Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fibrin D-Dimer, Haemostatic Factors and Peripheral Arterial Disease

Summary Several haemostatic factors have been shown to have a predictive role in cardiovascular disease, although their relationship with prevalent peripheral arterial disease is not well reported. Using a random sample of 1592 men and women aged 55-74 years from Edinburgh, Scotland, we examined the relationship of von Willebrand factor (vWF), tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA) and fibrin D-dimer antigens and factor VII activity to peripheral arterial disease. t-PA antigen and fibrin D-dimer showed significant linear trends of increased levels with increasing severity of disease in both sexes (p ≤0.01) and vWF showed a similar pattern in men only (p ≤0.01). On multivariate analysis, fibrin D-dimer was independently related to the risk of intermittent claudication (p ≤0.01) and, among men, to the extent of arterial narrowing in the lower limb, as measured by the ankle brachial pressure index, (ABPI) (p ≤0.001). These results are further evidence of a role for intravascular fibrin deposition in the development of peripheral atherosclerosis.
Izvorni znanstveni rad

In this paper I examine the proposed reconstructions of the PIE vowel system from a typological point of view. It is argued that the monovocalic or vowelless systems are improbable, because no such systems are attested in the languages of the world. On the other hand, the maximalistic view of the PIE vowel system is equally unacceptable, because the alleged instances of PIE *a can be explained away as containing *h2, and the PIE long vowels *e and *o are best treated as short *e and *o with the additional suprasegmental feature of length. However, the most usual phonetic interpretation of the ablauting PIE vowels *e and *o is not convincing, because there are no languages containing /e/ and /o/ but no /a/. Although the final solution of this problem is not offered, it is argued that it would be possible to interpret PIE e as /a/, and * PIE *o as /∂/ to achieve a typologically plausible reconstruction of the PIE vowel system.
Seeing is believing – quantifying is convincing: Computational image analysis in biology ∗

Imaging is center stage in biology. Advances in microscopy and labeling techniques have enabled unprecedented observations and continue to inspire new developments. Eﬃcient and accurate quantiﬁcation and computational analysis of the acquired images, however, are becoming the bottleneck. We review diﬀerent paradigms of computational image analysis for intracellular, single-cell, and tissue-level imaging, providing pointers to the specialized literature and listing available software tools. We place particular emphasis on clear categorization of image-analysis frameworks and on identifying current trends and challenges in the ﬁeld. We further outline some of the methodological advances that are required in order to use images as quantitative scientiﬁc measurements.
Formalizing the SSA-based compiler for verified advanced program transformations

FORMALIZING THE SSA-BASED COMPILER FOR VERIFIED ADVANCED PROGRAM TRANSFORMATIONS Jianzhou Zhao Steve Zdancewic Compilers are not always correct due to the complexity of language semantics and transformation algorithms, the trade-offs between compilation speed and verifiability, etc. The bugs of compilers can undermine the source-level verification efforts (such as type systems, static analysis, and formal proofs) and produce target programs with different meaning from source programs. Researchers have used mechanized proof tools to implement verified compilers that are guaranteed to preserve program semantics and proved to be more robust than ad-hoc non-verified compilers. The goal of the dissertation is to make a step towards verifying an industrial strength modern compiler—LLVM, which has a typed, SSA-based, and general-purpose intermediate representation, therefore allowing more advanced program transformations than existing approaches. The dissertation formally defines the sequential semantics of the LLVM intermediate representation with its type system, SSA properties, memory model, and operational semantics. To design and reason about program transformations in the LLVM IR, we provide tools for interacting with the LLVM infrastructure and metatheory for SSA properties, memory safety, dynamic semantics, and controlflow-graphs. Based on the tools and metatheory, the dissertation implements verified and extractable applications for LLVM that include an interpreter for the LLVM IR, a transformation for enforcing memory safety, translation validators for local optimizations, and verified SSA construction transformation. This dissertation shows that formal models of SSA-based compiler intermediate representations can be used to verify low-level program transformations, thereby enabling the construction of highassurance compiler passes.
Development of an antimicrobial urinary catheter to inhibit urinary catheter encrustation

