Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficacy of a primary chemotherapy regimen combining vinorelbine, epirubicin, and methotrexate (VEM) as neoadjuvant treatment in 89 patients with operable breast cancer.

PURPOSE In order to improve the breast conservation rate for noninflammatory operable breast cancer stage II and IIIa, neoadjuvant chemotherapy containing vinorelbine, 25 mg/m(2), epirubicin, 35 mg/m(2), and methotrexate, 20 mg/m(2), VEM, was administered days 1 and 8 every 28 days for six cycles. METHODS From October, 1991 to April, 1996, 89 patients (median age 52 years, range 31-72; 68 stage II and 19 stage IIIa) received 519 cycles (median six) of VEM chemotherapy. RESULTS Hematotoxicity was mild (World Health Organization grade 3-4 neutropenia in 28% of cycles for 22 patients, and anemia or thrombocytopenia >grade 2) when it occurred, and there were no toxic deaths. The clinical objective response was 90% (28% complete response and 62% partial response). All patients underwent surgery: 77 (87%) had conservative and 12 (13%) had modified radical mastectomy, and 12 (14%) reached pathological complete response. At December, 2000, with a median follow-up of 86 months (39-100), 13 patients had relapsed, and five had died of metastatic disease. Median disease-free survival was 100 months (8.4 years) and median survival had not yet been reached.
Relationship of serum carotenoid concentrations with allostatic load as a measure of chronic stress among middle-aged adults in the USA

Abstract Objective Chronic stress and repeated physiological attempts at stress adaptation may result in ‘fatigue’ and suboptimal performance of multiple physiological systems, i.e. allostatic load (AL). Although carotenoids have been linked with individual cardiovascular, metabolic and inflammatory biomarkers, little is known about the relationship of carotenoids with the multi-system biomarker measure of stress, AL. The present study examined the association of serum concentrations of carotenoids with AL among middle-aged adults. Design Cross-sectional. AL score was calculated based on nine risk-rated indicators (systolic and diastolic blood pressure, pulse rate, total and HDL-cholesterol, glycosylated Hb, sex-specific waist-to-hip ratio, albumin and C-reactive protein). Subjects Middle-aged (45–64 years, n 3387) men and women participants in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, NHANES III (1988–1994). Results Serum β-carotene concentration was inversely associated with high AL after adjusting for age, education, race/ethnicity, serum cotinine, alcohol consumption, physical activity and other carotenoids (α-carotene, β-cryptoxanthin, lycopene, lutein/zeaxanthin). Females in the lowest β-carotene quartile were 2·94 (95 % CI 1·74, 4·94) times and males 2·90 (95 % CI 1·43, 5·89) times as likely to have high AL, compared with peers in the highest quartile (P for linear trend 0·001 and 0·018 for females and males, respectively). Mean serum β-carotene concentrations were also inversely associated with the number of ‘high-risk’ AL components (P for linear trend <0·001 and 0·004 for females and males, respectively). Conclusions Our study adds to evidence linking low β-carotene levels with unfavourable health outcomes.
Saccharomyces cerevisiae Mid2p Is a Potential Cell Wall Stress Sensor and Upstream Activator of thePKC1-MPK1 Cell Integrity Pathway

ABSTRACT The MID2 gene of Saccharomyces cerevisiaeencodes a protein with structural features indicative of a plasma membrane-associated cell wall sensor. MID2 was isolated as a multicopy activator of the Skn7p transcription factor. Deletion ofMID2 causes resistance to calcofluor white, diminished production of stress-induced cell wall chitin under a variety of conditions, and changes in growth rate and viability in a number of different cell wall biosynthesis mutants. Overexpression ofMID2 causes hyperaccumulation of chitin and increased sensitivity to calcofluor white. α-Factor hypersensitivity ofmid2Δ mutants can be suppressed by overexpression of upstream elements of the cell integrity pathway, includingPKC1, RHO1, WSC1, andWSC2. Mid2p and Wsc1p appear to have overlapping roles in maintaining cell integrity since mid2Δ wsc1Δ mutants are inviable on medium that does not contain osmotic support. A role for MID2 in the cell integrity pathway is further supported by the finding that MID2 is required for induction of Mpk1p tyrosine phosphorylation during exposure to α-factor, calcofluor white, or high temperature. Our data are consistent with a role for Mid2p in sensing cell wall stress and in activation of a response that includes both increased chitin synthesis and the Mpk1p mitogen-activated protein kinase cell integrity pathway. In addition, we have identified an open reading frame, MTL1, which encodes a protein with both structural and functional similarity to Mid2p.
Pseudomonas aeruginosa: Burn Infection, Treatment and Antibacterial Resistance

