Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Design and implementation of a behavioral migraine management iPhone app for adolescents with migraine

Our recent feasibility study of a telephone-administrated Behavioral Migraine Management (BMM) program for teens revealed that while learning and improvements in migraine were encouraging, experience for teens could be further improved with on-demand access to BMM instruction and materials. To meet this demand, an iPhone application was developed to help adolescent migraine patients and their counselors manage migraine with our behavioral migraine management approach. This application provides on-demand access to audio, video and animated instructions to guide the learning and application of behavioral migraine management skills as well as a headache diary that allows adolescents and their counselors to monitor key migraine and medication use variables. The design, implementation, current status, and future plan of this BMM iPhone App for adolescents are described in this paper.
Optimizing soy isoflavones effect in postmenopausal women: the impact of timing on climacteric symptoms

Background. The most common complaints during climacteric are vasomotor symptoms. A circadian rhythm has been observed when hot flashes start; however, not much information is available in this field. Aims. To analyze whether the time (morning/evening) of administration of a compound containing 60 mg of dry soy seed extract (glycine max) with 40% of total isoflavones, primrose oil and α-tocopherol modifies the effect on the climacteric syndrome. Trial design. Multicentric, observational, open, prospective, longitudinal and cross-sectional study. Subjects and methods. One thousand six hundred eighty-two postmenopausal women with climacteric symptoms were allocated in two groups in order to receive the treatment in the morning (Group 1) or in the evening (Group 2), switching administration time after 3 months. Clinical evaluation was carried out at 0, 3 and 6 months of follow-up using Blatt–Kupperman and Greene scales Results. 233 (13.9%) women dropped out from the study. Both administration times improved the climacteric symptoms after 3 and 6 months of treatment, showing a reduction in the scores of Blatt–Kupperman and Greene scales (p < 0.001). No differences between both groups during the follow-up were identified. Conclusions. The time of administration of isoflavones does not modify its effect on climacteric symptoms.
The Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor HER2 Is Not a Major Therapeutic Target in Ewing Sarcoma

Background Although chimeric EWS gene and Ets gene fusions are pathognomonic of Ewing sarcoma (ES) and primitive neuroectodermal tumors (PNET), the molecular pathogenesis of these pediatric malignancies is poorly understood. Recently, the human epidermal growth factor (HER)-2 receptor, which plays an important role in the biology of certain epithelial cancers, has been implicated in ES tumor cell line growth and chemosensitivity. Materials To investigate whether HER2 might be a rational target for ES/PNET therapy, five ES cell lines and 13 archival primary ES/PNET samples were examined by immunohistochemistry (IHC) and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) for evidence of HER2 overexpression. Results Although several ES cell lines demonstrated modest constitutive HER2 expression by immunoblot, none of the ES cell lines or primary tumor samples showed evidence of HER2 overexpression by IHC or HER2 gene amplification by FISH. Moreover, treatment of human ES cell lines with the HER2-targeted agent trastuzumab (Herceptin) had little effect on cell survival, proliferation, or growth in semi-solid medium. Conclusions These results suggest that HER2 is not a biologically or therapeutically important pathway in ES/PNET.
A comparative study between responses of isolated bovine and equine digital arteries to vasoactive mediators

Hemodynamic perturbations, partly resulting from abnormal vasoconstriction of digital vessels, have been implicated in the pathogenesis of bovine and equine laminitis. This study compared the responsiveness of isolated bovine (BDA) and equine (EDA) digital arteries to pharmacological agents that stimulate receptor systems involved in the regulation of normal vessel tone. The role of the endothelium and the short- and longer-term effects of an experimentally induced endothelial damage were also evaluated. Species-related differences were found in the vessel reactivity to all of the receptor agonists tested. In intact BDA, as compared to intact EDA, norepinephrine was a more effective vasoconstrictor, 5-hydroxytryptamine a more effective but less potent vasoconstrictor, isoproterenol a less effective vasodilator and carbamylcholine a less potent vasodilator. In BDA, but not in EDA, the contractile responses to norepinephrine and 5-hydroxytryptamine were enhanced immediately after endothelium removal. However, the contractile reactivity of denuded BDA returned to basal values following overnight incubation. The differences suggest species specificity for the pathophysiology of digital vasomotor tone and function in horses and cattle.
The Link Between Recent Sexual Abuse and Drug Use Among African American Male College Students: It's Not Just a Female Problem in and Around Campus

