Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Low mannose‐binding lectin complement activation function is associated with predisposition to Legionnaires' disease

Innate immune system deficiency may predispose to severe infections such as Legionnaires' disease. We have investigated the role of mannose‐binding lectin (MBL) deficiency in the Melbourne Aquarium Legionnaires' disease outbreak. Serum samples from patients and controls that were exposed but shown to be uninfected from the Melbourne Aquarium Legionnaires' disease outbreak were tested for MBL function (C4 deposition) and level (mannan‐binding). MBL function was lower in Legionnaires' disease cases than in age‐ and sex‐matched uninfected, exposed controls. The frequency of MBL deficiency with C4 deposition < 0·2 U/µl was significantly higher in Legionnaires' disease cases than in controls. This also applied to Legionnaires' disease cases requiring hospital care. There was no difference in MBL mannan‐binding levels between Legionnaires' disease patients and controls. There was no significant interval change in MBL function or level after a mean of 46 days. MBL complement activation functional deficiency appears to predispose to Legionnaires' disease.
Dynamics of sequestration-based gene regulatory cascades

Abstract Gene regulatory cascades are ubiquitous in biology. Because regulatory cascades are integrated within complex networks, their quantitative analysis is challenging in native systems. Synthetic biologists have gained quantitative insights into the properties of regulatory cascades by building simple circuits, but sequestration-based regulatory cascades remain relatively unexplored. Particularly, it remains unclear how the cascade components collectively control the output dynamics. Here, we report the construction and quantitative analysis of the longest sequestration-based cascade in Escherichia coli. This cascade consists of four Pseudomonas aeruginosa protein regulators (ExsADCE) that sequester their partner. Our computational analysis showed that the output dynamics are controlled in a complex way by the concentration of the unbounded transcriptional activator ExsA. By systematically varying the cascade length and the synthesis rate of each regulator, we experimentally verified the computational prediction that ExsC plays a role in rapid circuit responses by sequestering the anti-activator ExsD, while ExsD increases response times by decreasing the free ExsA concentration. In contrast, when additional ExsD was introduced to the cascade via indirect negative feedback, the response time was significantly reduced. Sequestration-based regulatory cascades with negative feedback are often found in biology, and thus our finding provides insights into the dynamics of this recurring motif.
A method for determination of the absorption and scattering properties interstitially in turbid media

We have developed a method to quickly determine tissue optical properties (absorption coefficient μa and transport scattering coefficient μ′s) by measuring the ratio of light fluence rate to source power along a linear channel at a fixed distance (5 mm) from an isotropic point source. Diffuse light is collected by an isotropic detector whose position is determined by a computer-controlled step motor, with a positioning accuracy of better than 0.1 mm. The system automatically records and plots the light fluence rate per unit source power as a function of position. The result is fitted with a diffusion equation to determine μa and μ′s. We use an integrating sphere to calibrate each source–detector pair, thus reducing uncertainty of individual calibrations. To test the ability of this algorithm to accurately recover the optical properties of the tissue, we made measurements in tissue simulating phantoms consisting of Liposyn at concentrations of 0.23, 0.53 and 1.14% (μ′s = 1.7–9.1 cm−1) in the presence of Higgins black India ink at concentrations of 0.002, 0.012 and 0.023% (μa = 0.1–1 cm−1). For comparison, the optical properties of each phantom are determined independently using broad-beam illumination. We find that μa and μ′s can be determined by this method with a standard (maximum) deviation of 8% (15%) and 18% (32%) for μa and μ′s, respectively. The current method is effective for samples whose optical properties satisfy the requirement of the diffusion approximation. The error caused by the air cavity introduced by the catheter is small, except when μa is large (μa > 1 cm−1). We presented in vivo data measured in human prostate using this method.
Studies on the synergistic effects of extremely low-frequency magnetic fields and the endocrine-disrupting compound atrazine on the thyroid gland