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen causing severe, acute and chronic nosocomial infections in immunocompromised, catheterized or burn patients. Various types of virulent factors have been identified in P. aeruginosa, suggesting their contribution to the pathogenesis of the disease. The organism is generally resistant to numerous antimicrobial agents due to natural resistance in particular impermeability or mutations and acquisition of resistant determinants. Plasmid and integron have a crucial role in acquisition of mobile elements. Most treatment failures are related to inappropriate initial antibiotic therapy with insufficient coverage of multidrug resistant (MDR) pathogens, the rationale for using combinations of antibiotics to cover MDR gram-negatives. However, clinical data supporting this strategy are limited. In fact, systematic combination therapy may have contributed to the overuse of antibiotics and to the emergence of MDR microorganisms. Nevertheless, combination therapy is the best strategy to treat severe infections due to suspected MDR Pseudomonas. Optimally, therapeutic strategies should be sufficiently broad to cover relevant pathogens while minimizing the risk for emergence of antimicrobial resistance. Polymyxin E (colistin) and carbapenems are the most effective antibiotics against MDR isolates.
Application of Unsupervised Learning for Detection Cross-site Scripting ( XSS ) Security Breaches

—Advancements of technology in the field of networking and computing bring with it a heightened importance for cyber security. Currently, legal forms of identification, financial information, and scientific data rely on this technology. Moreover, as more dependence on cloud computing, data-base storage, and online banking is applied keeping sensitive information secure is paramount. JavaScript Cross-site based attacks continue to be the most prevalent cause of compromised information. Here, we demonstrate the feasibility of using unsupervised learning algorithms to detect attacks as part of the Intrusion Detection System for malicious cross scripts with attacked web sites. Our contribution is domain-based, in order to track changes of the interaction. Profiles are made from web-crawled pages and parsed according to key scripting features. The detection is done when scripting deviates from the main clustering of those clean profiles data gathered
A Population-Based Study of the Association between Trypanosoma cruzi Infection and Cognitive Impairment in Old Age (The Bambuí Study)

Background: Limited clinical data suggest that chronic Trypanosoma cruzi infection, which causes Chagas’ disease (ChD), is associated with cognitive impairment. This study investigated this association in a large population-based sample of older adults. Methods: Participants in this cross-sectional study comprised 1,449 persons aged ≥60 years from a Brazilian endemic area (Bambuí). Cognitive functioning was ascertained by the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), considering its score in percentiles [≤14 (<5th percentile), 15–22 (5th to <25th) and ≥23]. Hypothesized risk factors were T. cruzi infection, ChD-related electrocardiographic (ECG) abnormalities and use of digoxin medication. Potential confounders included depressive symptoms, smoking, stroke, hemoglobin, HDL cholesterol, blood glucose, systolic blood pressure, and use of psychoactive medication. Results: The prevalence of T. cruzi infection was 37.6%. There was a graded and independent association between infection and the MMSE score (adjusted odds ratios estimated by ordinal logistic regression = 1.99; 95% CI 1.43–2.76). No significant associations between the MMSE score and ECG abnormalities or digoxin medication use were found. Conclusions: This study provides for the first time epidemiological evidence of an association between T. cruzi infection and cognitive impairment which was not mediated by either ChD-related ECG abnormalities or digoxin medication use.
Algorithm Design for Real-time Physical Activity Identification with Accelerometry Measurement