Background: Encrustation of urinary catheters is a frequent problem in patients with long-term indwelling catheters colonised with urease-positive bacteria such as Proteus mirabilis. Catheter blockage may follow catheter encrustation, potentially leading to systemic infection. Prevention of encrustation is difficult and avoidance of recurrence often unsuccessful. One possible preventative strategy is to use a catheter with an antimicrobial surface and development and assessment of such a surface was the aim of this research. Methods: Initial experiments assessed the antimicrobial activity of silicone impregnated with plant-derived antimicrobials and triclosan using agar diffusion. The longevity of activity of each antimicrobial silicone was examined over a period of 11 weeks following soaking individual pieces of antimicrobial silicone in an artificial urine solution before using agar diffusion to test remaining antimicrobial activity. Live/Dead staining of bacteria colonising the surface of each antimicrobial silicone was employed to determine the bactericidal properties of each antimicrobial silicone. Selected antimicrobial silicones were subsequently evaluated for their ability to prevent catheter encrustation in an in vitro bladder model. Results: Results showed that antimicrobial activity was obtained using 1% triclosan-impregnated silicone and that this antimicrobial activity was long-lasting (up to 11 weeks). Use of a dip coat silicone formulation, containing 0.2% triclosan, proved effective at delaying catheter encrustation with P. mirabilis metabolites in vitro. In 8 out of 13 independent experiments using dip-coated catheters, no catheter blockage occurred over 7 days, whilst all control catheters blocked during this period. Only on one occasion was delayed encrustation not evident with the treated catheters. Conclusions: In summary, a dip-coat silicone containing triclosan proved effective in preventing in vitro catheter encrustation caused by P. mirabilis infection. Further studies with triclosan silicone dip coat formulation are warranted, including those that investigate potential host cell toxicity and long-term benefits following its application to indwelling urinary catheters in clinical settings.
Modulation of tRNAAla identity by inorganic pyrophosphatase

A highly sensitive assay of tRNA aminoacylation was developed that directly measures the fraction of aminoacylated tRNA by following amino acid attachment to the 3′-32P-labeled tRNA. When applied to Escherichia coli alanyl-tRNA synthetase, the assay allowed accurate measurement of aminoacylation of the most deleterious mutants of tRNAAla. The effect of tRNAAla identity mutations on both aminoacylation efficiency (kcat/KM) and steady-state level of aminoacyl-tRNA was evaluated in the absence and presence of inorganic pyrophosphatase and elongation factor Tu. Significant levels of aminoacylation were achieved for tRNA mutants even when the kcat/KM value is reduced by as much as several thousandfold. These results partially reconcile the discrepancy between in vivo and in vitro analysis of tRNAAla identity.
ADMISSION MOTOR IMPAIRMENT AS A PREDICTOR OF PHYSICAL DISABILITY AFTER STROKE REHABILITATION

The purpose of this study is to investigate the Fugl-Meyer Motor Impairment Scale and physical disability as measured by the Functional Independence Measure (FIM) as predictors of physical independence after stroke inpatient rehabilitation. Forty-eight patients admitted to a rehabilitation hospital within 6 wk of their first unifocal stroke were prospectively studied. Upper and lower extremity Fugl-Meyer scores were obtained near rehabilitation admission. FIMs were obtained on admission and discharge. Discharge FIM self-care was predicted best by admission FIM total (rs=0.75; P < 0.0001), although admission FIM self-care, other FIM components, and upper- and lower-extremity Fugl-Meyer scores were also good predictors. Discharge FIM mobility and locomotion correlated well with their admission counterparts (rs=0.54 and 0.45; P<.001 and <.01, respectively) but were even more strongly related to admission Fugl-Meyer scores (rs=0.63 and 0.74, respectively; P<0.0001). As expected, cognitive and psychosocial components of the FIM at discharge correlated poorly with admission Fugl-Meyer. These data confirm the strong motor impairment basis for the physical disability subdimensions of the FIM and suggest that dependency in physical activities of daily living after stroke is primarily determined by degree of motor impairment.
Genetic Testing for Macular Degeneration Effective : August 1 , 2017