Abstract This study examined the relationship between sexual abuse in or around campus and drug use among young African-American males in college. It offers cross-sectional analysis of data collected from the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Awareness and Use Study (ASAAUS). Data collection took place in October 2004 via a self-administered survey among 181 African-American male students. Males who reported past sexual abuse in or around campus were significantly more likely than nonsexuallyabused males to have used tobacco (41% v. 19%, p < .05), alcohol (82% v. 49%, p < .05), marijuana (59% v. 30%,p < .05), and cocaine (18% v. 2%, p < .05) in the 30 day preceding the interview. Logistic regression analyses indicated that sexual abuse history in or around campus was significantly associated with past year (OR = 9.8, p ≤ 0.001) and past 30 day (OR = 5.0, p ≤ 0.001) drug use.
Adaptive position tracking control of high-speed trains with piecewise dynamics

This paper addresses the adaptive position tracking control problem for high-speed trains with time-varying resistances and mass in the motion dynamics. To handel these time-varying parameters with piecewise constant characteristics, a piecewise constant model with unknown parameters is introduced for different train operation conditions. An integrated adaptive controller structure is constructed to have the capacity to achieve plant-model matching with known parameters and complete system parametrization with unknown parameters, which is desirable for adaptive tracking control. For the train position tracking requirement, the reference model system is specifically chosen. Stable adaptive laws are designed to update the adaptive controller parameters in the presence of the unknown piecewise constant system parameters. Closed-loop stability and asymptotic state tracking are proved. Simulation results on a high-speed train model are presented to illustrate the desired adaptive position tracking control performance.
Do Capital Markets Punish Managerial Myopia?

The extant literature provides conflicting arguments and mixed results on whether capital markets punish managerial myopia. Using managers’ cutting R&D to meet short-term earnings goals as a research setting, this study reveals that capital markets actually penalize managerial myopia, especially for firms with high investor sophistication. Our results are consistent with Jensen’s (1988) contention that the security market is not shortsighted. Additionally, we document that compensation, especially cash compensation, could be one of the reasons why managers behave myopically. JEL classifications: G32; M41
Social value orientation moderates the effects of intuition versus reflection on responses to unfair ultimatum offers

We investigated whether social value orientation (SVO) moderates the effects of intuitive versus reflective information processing on responses to unfair offers. We measured SVO one week prior to an ultimatum game experiment in which participants had to accept or reject a series of 10 ultimatum offers including very low (unfair) ones. Before making these decisions, participants mentally contrasted their individual goals with the obstacle of pondering at length or acting in a hasty way; then they made the plan to adopt an intuitive or a reflective mode of processing (intuitive and reflective condition, respectively), or made no such plans (control condition). Participants with rather high (prosocial) SVO scores were more likely to accept unfair offers in the reflective than the intuitive condition. This effect also evinced for a subset of selfish individuals; however, the majority with rather low (selfish) scores made similar decisions in both conditions. This pattern of results suggests that SVO moderates the effects of intuitive versus reflective modes of processing on responses to low ultimatum offers.
Diagnosis, Personality and the Long-term Outcome of Depression

Patients diagnosed in the late 1960s as suffering from either endogenous or neurotic depression, or as presenting with depression but discharged with another neurotic diagnosis, were followed for 15 years. Diagnosis at index admission did not predict overall outcome, but patients with endogenous depression, an apparently stable diagnosis, had longer index admissions, were readmitted sooner, but spent less time ill than patients in either of the neurosis groups. Personality abnormality accounted for 20% of the variance in outcome in the neurotic groups and only 2% of the variance in the endogenous group. Thus there is evidence that endogenous and neurotic depression are two illnesses and that, in the neuroses particularly, prognosis will depend on the extent to which these personality abnormalities are modified by treatment.
Analysis of an integrated twin-guide laser with coupled-wave theory