Characteristics of physical activity are indicative of one's mobility level, latent chronic diseases and aging process. Current research has been oriented to provide quantitative assessment of physical activity with ambulatory monitoring approaches. This study presented the design of algorithm integrated with a portable microprocessor-based accelerometry measuring device to implement real-time physical activity identification. This algorithm processes real-time tri-axial acceleration signals produced by human movement to identify targeted still postures, postural transitions or walking. Fall detection is also featured in this algorithm to meet the increasing needs for elderly care. High identification accuracy was obtained during the preliminary test phase and the observed limitations regarding real-time processing was also discussed. The result reveals that this developed algorithm is technically viable for real-time identification in ambulatory monitoring to provide sufficient information in evaluating a person's activity of daily living (ADL) and the status of physical mobility. Possible system integration and applications in the future were also discussed.
Improving Prediction of Student Performance based on Multiple Feature Selection Approaches

Recently, to provide the better education for students, there are a lot of researchers that discover the latent characteristics of students for predicting their performance. However, few existing work has explored the problem of extracting information from E-learning to get more precise and interpretable analysis. Based on the edX open data, we first predict whether the student will obtain the certificate, and take it as the criterion of student perfomance. Next, according to the requirement of the research, student features on dataset can be classified into three categories primarily, and some characters which seem umimportant intuitively have been removed already. Then, we adopt several kinds of feature selection approaches to extract important influencing student feature of the rest characters. Finally, though a few of existing classical machine learning methods, we build the model and predict student performance. The extensive experiments on the dataset of edX open platform we have conducted validated the effectiveness of predicting student performance.
Assay of Human Tissue-Type Plasminogen Activator (t-PA) with an Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) Based on Three Murine Monoclonal Antibodies to t-PA

Summary An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for the measurement of human tissue-type plasminogen activator (t-PA) was developed. Microtiter plates were coated with a mixture of two monoclonal antibodies and bound t-PA was quantitated with a third monoclonal antibody linked to peroxidase. The lower limit of sensitivity of the assay was 0.2 ng of t-PA per ml. The concentration of antigen in citrated plasma of human subjects was found to be 3.4 ± 0.8 ng/ml. The assay had a good reproducibility with values of 3.8, 6.5 and 4.9 percent respectively for the intra-, inter-assay and inter-dilution variation coefficients. The results of the ELISA assay on plasma samples from patients during thrombolytic therapy with t-PA correlated very well, over a wide concentration range, with those obtained with a previously described two-site immuno-radiometric assay (r = 0.96). This ELISA with monoclonal antibodies constitutes a stable and reproducible set of reagents for the measurement of t-PA antigen in biological fluids, avoiding the disadvantages of the use of radioisotopes and of polyclonal antibodies.
Closing crack earthquakes within the Krafla caldera, North Iceland

Moment tensor analysis with a Bayesian approach was used to analyse a non-double-couple (non-DC) earthquake (Mw ∼ 1) with a high isotropic (implosive) component within the Krafla caldera, Iceland. We deduce that the earthquake was generated by a closing crack at depth. The event is well located, with high signal-to-noise ratio and shows dilatational P-wave first arrivals at all stations where the first arrival can be picked with confidence. Coverage of the focal sphere is comprehensive and the source mechanism stable across the full range of uncertainties. The non-DC event lies within a cluster of microseismic activity including many DC events. Hence, we conclude that it is a true non-DC closing crack earthquake as a result of geothermal utilization and observed magma chamber deflation in the region at present.
Enol Carbamates as Inhibitors of Fatty Acid Amide Hydrolase (FAAH) Endowed with High Selectivity for FAAH over the Other Targets of the Endocannabinoid System

Enol Carbamates as Inhibitors of Fatty Acid Amide Hydrolase (FAAH) Endowed with High Selectivity for FAAH over the Other Targets of the Endocannabinoid System Sonia Gattinoni, Chiara De Simone, c] Sabrina Dallavalle, Filomena Fezza, c] Raffaella Nannei, Daniele Amadio, c] Patrizia Minetti, Gianandrea Quattrociocchi, Antonio Caprioli, Franco Borsini, Walter Cabri, Sergio Penco, Lucio Merlini,* and Mauro Maccarrone*
Enhancing Object Detection by Using Probabilistic Spatial-Semantic Knowledge