PLEASE NOTE: Contracts exclude from coverage, among other things, services or procedures that are considered investigational or cosmetic. Providers may bill members for services or procedures that are considered investigational or cosmetic. Providers are encouraged to inform members before rendering such services that the members are likely to be financially responsible for the cost of these services.
Ovarian hormone status and skeletal muscle inflammation during recovery from disuse in rats

Resumption of normal muscle loading after a period of disuse initiates cellular processes related to mass accretion. The renewed loading also induces a significant amount of muscle damage and subsequent inflammation. Ovarian hormone depletion delays atrophied myofibre mass recovery. Ovarian hormones are also global regulators of immune system function. The purpose of this study was to determine whether ovarian hormone depletion‐induced deficits in myofibre regrowth after disuse atrophy are related to the induction of muscle damage and the associated inflammatory response. We hypothesized that soleus muscle immune cell infiltration and inflammatory gene expression would be both accentuated and prolonged in ovarian hormone‐depleted rats during the first week of recovery from disuse atrophy. Intact and ovariectomized (OVX) female rats were subjected to hindlimb suspension for 10 days and then returned to normal ambulation for a recovery period, the rats were killed and the soleus muscle removed for analysis. Although reloading increased both circulating creatine kinase and myofibre membrane disruption, there was no effect of ovarian hormones on these processes during recovery. Muscle neutrophil concentration was increased above baseline regardless of hormone status at days 1 and 3 of recovery; however, this increase was 43% greater at day 3 in the OVX group. Muscle ED1+ and ED2+ macrophage concentrations were increased during recovery in both groups. However, macropage concentrations remained elevated at day 7 of recovery in the OVX group, whereas they returned to control levels in the intact group. Cyclo‐oxygenase‐2, interleukin‐6 and interleukin‐1β muscle mRNA expression increased similarly during recovery, regardless of ovarian hormone status. These results demonstrate that the initial myofibre damage and inflammatory gene expression induced during muscle recovery from disuse atrophy are independent of ovarian hormone status.
Differential Molecular Stress Responses to Low Compared to High Doses of Ionizing Radiation in Normal Human Fibroblasts

Understanding the mechanisms producing low dose ionizing radiation specific biological effects represents one of the major challenges of radiation biology. Although experimental evidence does suggest that various molecular stress response pathways may be involved in the production of low dose effects, much of the detail of those mechanisms remains elusive. We hypothesized that the regulation of various stress response pathways upon irradiation may differ from one another in complex dose-response manners, causing the specific and subtle low dose radiation effects. In the present study, the transcription level of 22 genes involved in stress responses were analyzed using RT-qPCR in normal human fibroblasts exposed to a range of gamma-doses from 1 to 200 cGy. Using the alkali comet assay, we also measured the level of DNA damages in dose-response and time-course experiments. We found non-linear dose responses for the repair of DNA damage after exposure to gamma-radiation. Alterations in gene expression were also not linear with dose for several of the genes examined and did not follow a single pattern. Rather, several patterns could be seen. Our results suggest a complex interplay of various stress response pathways triggered by low radiation doses, with various low dose thresholds for different genes.
Prevalence and association of anemia with CKD: A hospistal based crosssectionalstudy from Nepal.

