Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Peripheral Artery Disease Is Associated With a High CD163/TWEAK Plasma Ratio

Objective—In addition to its role in the clearance of haptoglobin-hemoglobin (Hp-Hb) complexes, CD163 is a macrophage scavenger receptor for tumor necrosis factor–like weak inducer of apoptosis (TWEAK). We recently reported that the CD163/TWEAK plasma ratio could be a potential biomarker of atherothrombosis in asymptomatic subjects. In this study, we assessed soluble TWEAK (sTWEAK) and soluble CD163 (sCD163) plasma levels in white males with peripheral artery disease (PAD) and in atherothrombotic femoral plaques to evaluate their relationship with disease. We also analyzed whether Hp-Hb complexes could compete for CD163-mediated TWEAK uptake. Methods and Results—Patients with PAD (n=155) showed a trend toward lower sTWEAK (median [interquartile range]: 134 [110–204] versus 147 [119–205] pg/mL; P=0.067) and higher sCD163 (median [interquartile range]: 367 [269–506] versus 288 [234–369] ng/mL; P<0.001) plasma concentrations than age-matched controls (n=251). sCD163 and sTWEAK plasma levels were negatively correlated in both patients and controls. After stratification according to the severity of disease, sCD163/sTWEAK ratio was significantly increased in patients with more severe disease relative to the other groups (P=0.049). Analysis of conditioned medium obtained from cultured human atherothrombotic femoral plaque samples (n=36) and healthy aortas (n=14) revealed that high amounts of sCD163 were released by the atherothrombotic tissue, whereas sTWEAK presented the opposite trend (P<0.05). Finally, we report a potential association between CD163 shedding and oxidative stress. Conclusion—Our results suggest that the sCD163/sTWEAK plasma ratio may be associated with atherothrombosis burden in PAD. We hypothesize that an imbalance between TWEAK and CD163 could reflect the progression of atherothrombosis.
Detection of the Chinese Genotype of Infectious Bronchitis Virus (QX-type) in Iran

Case Report: Recently a 20-day-old layer flock with mortality has been submitted to the PCR Lab. Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV) has been detected in the clinical samples. Results: A phylogenetic tree based on a partial S1 gene sequence showed Iranian IBV variant located in LX4-type cluster. This cluster include all QXIBV-type detected in China and European countries. The highest sequence homology (> 99%) was found with that of a group of the Chinese QX but less similarity with European QX-like (>95%) and another Chinese QXIBV (>94%). Conclusion: Comparison of Nucleotides sequence with H120 and 4/91 IB vaccines shows only 76.9 and 79.7 identity, respectively.
Functional relevance of abnormal fMRI activation pattern after unilateral schizencephaly

Brain plasticity was investigated in a child with a hemiplegia due to unilateral schizencephaly involving the sensorimotor cortex. This focal lesion led to a dramatic functional reorganization of the undamaged hemisphere, as evidenced by the unusual pattern of fMRI activation during paretic finger movements. The functional relevance of the activation in the undamaged motor cortex was supported by the finding that TMS of this area yielded a response in the paretic hand, indicating that it controls both hands. However, this reorganization was not restricted to the primary motor cortex, but also concerned other structures involved in the control of movements, as shown by the activation of contralesional SMA and thalamus. In contrast, the fMRI activation in the damaged sensorimotor cortex during paretic hand movements appears functionally irrelevant.
Primary care practice organization and preventive services delivery: a qualitative analysis.