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine the effect of extremely low-frequency magnetic fields (MF) and the endocrine-disrupting compound atrazine, each separately, on the thyroid gland of juvenile-peripubertal rats, and to investigate the possible synergistic effect of these two factors combined. Materials and methods: The study was performed on male Wistar rats from postnatal day 23–53. Animals were divided into six groups: (1) 4 h/day exposure to MF (50 Hz, 100–300 μT, 54–160 V/m), (2) 20 mg/kg of body weight (bw) of atrazine, (3) 200 mg/kg bw of atrazine, (4) MF with 20 mg/kg bw of atrazine (5) MF with 200 mg/kg bw of atrazine, and (6) control. Results: Light and electron microscopic studies demonstrated no significant alterations in the thyroid structure between the treated groups and the control. Significant outcomes were found regarding the volume density of thyroid follicles and the connective tissue between the MF-exposed group when compared to both atrazine treatments and the combined treatments. The high dose of atrazine significantly affected the number of mast cells compared to the control. Conclusions: No synergistic effect of the MF and the endocrine-disrupting compound atrazine on the thyroid gland has been found. The specific histological alterations of the thyroid parenchyma observed in some treated groups require further investigation.
Understanding Heterogeneity in the Effects of Parental Separation on Educational Attainment in Britain: Do Children from Lower Educational Backgrounds Have Less to Lose?

We use the British Cohort Study 1970 to show that the proportion of children achieving a tertiary education degree is 8 percentage points lower for the offspring of separated parents than for children from intact families. Moreover, the children of highly educated parents experience a two times larger ‘separation penalty’ than the children of less educated parents. We ﬁnd a similar pattern of heterogeneity in effects for the likelihood of participation in academic education (A-Levels) beyond school leaving age but not for school grades at age 16. We test three different explanations for heterogeneity in the parental separation penalty: changes in family relations, changes in income, and negative selection into separation based on unobserved characteristics. We address the potential endogeneity of parental separation by including pre-separation observable characteristics, individual ﬁxed effects models, and a placebo test. Our key ﬁnding is that changes in family income, but not those in family relations or selection, explain a large part of heterogeneity in the effects of parental separation. Children with more highly educated parents face a larger decline in family income if parents separate and, in addition, declines in family income of equal amounts entail more negative consequences for their educational attainment.
Comparison of planar and Toroidal PCB integrated inductors for a multi-cellular 3.3 kW PFC

The Printed-Circuit-Board (PCB) technology is attractive for power electronic systems as it offers a low manufacturing cost for mass production. In this paper, we present a procedure to design power inductors based on PCB. These inductors either use PCB for the winding only (Planar structure), or to host both the magnetic core and the winding (Toroidal PCB structure). The design procedure compares, in the form of a Pareto fronts, the two inductor structures over a large range of parameters (geometric parameters, magnetic materials), to identify the best candidates in terms of power losses and box volume. In this procedure, the core losses are taken into account using improved Generalized Steinmetz Equation (iGSE). The skin and proximity effects are considered using the AC resistance calculated with a FEM software. The inductor feasibility is checked from a mechanical perspective using the PCB design rules and from a thermal point of view with FEM simulation. A design case is presented for a 3.3 kW multi-cellular (3 interleaved cells) Power Factor Corrector (PFC). It is found that the planar design offers the most compact solution, but might present challenges regarding thermal management. The Toroidal PCB structure tends to be larger, but easier to cool.
Colorectal cancer screening in Massachusetts: measuring compliance with current guidelines.