A hospital based cross-sectional study was conducted in department of biochemistry, Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH), Nepal. We showed the prevalence of anemia in chronic kidney disease (CKD) and association between anemia and CKD. Total of 163 predialysis patients in all stages of CKD and 163 of non-CKD healthy controls were enrolled. CKD was defined and classified as per national kidney foundation guidelines. We analyzed biochemical profile on BT 2000 Plus biotechnica instruments - clinical chemistry analyzer and hematological profile on xs-1000i. Descriptive statistics and testing of hypothesis were used for the analysis using SPSS 16 software. The incidence of anemia in stage I, Stage II, Stage III, stage IV, stage V and all CKD were found to be 17.64%, 27.78%, 48.38%, 74.19%, 80% and 47.85% respectively. Hemoglobin level was significantly lower in CKD cases than non-CKD controls (P-value <0.001). 47.8% of CKD cases and 13.5% of non-CKD controls had anemia (Odds ratio 5.88, P-value <0.001). 41.3% of male CKD cases and 8.7% of male non-CKD controls had anemia (Odds ratio 7.39, P-value <0.001). 56.34% of female CKD cases and 13.5% of female non-CKD controls had anemia (Odds ratio 5.25, P-value <0.001). Anemia was seen in all stages of CKD. Prevalence of anemia increased as kidney function decreased. A strong association was found between an anemia and CKD.
Synaptic transmission mediated by single club endings on the goldfish Mauthner cell. II. Plasticity of excitatory postsynaptic potentials

Simultaneous pre- and postsynaptic intracellular recordings were used to analyze the properties of chemically mediated synaptic transmission between single club endings of eighth nerve afferents and the goldfish Mauthner (M-) cell lateral dendrite. The EPSPs exhibited pronounced facilitation when the presynaptic fiber fired high-frequency bursts of 2 or 3 impulses at intervals of 2–4 msec. The amplitudes of the EPSPs evoked by the second and third presynaptic impulses of a burst were, on average, 99 and 108% larger than that evoked by the first impulse. A cross-correlation analysis showed that the amplitudes of the control and facilitated EPSPs fluctuated independently, indicating that the facilitation was mediated by a presynaptic mechanism. This conclusion was supported by a comparison of the coefficient of variation for the control and facilitated EPSPs, on the basis of a binomial release model. In addition, the value of binomial n, the number of presynaptic release units, was not changed during facilitation. The origin of EPSP fluctuations was analyzed by examining the correlation between the amplitudes of EPSPs and those of the electrotonic coupling potentials associated with them. The absence of correlation between the 2 variables suggested that the fluctuations of EPSPs were not due to a variable presynaptic impulse invasion. The EPSP fluctuations were further analyzed by assuming that the facilitation was associated with an increase in the probability (p) of transmitter release and that the release process followed simple binomial statistics. The binomial variables thus calculated were n = 6–11, p = 0.29–0.44, and q = 31–61 microV, values comparable to the estimates for other CNS synapses. More importantly, these parameters provided satisfactory fits to the amplitude histograms of the control and facilitated EPSPs. The number of release units, n, was smaller than, but in a range similar to, the number of active zones identified in the freeze-fracture study of the club endings (Kohno and Noguchi, 1986). This correlation is consistent with the notion that active zones are the structural correlates of quantal release units. In the preceding paper, it was shown that impulses in a majority of club endings electrotonically coupled to the M-cell do not produce a detectable chemically mediated EPSP, although the contacts have the morphological correlates of chemical synapses. In an attempt to activate these “silent” connections, 2 approaches were used. First, the burst-firing paradigm, which could effectively facilitate EPSPs already present, failed to reveal any EPSPs at the silent junctions.
Boston type craniosynostosis: Report of a second mutation in MSX2

We describe a family that segregated an autosomal dominant form of craniosynostosis characterized by variable expression and limited extra‐cranial features. Linkage analysis and genome sequencing were performed to identify the underlying genetic mutation. A c.443C>T missense mutation in MSX2, which predicts p.Pro148Leu was identified and segregated with the disease in all affected family members. One other family with autosomal dominant craniosynostosis (Boston type) has been reported to have a missense mutation in MSX2. These data confirm that missense mutations altering the proline at codon 148 of MSX2 cause dominantly inherited craniosynostosis. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Keratins of the human occipital hair medulla: androgenic regulation of in vitro hair keratin K37 expression

diagnosis simpler despite the history of DLE of the scalp. Difficulty would arise if a patient presented with scarring alopecia due to LPP, rather than typical FFA, which may go unrecognized due to diagnostic overshadowing given a history of DLE. Similarly, a patient with known LP presenting with scarring alopecia should not be assumed to have LP-induced hair loss. This case serves as a reminder that the presence of cutaneous lesions elsewhere, while a useful clue, may also mislead the unwary when diagnosing cicatricial alopecias. A comprehensive clinical and pathological assessment proforma has been published which may be of use in aiding diagnosis and management of patients with challenging cicatricial alopecias.
Efficient Attribute-Based Searchable Encryption on Cloud Storage