The integrated twin-guide (ITG) laser consists of two parallel waveguides for the laser gain and the light output. Light-wave coupling between the two waveguides is analyzed with the help of coupled-wave theory, and the frequency-dependent oscillation conditions are obtained in an explicit form. It is concluded that single axial-mode oscillation is more realizable in an asymmetrical structure with shorter cavity length than in a symmetrical structure. This method of analysis can be applied to integrated optical circuits consisting of twin-guide structures.
Microbial shift and periodontitis.

Periodontitis, a biofilm-associated inflammatory disease of the periodontium, is a major cause of tooth loss in the world. This disease appears to have multiple etiologies, the most studied of which are microbial and immunological. The primary microbial factor contributing to disease is a shift in the content of the oral microflora, while the primary immunological factor is the destructive host inflammatory response. Several techniques have been used clinically to treat periodontitis, but the most successful ones appear to address both the bacterial and inflammatory components of the condition. Therefore, this review will detail the microbial and molecular nature of periodontitis, and it will also compare the efficacy of traditional and emerging technologies for treating this costly disease.
Road extraction in remote sensing images based on Nonsubsampled Contourlet Transform

A new method for automated road extraction in remote sensing images is proposed based on Nonsubsampled Contourlet Transform (NSCT). Due to the advantages of multi-scale, multi-direction and translation invariance, NSCT is much efficient for the capture of linear singularity of road target. A pixel-wised feature extraction algorithm is given first based on the analysis of the NSCT coefficient responses for the road target. Final results can be achieved by the simple fuzzy C-means clustering and the postprocessing steps. Experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms other methods such as Gabor wavelet in accuracy, localization and false detection.
Involvement of an AP-1 complex in zone-specific expression of the CYP11B1 gene in the rat adrenal cortex

The CYP11B1 gene, which encodes steroid 11 beta-monooxygenase, which is responsible for the synthesis of cortisol and corticosterone, the major glucocorticoids in mammals, is expressed specifically in the zona fasciculata of the adrenal cortex. We have analyzed the promoter region of the rat CYP11B1 gene by using a transient-expression system with adrenocortical Y1 cells and have identified a positive regulatory region. The region contained two adjacent sites for the binding of Y1-cell nuclear proteins: the binding site for an AP-1 transcription factor composed of JunD and a Fos-related protein, and the site for Ad4-binding protein (Ad4BP). The binding of the AP-1 factor to the regulatory region had a suppressive effect on that of Ad4BP in the nuclear extracts. Mutational analyses revealed that the transcriptional activation of the CYP11B1 gene promoter in Y1 cells was attributable to the AP-1 site but not to the Ad4 site. Subsequently, nuclear extracts of the zona fasciculata cells from the rat adrenal cortex were found to contain both AP-1 factor and Ad4BP, whose binding properties to the regulatory region were almost identical to those of the two factors in the Y1-cell nuclear extracts. Moreover, immunohistochemical analyses of rat adrenal cortices showed that the AP-1 factor was present in the nuclei of CYP11B1-expressing cells in the zona fasciculata but not in the nuclei of cells in the other zones. From these results, we propose that the AP-1 transcription factor found in this study plays an important role in the zone-specific expression of the CYP11B1 gene in rat adrenal cortex.
Texture Inpainting Using Covariance in Wavelet Domain

Abstract In this article, the covariance of wavelet transform coefficients is used to obtain a texture inpainted image. The covariance is obtained by the maximum likelihood estimate. The integration of wavelet decomposition and maximum likelihood estimate of a group of pixels (texture) captures the best-fitting texture used to fill in the inpainting area. The image is decomposed into four wavelet coefficient images by using wavelet transform. These wavelet coefficient images are divided into small square patches. The damaged region in each coefficient image is filled by searching a similar square patch around the damaged region in that particular wavelet coefficient image by using covariance.
Quantitation of arterial spin labeling MRI labeling efficiency in high cervical velocity conditions using phase contrast angiography