CONTEXT Professional organizations have published guidelines for colorectal cancer screening. Defining which patients are currently, or should be, screened is an important clinical and public health issue. OBJECTIVE To document the prevalence of colorectal cancer screening and profile the tests patients have had. DESIGN/POPULATION: A random-digit telephone survey of Massachusetts adults, 50 years of age and older. OUTCOME MEASURES Percentage of persons ever and currently tested by fecal occult blood tests, flexible sigmoidoscopy, barium enema, colonoscopy, or some combination of these tests. RESULTS Sixty-five percent of those contacted agreed to the telephone interview. Approximately 29% of the 1119 respondents had never had any currently accepted test, including 10% who reported having only a fecal occult blood test done in a provider's office and 19% who reported having no tests. At least 51% were currently tested by one or more tests for screening, diagnosis, or both. Another 10% were possibly current by colonoscopy or barium enema, both of which can be ordered for screening but are more commonly used to evaluate a problem, such as rectal bleeding, or for surveillance after identification of a polyp or other abnormality. An additional 11% had been tested at some point but were not current according to guidelines. CONCLUSIONS Accurate assessment of rates of colorectal cancer screening is complex because of the multiple acceptable screening methods, the fact that patients may be tested for screening or diagnostic purposes, and the lack of adequate systems for tracking such testing. For accurate measurement, all methods must be assessed regardless of whether tests were ordered for screening, diagnosis, or surveillance.
MERCURY IN MUSHROOMS AND SOIL FROM THE WIELUŃSKA UPLAND IN SOUTH-CENTRAL POLAND

ABSTRACT Concentrations of mercury were determined in the fruiting bodies of 15 species of higher mushrooms and underlying soil substrate collected from Wieluńska Upland in northern part of Sandomierska Valley in south-central Poland in 1995. A total of 197 samples of caps, 197 stalks, 30 whole fruiting bodies and 227 soil (0–10 cm layer) were analyzed. Mean mercury concentrations in soil substrate corresponding to 15 mushroom species were between 28 ± 17 and 85 ± 62 ng/g dry matter (total range between 3.0–190 ng/g). The average cap to stalk concentration quotients of Hg were around 2 (range between 1.1 ± 1.1 and 2.8 ± 1.4). However, this quotient in Larch bolete (Suillus grevillei) was 4.4 ± 6.3. Concentrations of Hg varied depending on the mushroom species. Parasol Mushroom (Macrolepiota procera) and Horse mushroom (Agaricus arvensis) contained the greatest mean mercury concentrations both in caps (between 4500 ± 1700 and 4400 ± 2400 ng/g dry matter) and stalks (between 2800 ± 1300 and 3000 ± 2000 ng/g dry matter). Both the Parasol Mushroom and Horse mushroom were characterised also by a greater potential to bioconcentrate mercury from soils as evidenced by great bioconcentration factors (BCFs), which were between 170 ± 160 and 130 ± 120 for caps, and 110 ± 97 and 89 ± 92 for stalks. Mercury concentrations in caps and stalks of False death cap (Amanita citrina) increased (p<0.05) with increasing soil mercury contents. An opposite trend was observed for Quéleta brittle gills (Russula queleti), Grat knight-cap (Tricholoma terreum), Fly agaric (Amanita muscaria), Common scaber stalk (Leccinum scabrum) and Slippery jack (Suillus luteus).
Power-aware cloud brownout: Response time and power consumption control

Cloud computing infrastructures are powering most of the web hosting services that we use at all times. A recent failure in the Amazon cloud infrastructure made many of the website that we use on a hourly basis unavailable1. This illustrates the importance of cloud applications being able to absorb peaks in workload, and at the same time to tune their power requirements to the power and energy capacity offered by the data center infrastructure. In this paper we combine an established technique for response time control — brownout — with power capping. We use cascaded control to take into account both the need for predictability in the response times (the inner loop), and the power cap (the outer loop). We execute tests on real machines to determine power usage and response times models and extend an existing simulator. We then evaluate the cascaded controller approach with a variety of workloads and both open- and closed-loop client models.
Extent of disease activity assessed by 18F-FDG PET/CT in a Dutch sarcoidosis population.