Autonomous mobile robots that act in human living environment and perform complex tasks there must be able to obtain relevant information from the surrounding and reason about this knowledge. The system’s ability to recognize objects and assign them semantic description is a vital capability for the robots in order to carry out such a complex task. Dealing with objects in the environment is not a trivial problem but rather a challenging one and detection systems relay only on information extracted from their noisy sensors are often not sufficient to recognize objects properly. Therefore, this paper presents a new approach for object recognition, in which probabilistic spatial-semantic knowledge is applied to improve the recognition result.
Studies of monoclonal and polyclonal anti-digoxin antibodies for serum digoxin radioimmunoassay.

We compared the advantages of monoclonal antibodies (produced by plasma cell-myeloma cell hybrid lines) and those of conventional antibodies in the radioimmunoassay of digoxin. It was found that antibodies produced by some hybrid cell lines (hybridomas) were highly specific for the digoxin structure; this way the cross-reactions to related structures (e.g. spironolactone) could be avoided. When the hybridoma lines were grown in ascites, the resulting fluid could have as high or higher titre than the serum of a hyperimmunized rabbit. The high titre, the specificity and the permanent growth of the hybridoma lines make them an optimal source of the specific antibody in clinical radioimmunoassays for the measurement of drug or hormone levels.
Mechanical assessment of trabecular bone stiffness using hybrid skeleton and finite element analysis

The form primitives of trabecular bone can be modelled as a complex structure of rods and plates. The classification of these primitives helps in simulating the physical or mechanical properties which are usually determined not only by the porosity of the object, but also by the arrangement of structure primitives in the 3D space. Based on the classified trabecular bone primitives, we propose in this work a finite element model that is both simple and fast while preserving the accuracy of the analysis. Rods are modelled as beams with circular cross sections. For the plate-like primitives, a triangulation method is used to characterise the behaviour of the corresponding shell elements. Using the proposed method, multiple features can be generated and combined in a statistical discriminant analysis in order to study the mechanical behaviour of selected trabecular bone samples. A clinical study was conducted on two populations of arthritic and osteoporotic bone samples. The results show the ability of our beam/shell model to discriminate the two populations.
How Good is the Assumption About Visible Surface Reflectance in MODIS Aerosol Retrieval Over Land? A Comparison With Aircraft Measurements Over an Urban Site in India

In this paper, we discuss the measurements of spectral surface reflectance (rholambda s) in the wavelength range 350-2500 nm measured using a spectroradiometer onboard a low-flying aircraft over Bangalore (12.95degN, 77.65deg E), an urban site in southern India. The large discrepancies in the retrieval of aerosol properties over land by the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), which could be attributed to the inaccurate estimation of surface reflectance at many sites in India and elsewhere, provided motivation for this paper. The aim of this paper was to verify the surface reflectance relationships assumed by the MODIS aerosol algorithm for the estimation of surface reflectance in the visible channels (470 and 660 nm) from the surface reflectance at 2100 nm for aerosol retrieval over land. The variety of surfaces observed in this paper includes green and dry vegetations, bare land, and urban surfaces. The measured reflectance data were first corrected for the radiative effects of atmosphere lying between the ground and aircraft using the Second Simulation of Satellite Signal in the Solar Spectrum (6S) radiative transfer code. The corrected surface reflectance in the MODIS's blue (rho470 s), red (rho660 s), and shortwave-infrared (SWIR) channel (rho2100 s) was linearly correlated. We found that the slope of reflectance relationship between 660 and 2100 nm derived from the forward scattering data was 0.53 with an intercept of 0.07, whereas the slope for the relationship between the reflectance at 470 and 660 nm was 0.85. These values are much higher than the slope ( ~0.49) for either wavelengths assumed by the MODIS aerosol algorithm over this region. The reflectance relationship for the backward scattering data has a slope of 0.39, with an intercept of 0.08 for 660 nm, and 0.65, with an intercept of 0.08 for 470 nm. The large values of the intercept (which is very small in the MODIS reflectance relationships) result in larger values of absolute surface reflectance in the visible channels. The discrepancy between the measured and assumed surface reflectances could lead to error in the aerosol retrieval. The reflectance ratio (rho660 s/rho2100 s) showed a clear dependence on the NDVI SWIR where the ratio increased from 0.5 to 1 with an increase in NDVI SWIR from 0 to 0.5. The high correlation between the reflectance at SWIR wavelengths (2100, 1640, and 1240 nm) indicated an opportunity to derive the surface reflectance and, possibly, aerosol properties at these wavelengths. We need more experiments to characterize the surface reflectance and associated inhomogeneity of land surfaces, which play a critical role in the remote sensing of aerosols over land.
Nearest-Neighbor and Contact Distance Distributions for Matérn Cluster Process