The objective of this study is to measure flow velocities in the four major vessels supplying the brain using phase contrast angiography (PCA) MRI and to use these measurements to estimate labeling efficiency in the popular cerebral blood flow (CBF)-weighted arterial spin labeling (ASL) approach in patient cervical vessels with variable flow velocity. ASL and PCA scans were performed on controls (n=7), and patients with sickle cell disease (SCD) with known, elevated flow velocity (n=19). Mean blood flow velocities were computed for the internal carotid and vertebral arteries using PCA. ASL labeling efficiencies were calculated by requiring that the CBF be identical between PCA and ASL. The results showed that ASL labeling efficiencies in patients with SCD are significantly lower (p<;0.05) than in controls, causing an underestimation of CBF from ASL when using labeling efficiencies that do not control for flow velocity; solutions for this fundamental limitation are proposed.
Efficient Site-Specific Integration of Large Transgenes by an Enhanced Herpes Simplex Virus/Adeno-Associated Virus Hybrid Amplicon Vector

ABSTRACT We previously demonstrated that a herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1)/adeno-associated virus (AAV) hybrid amplicon vector constructed by inserting the sequences of regulatory protein (rep) and inverted terminal repeats of AAV into an HSV amplicon vector resulted in the enhanced stability of transgene expression compared to the original HSV-1 amplicon vector. However, problems related to the expression of Rep compromised its therapeutic applications. We report here a new HSV/AAV hybrid amplicon vector system that not only solved problems associated with Rep expression but also markedly improved the stable transduction efficiency of this vector. This new HSV/AAV vector is designed in a way that little or no Rep would be expressed in packaging cells, but it can be expressed in transduced cells if Cre recombinase is provided. Furthermore, Rep expression will be automatically suppressed as a consequence of Rep-mediated integration. Our results showed that the new hybrid amplicon vector yielded titers comparable to those of standard amplicon vectors. When Cre-expressing 293 cells were transduced, a low level of Rep expression was detected, and stable transduction was achieved in ∼22% of transduced cells; of those cells, ∼70% transduction was achieved by Rep-mediated site-specific integration. In the majority of the stably transduced cells, Rep expression was no longer observed. Our results also proved that this vector system is capable of efficiently accommodating and site-specifically integrating large transgenes, such as the full-length dystrophin expression cassette. Thus, the new HSV/AAV vector demonstrated unique advantages in safe and effective delivery of long-lasting transgene expression into human cells.
Hormonal Replacement in Hypopituitarism in Adults: An Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline.

OBJECTIVE To formulate clinical practice guidelines for hormonal replacement in hypopituitarism in adults. PARTICIPANTS The participants include an Endocrine Society-appointed Task Force of six experts, a methodologist, and a medical writer. The American Association for Clinical Chemistry, the Pituitary Society, and the European Society of Endocrinology co-sponsored this guideline. EVIDENCE The Task Force developed this evidence-based guideline using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation system to describe the strength of recommendations and the quality of evidence. The Task Force commissioned two systematic reviews and used the best available evidence from other published systematic reviews and individual studies. CONSENSUS PROCESS One group meeting, several conference calls, and e-mail communications enabled consensus. Committees and members of the Endocrine Society, the American Association for Clinical Chemistry, the Pituitary Society, and the European Society of Endocrinology reviewed and commented on preliminary drafts of these guidelines. CONCLUSIONS Using an evidence-based approach, this guideline addresses important clinical issues regarding the evaluation and management of hypopituitarism in adults, including appropriate biochemical assessments, specific therapeutic decisions to decrease the risk of co-morbidities due to hormonal over-replacement or under-replacement, and managing hypopituitarism during pregnancy, pituitary surgery, and other types of surgeries.
Signal Reconstruction of Pulmonary Vein Recordings Using a Phenomenological Mathematical Model: Application to Pulmonary Vein Isolation Therapy

