an analysis of the evolution of a Web application project developed with object-oriented technology and an agile process. During the development we systematically performed measurements on the source code, using software metrics that have been proved to be correlated with software quality, such as the Chidamber and Kemerer suite and Lines of Code metrics. We also computed metrics derived from the class dependency graph, including metrics derived from Social Network Analysis. The application development evolved through phases, characterized by a different level of adoption of some key agile practices — namely pair programming, test-based development and refactoring. The evolution of the metrics of the system, and their behavior related to the agile practices adoption level, is presented and discussed. We show that, in the reported case study, a few metrics are enough to characterize with high significance the various phases of the project. Consequently, software quality, as measured using these metrics, seems directly related to agile practices adoption.
A structural model of HIV risk-taking intentions in Barbados

Introduction: The purpose of the study was to provide a comprehensive explanation of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) (sexual) risk-taking intentions in Barbados using an extended model derived from the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) using structural equation modelling (SEM). The study extends this model by including two other factors essential for the prediction of an individual’s intention to engage in unsafe sexual behaviours: knowledge about HIV/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and perceived risk of or susceptibility to HIV infection. Material and methods: A structured questionnaire was used as the main data collection tool. The main constructs were: HIV Risk-taking Intentions, Attitudes, Subjective Norms, Perceived Behavioural Control, Knowledge of HIV/AIDS, and Perceived Risk. Three models were tested: SEM; a direct effects model; and the traditional TPB model. Results: The traditional TPB model performed best. Attitudes and perceived behavioural control were significant predictors of HIV risk-taking intentions; knowledge of HIV/AIDS and perceived risk of HIV infection had no influence. Conclusions: Behavioural change interventions should focus on changing attitudes towards sex and sexual behaviours among individuals since attitudes are important determinants of intentions. In terms of perceived behavioural control, efforts should be made to identify those persons who find it difficult to control their sexual behaviours. Enhancing these individuals’ self-efficacy beliefs and confidence about condom use and other safe sex practices would curb intentions to engage in risky sexual practices as well as actual behaviours. HIV AIDS Rev 2019; 18, 1: 62-69 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5114/hivar.2019. 84171
Latent fingerprint match using Minutia Spherical Coordinate Code

This paper proposes a fingerprint match algorithm using Minutia Spherical Coordinate Code (MSCC). This algorithm is a modified version of Minutia Cylinder Code (MCC). The advantage of this algorithm is its compact feature representation. Binary vector of every minutia only needs 288 bits, while MCC needs 448 or 1792 bits. This algorithm also uses a greedy alignment approach which can rediscover minutiae pairs lost in original stage. Experiments on AFIS data and NIST special data27 demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. We compare this algorithm to MCC. The experiments show that MSCC has better matching accuracy than MCC. The average compressed feature size is 2.3 Kbytes, while the average compressed feature size of MCC is 4.84 Kbytes in NIST SD27.
Dissociative extraction of brain proteoglycans

IT HAS been demonstrated that sulfated glycosaminoglycans (chondroitin sulfate and heparan sulfate) are present in brain as proteoglycans, in which the polysaccharide chains are covalently linked to serine residur; in the protein moiety (MARGOLIS er a/. 1972). In an attempt to characterize these proteoglycans. BRANFORD WHITE & HUDSON (1977) have recently reported the isolation of a chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan from sheep brain using a dissociative extraction method. Briefly, the method involves extraction of a lipid-free residue of whole brain with 0.1 M-citrate buffer (pH 3.l), followed by extraction with 4 M-guanidine hydrochloride in 50 mM-Tris buffer (pH 7.5). Guanidine was then removed from this second extract by dialysis against distilled water, and a chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan was isolated from the precipitated protein by extraction with 0.1 M-citrate buffer, pH 5.0. The authors did not provide any quantitative data concerning the yield of proteoglycan in the final citrate extract (Fraction Bm). However, in the course of our own studies on the isolation and characterization of proteoglycans from brain (MARWLIS et at., 1976) we had evaluated a similar type of dissociative extraction procedure and found it to be unsatisfactory from the standpoints of both the yield and purity of the resulting product. On the basis of an encouraging report on their results by BRANFORD WHITE et al. (1976) and their later more detailed description of the isolated proteoglycans (BRANFORD WHITE & HUDSON, 1977) we have re-evaluated the possible utility of dissociative extraction techniques using the procedure described by these authors.
A Scalable Bioinformatics Analysis Platform based on Microservices Architecture