Cloud service is very popular for its computing and storage capacity at lower cost. More and more data are being moved to the cloud to reduce storage cost. On the other hand, since the cloud is not fully trustable, in order to protect data privacy against third-parties and even the cloud server, they are usually encrypted by cryptology technology before uploading. However, many operations, such as searching, are hard to perform on encrypted data. To solve this problem, searchable encryption has emerged. Searchable encryption in multi-user setting is much less efficient than in single-user setting. In order to address this problem, we propose a multi-owner to multi-user searchable encryption scheme based on attribute-based encryption. Our scheme keeps data secure in the cloud even against the cloud server. It allows users with appropriate authorizations to perform search operations on encrypted data. In addition, search tokens are generated by users instead of data owners. We prove that token privacy and index privacy are well protected in our scheme. The cloud server and illegimate users are not able to get any useful information about search tokens and ciphertexts. Ciphertexts of our scheme are constant-size, which reduce the time-complexity and bandwidth overhead of our scheme.
Performance Improvement of Blind Adaptive Beamforming Algorithms Using Pre-filtering Technique

This paper presented the possibility of performance improvement of blind adaptive beamforming algorithms using a new proposed pre-filtering technique. We will introduce the idea of this technique with the necessary mathematical derivation. Simulation results of this technique show that there is a significant improvement in beam pattern characteristics with increasing in signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) level over conventional blind algorithms.
A Flying Odor Compass to Autonomously Locate the Gas Source

The design of a flying odor compass is proposed for the localization of gas source. The compass is built on a quad-rotor helicopter and contains three gas sensors. A data processing method is proposed to estimate the direction which the odor comes from. The method adopts continuous wavelet transform and modulus maxima approaches to uncover the time difference information hidden in the gas sensor signals. Experiments have demonstrated the effectiveness of this design.
A Low-Cost Mechanism Exploiting Narrow-Width Values for Tolerating Hard Faults in ALU

Digital circuits are expected to increasingly suffer from more hard faults due to technology scaling. Especially, a single hard fault in ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) might lead to a total failure in processors or significantly reduce their performance. To address these increasingly important problems, we propose a novel cost-efficient fault-tolerant mechanism for the ALU, called LIZARD. LIZARD employs two half-word ALUs, instead of a single full-word ALU, to perform computations with concurrent fault detection. When a fault is detected, the two ALUs are partitioned into four quarter-word ALUs. After diagnosing and isolating a faulty quarter-word ALU, LIZARD continues its operation using the remaining ones, which can detect and isolate another fault. Even though LIZARD uses narrow ALUs for computations, it adds negligible performance overhead through exploiting predictability of the results in the arithmetic computations. We also present the architectural modifications when employing LIZARD for scalar as well as superscalar processors. Through comparative evaluation, we demonstrate that LIZARD outperforms other competitive fault-tolerant mechanisms in terms of area, energy consumption, performance and reliability.
Design and performance evaluation of a distributed WirelessHART sniffer based on IEEE1588

Wireless communications in the industrial automation world still suffer from lack of standardization. WirelessHART, released in September 2007, is still the only open communication standard specifically designed for real-time process control applications. This paper presents an innovative distributed tool for capturing WirelessHART packets in the field. In fact, even if tools for compliance assessment have been already proposed, an instrument for in situ testing is not yet available. WirelessHART implements a time synchronized mesh network in order to ensure the reliability of the wired counterpart. For this reason, a distributed packet analyzer (“sniffer”) must ensure synchronization among all probes to provide a spatial/temporal image of wireless traffic. The solution we propose is based on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and exploits a wired measuring network that uses IEEE1588 to reach this goal. Several experiments have been conducted in order to verify the feasibility of our proposal and to evaluate performances.