In this letter, we derive the cumulative density function of the nearest neighbor and contact distance distributions of the Matérn cluster process (MCP) in <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathbb {R}^{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. These results will be useful in the performance analysis of many real-world wireless networks that exhibit inter-node attraction. Using these results, we concretely demonstrate that the contact distance of the MCP stochastically dominates its nearest-neighbor distance as well as the contact distance of the homogenous Poisson point process with the same density.
Tumor necrosis factor alpha is a cytotoxin induced by murine Chlamydia trachomatis infection

A mouse model of pneumonia caused by murine Chlamydia trachomatis (mouse pneumonitis agent) was used to demonstrate that whole spleen cells from both nude athymic mice (nu/nu) and heterozygous mice (nu/+) produced tumor necrosis factor alpha in vitro in response to mouse pneumonitis agent antigen. The tumor necrosis factor alpha measured in these supernatants by immunoassay was shown to have bioactivity in a cytotoxic assay in which uninfected target cells were used. This cytotoxicity was distinct from the gamma interferon-related cytotoxicity against C. trachomatis-infected targets that we described previously.
Roof Surface Classification with Hyperspectral and Laser Scanning Data - An Assessment of Spectral Angle Mapper and Support Vector Machines

The urban environment is characterised by a variety of different surface materials. For the discrimination of urban materials, hyperspectral imaging proved a valuable tool. In this study, two methods for classification, Spectral Angle Mapper and Support Vector Machines, are compared on a hyperspectral dataset to derive a detailed map of roof materials. Spectral similarity of different materials, especially with low reflectance and no distinct absorption features can complicate the classification process. Therefore, hyperspectral data were supplemented with laser scanning data to not only discriminate roof from ground data but also to use roof inclination to distinguish roof spectra. A binary roof mask from a laser scanning dataset was used to restrict the classification to roofs only. After testing the two classifiers on this reduced dataset, the approach was extended by incorporating inclination information in the classification process. Comparison between the classified images is done visually and quantitatively using confusion matrices. It can be shown that both classifiers are suitable for the classification of roof materials with the Spectral Angle Mapper results yielding higher classification accuracies than Support Vector Machines. For both classification approaches, the confusion between several materials was reduced by the incorporation of roof inclination, thus improving overall accuracy.
Adaptive, quadratic preprocessing of document images for binarization

This paper presents an adaptive algorithm for preprocessing document images prior to binarization in character recognition problems. Our method is similar in its approach to the blind adaptive equalization of binary communication channels. The adaptive filter utilizes a quadratic system model to provide edge enhancement for input images that have been corrupted by noise and other types of distortions during the scanning process. Experimental results demonstrating significant improvement in the quality of the binarized images over both direct binarization and a previously available preprocessing technique are also included.
Wheat identifying in North China with RADARSAT-2 SAR data

Compared with conventional single-polarization synthetic aperture radar (SAR), quad-polarimetric SAR observations provide more information and show potential for land cover classification. This paper evaluates the wheat identifying potential of quad-polarimetric SAR data. The fully polarimetric Radarsat-2 image for the Hebei province, China, is selected to evaluate the identification accuracy. Experimental results indicate that HH with HH-HV is the optimal linear polarization combination, with an accuracy of up to 82.3%. The Freeman-Durden decomposition can discriminate wheat more effectively, with an accuracy of about 86.8%. The combination of the Freeman-Durden decomposition and the parameter H is the best method for wheat identification, with an accuracy of up to 90.5%.