With the advancement of technologies, web services play a significant role to maintain infrastructure in healthcare domain due to the increasing demand of performance. In such systems, adoption of novel technologies is necessary to increase the productivity and reduce the burden of maintenance associated with legacy systems. Microservices architecture has become prominent in deploying server-side enterprise applications by allowing maintainable functionalities. However, it is challenging to utilize microservices in the domain of bioinformatics, although it enables independent process execution and maintenance. This paper introduces the utilization of microservices architecture to build an optimized platform for bioinformatics analyses. We present a hybrid architecture that consists of different hardware platforms to execute accelerated computational services, independently. The core communication is based on an Application Programming Interface (API) gateway. Furthermore, the paper presents the evaluation of results related to the performance of the proposed solution under varying biological sequences as inputs and algorithms.
Identification of acetylcholine receptor subunits differentially expressed in singly and multiply innervated fibers of extraocular muscles.

PURPOSE To identify the acetylcholine receptor (AChR) isoforms among the neuromuscular junctions (NMJs) of singly and multiply innervated fibers (SIFs and MIFs) of rat extraocular muscles (EOMs). METHODS EOMs were dissected from adult rats and serially sectioned. Sections were simultaneously stained for acetylcholinesterase and with an antibody to the slow myosin heavy chain to identify NMJ topography and fiber types in the same section. Synapses and subsynaptic regions of SIFs and MIFs were isolated by laser capture microdissection and the AChR subunits identified by RT-PCR. RESULTS The en plaque endings of SIFs expressed only the adult epsilon subunit, not the fetal gamma subunit, of the AChR, whereas the en grappe endings of the MIFs expressed only the gamma subunit, and not the epsilon subunit. Although the expression of the epsilon subunit was confined to the NMJ region of the SIFs, the gamma subunit was expressed both synaptically and extrasynaptically within the MIFs. The gamma subunit in MIFs correlated with the expression of the myogenic regulatory factor myogenin. Moreover, an unusual neuronal AChR subunit, alpha9, was found in the EOMs, but not in the limb muscles. CONCLUSIONS The adult epsilon and fetal gamma subunits of the AChRs are segregated into distinct synapses on distinct fiber types. The maintenance of the fetal subunit in a population of fibers is probably linked to the expression of myogenin and is a unique attribute of the EOM allotype.
Phytophthora × pelgrandis, a new natural hybrid pathogenic to Pelargonium grandiflorum hort.

A new Phytophthora hybrid of Ph. cactorum (Leb. & Cohn) Schroet. and Ph. nicotianae van Breda de Haan pathogenic to cultivars of Pelargonium grandiflorum hort. is described as Phytophthora × pelgrandis and its morphological features are documented. Morphological, physiological (e.g. temperature requirements) and molecular data (DNA sequencing, random amplified polymorphic DNA-PCR) are presented for isolates of the Phytophthora hybrid. Pathogenicity was tested on cultivars of P. grandiflorum and Nicotiana tabacum. For comparison cultures of the parental species and additional Phytophthora taxa also were examined.
Thermal conductivity measurement of porous silicon by the pulsed-photothermal method