BACKGROUND Rapid developments within the health care environment have led to increased pressures for change among primary care physicians and their practices. Nevertheless, a lack of understanding of practice organization and function has limited the effectiveness of attempts to change practice behaviors. Recent attempts to increase the delivery of preventive health care services illustrate the limitations of current approaches. To assist physicians in their attempts at change, our study looked at the office as a whole system and at the competing demands within the primary care setting. METHODS Qualitative fieldnotes were recorded by research nurses who observed 138 family physicians in 84 practices in northeast Ohio for 4 days each. These data were content-analyzed to identify features that are important for understanding how practices are organized. RESULTS These data indicate that primary care practice is much more complex than research and transformation efforts generally acknowledge. The data identified a diverse set of features that describe how primary care practices are organized and function. These included cognitive and behavioral components of physician philosophy and style, and numerous features of the practice organization, such as office efficiency, clarity of staff roles, communication patterns among physicians and staff, and approaches to using office protocols. The data also suggest that some practices are more innovative than others and that some physicians or staff have special motivations that can support or inhibit a particular change. CONCLUSIONS Physicians who want to change their practice, as well as those persons who want to stimulate change from the outside, need to have a more comprehensive approach than is now commonly used to assess practices that encompass a broad spectrum of variables.
Continuous Birdsong Recognition Using Gaussian Mixture Modeling of Image Shape Features

Traditional birdsong recognition approaches used acoustic features based on the acoustic model of speech production or the perceptual model of the human auditory system to identify the associated bird species. In this paper, a new feature descriptor that uses image shape features is proposed to identify bird species based on the recognition of fixed-duration birdsong segments where their corresponding spectrograms are viewed as gray-level images. The MPEG-7 angular radial transform (ART) descriptor, which can compactly and efficiently describe the gray-level variations within an image region in both angular and radial directions, will be employed to extract the shape features from the spectrogram image. To effectively capture both frequency and temporal variations within a birdsong segment using ART, a sector expansion algorithm is proposed to transform its spectrogram image into a corresponding sector image such that the frequency and temporal axes of the spectrogram image will align with the radial and angular directions of the ART basis functions, respectively. For the classification of 28 bird species using Gaussian mixture models (GMM), the best classification accuracy is 86.30% and 94.62% for 3-second and 5-second birdsong segments using the proposed ART descriptor, which is better than traditional descriptors such as LPCC, MFCC, and TDMFCC.
Reexamining the “Politics of In-between”: Political Participation among Mexican Immigrants in the United States

This article undertakes a multivariate analysis of political participation among Mexican American immigrants. Traditional forms of participation such as registration and voting are not adequate tests of civic engagement for a population including 7 million noncitizens. Rather, this article examines nonelectoral participation including attending a meeting or rally, volunteering for a campaign, or donating money to a political cause. This research employs a national sample of Mexican Americans, including immigrants and noncitizens, and the models reveal that Mexican American immigrants are politically active. The authors find that the foreign-born are not less likely to be active than native-born respondents and, furthermore, among the foreign-born, noncitizens are just as likely to participate as naturalized citizens. Although traditional SES variables remain important, language fluency, percentage of life in the United States, and immigrant attitudes toward opportunities in the United States contribute additional predictive capacity to models of political participation among Mexican immigrants.
Pro12Ala polymorphism of the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ gene in first-degree relatives of subjects with polycystic ovary syndrome

Aim. This study was designed to examine the relationship between the Pro12Ala polymorphism of the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (PPAR-γ) gene and insulin resistance (IR) in first-degree relatives of subjects with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Materials and methods. One hundred and twenty family members of 55 patients with PCOS and 80 unrelated healthy control subjects without a family history of diabetes or PCOS were studied. IR was assessed by homeostatic model assessment (HOMA-IR) and area under the curve (AUC) for insulin during an oral glucose tolerance test in subjects with normal glucose tolerance and controls. Genetic analysis of the PPAR-γ gene Pro12Ala polymorphism was performed by restriction fragment length polymorphism. Results. Fasting insulin, HOMA-IR and AUC insulin were significantly higher in first-degree relatives of PCOS subjects than in controls. A significantly different allele distribution of the Pro12Ala polymorphism of PPAR-γ was observed between the two groups, with the frequency of the variant Ala isoform being significantly reduced in the first-degree relatives of PCOS subjects (10.8%, 13 subjects) compared with the control group (22.5%, 18 subjects). All Pro12Ala polymorphisms of the PPAR-γ gene were heterozygous. Compared with first-degree relatives of PCOS subjects with the Pro12Pro polymorphism of PPAR-γ, first-degree relatives of PCOS subjects with the Pro12Ala polymorphism had low fasting insulin, HOMA-IR and AUC insulin levels. The combined prevalence rate for impaired glucose tolerance, impaired fasting glucose and diabetes was 40% (16 subjects) in mothers and 52% (20 subjects) in fathers of PCOS women. Conclusion. Our findings suggest that Pro12Ala PPAR-γ gene polymorphism may be protective against IR and might prevent the development of diabetes mellitus in the first-degree relatives of subjects with PCOS.
Dissociação de modos de processamento em persuasão