Atrial fibrillation (AF), the most prevalent cardiac arrhythmia, is commonly initiated by ectopic beats originating from a small myocardial sleeve extending over the pulmonary veins. Pulmonary vein isolation therapy attempts to isolate the pulmonary veins from the left atrium by ablating tissue, commonly by using radiofrequency ablation. During this procedure, the cardiologist records electrical activity using a lasso catheter, and the activation pattern recorded is used as a guide toward which regions to ablate. However, poor contact between electrode and tissue can lead to important regions of electrical activity not being recorded in clinic. We reproduce these signals through the use of a phenomenological model of the cardiac action potential on a cylinder, which we fit to post-AF atrial cells, and model the bipolar electrodes of the lasso catheter by an approximation of the surface potential. The resulting activation pattern is validated by direct comparison with those of clinical recordings. A potential application of the model is to reconstruct the missing electrical activity, minimizing the impact of the information loss on the clinical procedure, and we present results to demonstrate this.
Primer effect in the detection of mtDNA heteroplasmy: insights from horse Cytochrome b gene

Abstract Heteroplasmy, the presence of bi-allelic mtDNA types within an individual, has been previously detected in the D-loop region and Cytochrome b gene (Cytb) of mitochondrial DNA using PCR-RFLP. However, heteroplasmy was absent in thousands of equine mtDNA sequences deposited in GenBank. To address whether heteroplasmy widely exists in mitochondria of Chinese indigenous horses, we generated the data set of the target sites in Cytb region with Sanger sequencing and PCR-RFLP method as well. In this study, 23 heteroplasmic individuals were detected in 430 Chinese local horses. Both site and length heteroplasmy were identified in horse Cytb, especially in Xinihe and Ujumqin breeds. Our data provide evidence that the forward and reverse primers seem to produce a similar approximation to the proportion of mutation base call. However, locations of primers affected the proper detection of mtDNA heteroplasmy. The data obtained in this study highlight the importance of the primers in the accurate detection of heteroplasmy.
Morphological characterization of graphene flake networks using Minkowski functionals

Two Minkowski functionals were tested in the capacity of morphological descriptors to quantitatively compare the arrays of vertically-aligned graphene flakes grown on smooth and nanoporous alumina and silica surfaces. Specifically, the Euler-Poincare characteristic and fractal dimension graphs were used to characterize the degree of connectivity and order in the systems, i.e. in the graphene flake patterns of petal-like and tree-like morphologies on solid substrates, and meshlike patterns (networks) grown on nanoporous alumina treated in low-temperature inductivelycoupled plasma. It was found that the Minkowski functionals return higher connectivity and fractal dimension numbers for the graphene flakepatterns with more complex morphologies, and indeed can be used as morphological descriptors to differentiate among various configurations of vertically-aligned graphene flakes grown on surfaces.
Data Assimilation of PROBA-V 100 and 300 m

The project for on-board autonomy-vegetation (PROBA-V) satellite can produce global daily images at 300-m spatial resolution. Three sensors are mounted on the same platform. Two off-nadir-viewing sensors acquire imagery at 300-m spatial resolution, whereas a nadir-viewing sensor acquires imagery at 100-m spatial resolution. The swath of the nadir-viewing sensor is only half of the swath of a single off-nadir-viewing sensor. Using this sensor only, the revisit time is five days. Here, we present a data assimilation method to increase the temporal resolution of the 100-m product. The method implements a Kalman filter recursive algorithm that integrates the images at 100 and 300-m resolution to generate the assimilated imagery at the fine spatial detail (100 m). The proposed method can be applied for global products. In this study, it has been applied to a region in western Europe (Flanders) during the growing season. This region is particularly challenging due to frequent cloud cover (45% cloud cover on average). The assimilated product is a cloud-free time series at the temporal resolution of the 300-m data, while preserving the spatial detail of the 100-m data. Quantitative results show the potential of the method compared to a simple data assimilation and the Savitzky-Golay (SG) filter. The added value of the improved spatial resolution from 300 to 100 m has also been illustrated for monitoring agriculture via remote sensing in this area.