Thermal properties of two types of porous silicon are studied using the pulsed-photothermal method (PPT). This method is based on a pulsed-laser source in the nanosecond regime. A 1D analytical model is coupled with the PPT technique in order to determine thermal properties of the studied samples (thermal conductivity and volumetric heat capacity). At first, a bulk single crystal silicon sample and a titanium thin film deposited on a single crystal silicon substrate are studied in order to validate the PPT method. Porous silicon samples are elaborated with two different techniques, the sintering technique for macroporous silicon and the electrochemical etching method for mesoporous silicon. Metallic thin films are deposited on these two substrates by magnetron sputtering. Finally, the thermal properties of macroporous (30% of porosity and pores diameter between 100 and 1000 nm) and mesoporous silicon (30% and 15% of porosity and pores diameter between 5 and 10 nm) are determined in this work and it is found that thermal conductivity of macroporous (73 W m−1 K−1) and mesoporous (between 80 and 50 W m−1 K−1) silicon is two times lower than the single crystal silicon (140 W m−1 K−1).
Automatic Estimation of Fetal Abdominal Circumference From Ultrasound Images

Ultrasound diagnosis is routinely used in obstetrics and gynecology for fetal biometry, and owing to its time-consuming process, there has been a great demand for automatic estimation. However, the automated analysis of ultrasound images is complicated because they are patient specific, operator dependent, and machine specific. Among various types of fetal biometry, the accurate estimation of abdominal circumference (AC) is especially difficult to perform automatically because the abdomen has low contrast against surroundings, nonuniform contrast, and irregular shape compared to other parameters. We propose a method for the automatic estimation of the fetal AC from two-dimensional ultrasound data through a specially designed convolutional neural network (CNN), which takes account of doctors’ decision process, anatomical structure, and the characteristics of the ultrasound image. The proposed method uses CNN to classify ultrasound images (stomach bubble, amniotic fluid, and umbilical vein) and Hough transformation for measuring AC. We test the proposed method using clinical ultrasound data acquired from 56 pregnant women. Experimental results show that, with relatively small training samples, the proposed CNN provides sufficient classification results for AC estimation through the Hough transformation. The proposed method automatically estimates AC from ultrasound images. The method is quantitatively evaluated and shows stable performance in most cases and even for ultrasound images deteriorated by shadowing artifacts. As a result of experiments for our acceptance check, the accuracies are 0.809 and 0.771 with expert 1 and expert 2, respectively, whereas the accuracy between the two experts is 0.905. However, for cases of oversized fetus, when the amniotic fluid is not observed or the abdominal area is distorted, it could not correctly estimate AC.
Rabbit Antithymocyte Globulin Induction Therapy in Adult Renal Transplantation

Rabbit antithymocyte globulin (rATG) and horse antithymocyte globulin (horse ATG) are the polyclonal antithymocyte agents available for use in solid organ transplantation in the United States. Horse ATG is indicated for induction immunosuppression and for treatment of acute rejection episodes after kidney transplantation; rATG is indicated for treatment of acute rejection only. However, rATG is commonly used in clinical practice as an induction immunosuppressive agent, instigating many questions regarding appropriate dosing, tolerability, safety, and efficacy. Available evidence supports the use of rATG as an induction agent in adult renal transplant recipients. The use of this product for induction therapy has been studied in conjunction with a full‐dose, triple‐therapy maintenance regimen (sequential quadruple immunosuppression) consisting of a calcineurin inhibitor, an antimetabolite, and corticosteroids. Rabbit ATG has a proven safety and efficacy profile both as treatment of acute rejection and as induction therapy in patients undergoing kidney transplantation. The most common adverse events associated with rATG are cytokine release syndrome, thrombocytopenia, and lymphopenia. Results of early studies showed an increased rate of cytomegalovirus disease associated with rATG treatment, but recent studies indicate that routine administration of modern antiviral prophylaxis can reduce this risk. Current practice with rATG is evolving to minimize lifelong exposure to calcineurin inhibitors and corticosteroids.
Model-driven self-adaptation of robotics software using probabilistic approach

A typical feature of robotic architectures are its reactivity and self-adaptivity. In practice, this is achieved by context-dependent dynamic invocation of software components in robotic architectures. In this paper, we specifically address how this self-adaptation capability can be formally defined and modeled in an architecture-independent way. We propose a probabilistic approach that facilitates system design and dynamic runtime adaptation satisfying the quality requirements. We also show how such techniques are incorporated in our model-driven framework: Self Adaptive Framework for Robotic Systems.