Neste artigo, apresentamos o paradigma subjacente a dissociacao dos processos de mudanca atitudinal (mudanca por via central vs. periferica) num contexto de persuasao. O paradigma base e aqui descrito em detalhe, sendo tambem descritas as principais variaveis moderadoras do efeito e as principais teorias que tentam explica-lo.
Levinas versus Levinas: Hebrew, Greek, and Linguistic Justice

I argue in this paper that Levinas's philosophical writings and his Jewish writings are not easily read as compatible. But I do not make the argument on what might seem to be the obvious grounds, namely, that the philosophical writings represent what Levinas calls the "Greek" while the Jewish writings represent what he calls the "Hebrew. " On the contrary, my claim is almost precisely the opposite. As Levinas uses the terms "Greek" and "Hebrew," each refers to a "sub-textual . way of thinking and speaking" (Richard Kearney, quoted in Cohen 1986, 18-19). The "Greek" is the ontological mode that seeks to describe the whole this is essentially the mode I believe Levinas works the reader toward in the Jewish writings. The "Hebrew" is the dialogical mode that is never complete and preserves dissent this is the mode he works the reader toward in the philosophical works. The first half of this paper contains a general discussion of the meaning of the two terms, the way in which Jacques Derrida brings out what is at stake in their use with the introduction of the more critically clarified terms "Jewgreek" and "Greekjew," and, finally, the beginning of my argument that Levinas is at odds with himself. The second half illustrates the
Hierarchy within human SI: supporting data from cytochrome oxidase, acetylcholinesterase and NADPH-diaphorase staining patterns

The human primary somatosensory cortex consists of four cytoarchitectonic subdivisions (3a, 3b, 1 and 2) that are likely to contain distinct somatosensory representations. The intraareal organization of these areas as well as that of the primary motor cortex (area 4) has been analyzed using histochemical stains of cytochrome oxidase, acetylcholinesterase and NADPH-diaphorase activity in normal human brains. Cytochrome oxidase activity was revealed in individual cortical neurons and neuropil. Areas 4, 3a and 3b were on average darker than areas 1 and 2. The laminar distribution of cytochrome oxidase activity varied in different areas. A prominent dark band was present in layers IV and lower III in areas 3a and 3b and in layer III in areas 1, 2 and 4. Acetylcholinesterase staining revealed fibers and pyramidal cells in layers III and V; stained layer III pyramids were rare in areas 3a and 3b and numerous in areas 1, 2 and 4. NADPH-diaphorase positive elements included Golgi-like stained non-pyramidal neurons and Nissl-like stained pyramidal neurons; the former were found, in small numbers, in layer II of areas 4, 3a, 3b and 1, and the latter in layers III and V of areas 4 and 3a and in layer V of areas 1 and 2. The dark cytochrome oxidase staining of layer IV and the paucity of acetylcholinesterase positive pyramids in areas 3a and 3b resemble the pattern found in primary visual and auditory areas, whereas the dark cytochrome oxidase staining in layer III and abundance of acetylcholinesterase positive pyramids in areas 1 and 2 that of association areas. These results suggest that the four areas included in human SI constitute hierarchical stages of cortical processing, with 3a and 3b corresponding to primary and 1 and 2 to secondary areas.
A bidirectional moving field inductive power transfer system for electric vehicles

A system concept for bidirectional non-contact inductive power transfer between a supply line embedded in the road and electric vehicles is described. The system allows high-speed long-range cruise with a minimum on-board stored energy. The inductive power transfer (IPT) is performed over a transformer system formed by a linear array of primary coils embedded in the roadway and a secondary coil in every electric vehicle. Primary and secondary coils are loosely coupled. The resulting high stray inductances are capacitively compensated. To minimize power loss only the primary coils under the vehicles are activated. The IPT system is operated as a switched resonant converter controlled by the primary and secondary coil currents. By this way power transfer in both directions can be accomplished. When switching from one primary coil to the subsequent primary coil on the track in order to follow the moving vehicle the electric and magnetic energies stored in the coils and capacitors are passed on to the subsequent coils and capacitors in order to avoid loss of the stored energy.
Decreased EMG median frequency during a second bout of eccentric contractions.

PURPOSE Others have reported preferential recruitment of fast motor units in muscles during performance of eccentric contractions and there is evidence that fast muscle fibers are more susceptible to eccentric contraction-induced injury. We tested the hypothesis that during a second bout of maximal eccentric contractions 1 wk after the first, there would be a reduction in the electromyographic (EMG) median frequency (MF) with minimal change in the EMG root-mean-square (RMS), indicating greater reliance on slower motor units. This could provide an explanation for the enhanced resistance to eccentric contraction-induced injury after a single bout of eccentric exercise. METHODS Human subjects performed 50 maximal voluntary eccentric (N = 10) or concentric (N = 10) contractions of the anterior crural muscles on two occasions separated by 1 wk. To determine whether MF changes during the second bout could be a consequence of injury to fibers in fast motor units, the anterior crural muscles of mice were electrically stimulated to perform 50 maximal eccentric (N = 10) or concentric (N = 9) contractions on two occasions separated by 1 wk. In both the humans and mice, torque production and tibialis anterior muscle RMS and MF were measured during the two exercise bouts. RESULTS In human tibialis anterior muscle, MF was 30% lower (P < 0.01) during the second eccentric bout although RMS was the same. In the mice, RMS and MF were unchanged at any time after the first eccentric bout despite torque deficits similar to those observed in the humans. CONCLUSIONS The data indicate that with repetition of maximal voluntary eccentric contractions, there is an increased activation of slow motor units and a concomitant decrease in activation of fast units.
Vehicle Tracking and Origin-destination Counting System for Urban Environment

Automatic counting of vehicles and estimation of origin-destination tables have become potential applications for traffic surveillance in urban areas. In this work we propose an alternative to Optical Flow tracking to segment and track vehicles with scale/size variation during movement known as adaptive size tracking problem. The performance evaluation of our proposed framework has been carried out on both public and privacy data sets. We show that our approach achieves better origin destination tables for urban traffic than the Optical Flow method which is used as baseline.
A simple method for isocapnic hyperventilation evaluated in a lung model

Isocapnic hyperventilation (IHV) has the potential to increase the elimination rate of anaesthetic gases and has been shown to shorten time to wake‐up and post‐operative recovery time after inhalation anaesthesia. In this bench test, we describe a technique to achieve isocapnia during hyperventilation (HV) by adding carbon dioxide (CO2) directly to the breathing circuit of a standard anaesthesia apparatus with standard monitoring equipment.
Reliable Hierarchical Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Systems

This paper presents an approach for hierarchical peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing systems in the design of the fault tolerance. In the hierarchical P2P system, peer nodes are organized into groups, and each group has a special peer node called superpeer to manage the regular peer nodes in the group. With this hierarchical characteristic, the proposed approach utilizes the superpeer node to tolerate the failures of the regular peer nodes. Unlike traditional P2P fault-tolerant approaches, the proposed fault-tolerant approach neither replicates the contents of the sharing files nor adds redundant overlay connections. Instead, it keeps track of the file retrievals in the superpeer node to support the fault tolerance. The cost of tracking the file retrievals is far smaller than the cost of replicating the file content. Furthermore, the proposed approach also considers the fault tolerance of the superpeer node by using the registration technique. The registration technique also takes a small cost in storing the file location information. Finally, the overall fault-tolerant cost of the proposed approach is analyzed to compare with other related approaches
Chapter 3 Expression analysis of five tobacco EIN 3 family members in relation to tissue-specific ethylene responses

Ethylene acts as a signaling compound during plant development and stress responses. In Arabidopsis, ethylene is perceived by a family of five membrane localized receptors, which can be grouped into two subfamilies. The subfamily II receptors ETR2, ERS2 and EIN4 contain a putative signal for transfer to the secretory pathway. By contrast, the subfamily I receptors ETR1 and ERS1 do not contain a known signal peptide. Immunological studies have shown that ETR1 localizes to the ER membrane. Using GFP tagging, we show that ERS1 localizes to the ER as well. The study underlines that plants have a tight control over ethylene receptor expression.
Current surgical strategies to treat fecal incontinence

Fecal incontinence is a devastating condition, vastly under-reported, and may affect up to 18% of the population. While conservative management may be efficacious in a large portion of patients, those who are refractory will likely benefit from appropriate surgical intervention. There are a wide variety of surgical approaches to fecal incontinence management, and knowledge and experience are crucial to choosing the appropriate procedure and maximizing functional outcome while minimizing risk. In this article, we provide a comprehensive description of surgical options for fecal incontinence to help the clinician identify an appropriate intervention.
Clinical Evaluation of Atypical Glandular Cells of Undetermined Significance on Cervical Cytology

Objective To determine the incidence of and identify risk factors for clinically significant diagnoses associated with the diagnosis on Papanicolaou test of atypical glandular cells of undetermined significance. Methods A computer search was initiated of diagnoses of atypical glandular cells of undetermined significance at the Massachusetts General Hospital from January 1993 through December 1996. Seventy-three patients with 81 smears were identified that were seen in the Colposcopy Clinic. All cytology was reviewed. A clinically significant lesion was defined as high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (SIL) or worse, endocervical glandular atypia or worse, or carcinoma. Results The rate of diagnoses of atypical glandular cells of undetermined significance was 0.167%. All patients underwent colposcopy, and 88% underwent endocervical curettage. A clinically significant diagnosis was made in 34.2% of patients, including cancer in 8.2%. A concurrent squamous diagnosis carried a risk of clinically significant lesion of 50%, compared with a risk of 25.5% for atypical glandular cells of undetermined significance alone (P = .043). Premenopausal and postmenopausal patients were both at risk for clinically important lessions, but premenopausal patients were more likely to have a high-grade SIL (30.4% versus 7.4%, P = .04). The subtype “suggestive of reactive” was a significant negative predictor of significant lesion (odds ratio = 0.09, 95% confidence interval 0.018, 0.482) in a logistic regression model controlling for age, menopausal status, and concurrent squamous diagnosis. Conclusion Atypical glandular cells of undetermined significance is an important Papanicolaou test diagnosis that needs appropriate and careful evaluation. Further studies are required to clarify areas of risk and to make triage algorithms.
Experimentos de enseñanza e investigación. Una dualidad en la práctica del formador de profesores de matemáticas

Este articulo se centra en el papel que pueden desempenar los experimentos de ensenanza y la investigacion sobre el aprendizaje del profesor de matematicas en la practica de formar profesores. En primer lugar, se describen los fundamentos que justifican la integracion de determinadas tareas profesionales en los entornos de aprendizaje que configuran los experimentos de ensenanza. En segundo lugar, se constata como las investigaciones han permitido identificar algunas caracteristicas sobre que y como aprenden los estudiantes para profesor en estos entornos de aprendizaje. Finalmente, las actividades descritas muestran la dependencia mutua entre los diferentes roles del formador de profesores de matematicas como docente, disenador e investigador.
Two-loop renormalization group equations for soft supersymmetry-breaking scalar interactions: Supergraph method.

We obtain the one- and two-loop renormalization group equations for soft SUSY breaking scalar interactions in general, semi-simple SUSY gauge model, by using the supergraph method. We find that the method simplifies the calculation significantly because of the non-renormalization theorem and also because of the property that the relevant divergences are derived by simple algebra from those in exact SUSY case. A disagreement with the existing result is found in $\beta~{(2)}(m~2)$ and its cause is briefly discussed.