BACKGROUND Sarcoidosis is characterized by a wide range of disease manifestations. In the management and follow-up of sarcoidosis patients, knowledge of extent of disease, activity and severity is crucial. Objectives The aim of this study was to assess the extent, distribution and consistency of inflammatory organ involvement using 18F-FDG PET/CT (PET) in sarcoidosis patients with persistent disabling symptoms. METHODS Retrospectively, sarcoidosis patients who underwent a PET between 2005 and 2011 (n=158) were included. Clinical data were gathered from medical records and PET scans were evaluated. Positive findings were classified as thoracic and/or extrathoracic. RESULTS :Of the studied PET positive sarcoidosis patients (n=118/158; 75%), 93% had intrathoracic activity (79% mediastinal and 64% pulmonary activity, respectively) and 75% displayed extrathoracic activity (mainly peripheral lymph nodes, bone/bone marrow, and spleen). Hepatic positivity was always accompanied by splenic activity, whereas the majority of patients with parotid gland, splenic or bone/bone marrow activity showed lymph node activity. A substantial number of patients with PET positive pulmonary findings (86%) had signs of respiratory functional impairment. No obvious association between hepatic, splenic or bone/bone marrow activity and their corresponding laboratory abnormalities suggestive of specific organ involvement, was found. CONCLUSIONS The majority of studied patients appeared to have PET positive findings (75%), of which a high proportion (75%) displayed extrathoracic activity. Hence, PET can be especially useful in the assessment of extent, distribution and consistency of inflammatory activity in sarcoidosis to provide an explanation for persistent disabling symptoms and/or to provide a suitable location for biopsy.
Health resort treatment improved the neurosteroid profile in thyroidectomized women.

OBJECTIVE The aim was to study the effect of climatotherapy and spa treatment on selected neuro- and immunomodulatory steroids known to affect well-being, and homocysteine, in a homogenous group of thyroidectomized women under standard substitution regime. METHODS Dehydroepiandrosterone, its precursors and metabolites, cortisol, major sex steroids, SHBG, and homocysteine were measured before and after three-weeks stay in a health resort Jeseník (Graefenberg) in Czech Republic. The studied group consisted of 21 women after total thyroidectomy which was performed at least 3 months before the admission to the spa resort. All patients received thyroid hormone substitution treatment which was not changed during their stay in that resort. RESULTS Out of the steroids investigated, five, namely dehydroepiandrosterone, androstenedione, testosterone, 7beta-hydroxy-dehydroepiandrosterone and cortisol were changed significantly after treatment. The most considerable was the decrease of cortisol and of homocysteine (p < 0.000 each). CONCLUSION Spa resort treatment of thyroidectomized women substituted with thyroid hormones resulted in significant, mostly beneficial effects on steroid spectrum. This effect was achieved without any use of psychopharmacs.
Problems and Countermeasures of Teaching Management in Colleges and Universities

At present, we are in a new era which calls for subjectivity and also generates subjectivity. Colleges and universities, as the institutions cultivating high level talents, should conform to the development trend of the times, pay attention to the subjectivity of the students, attach importance to the cultivation of students’ ability and quality, and take to promote the development of students' subjectivity as one of the important tasks in education. Reflect on the reform process in recent decades, what is worth of being praised is that China's Colleges and universities have made great development and progress in general. But it cannot be ignored that the universities also have great potential and space in promoting the development of students' subjectivity, especially the teaching management system that takes the manager as the main body, focuses on control while ignores communication formed under the planned economy system of our country at present seriously restricts the development of students' subjectivity, ignores the subject status and personality difference of College students, so it cannot fully meet the needs of the development of students' subjectivity. This paper analyzes the problems existing of teaching management in Colleges and universities in promoting the development of students' subjectivity, and then studies the countermeasures of teaching management in Colleges and universities to promote the development of students' subjectivity, providing some reference for the teaching management in the future.
Noninvasive fluorescence excitation spectroscopy for the diagnosis of oral neoplasia in vivo

Abstract. Fluorescence excitation spectroscopy (FES) is an emerging approach to cancer detection. The goal of this pilot study is to evaluate the diagnostic potential of FES technique for the detection and characterization of normal and cancerous oral lesions in vivo. Fluorescence excitation (FE) spectra from oral mucosa were recorded in the spectral range of 340 to 600 nm at 635 nm emission using a fiberoptic probe spectrofluorometer to obtain spectra from the buccal mucosa of 30 sites of 15 healthy volunteers and 15 sites of 10 cancerous patients. Significant FE spectral differences were observed between normal and well differentiated squamous cell carcinoma (WDSCC) oral lesions. The FE spectra of healthy volunteers consists of a broad emission band around 440 to 470 nm, whereas in WDSCC lesions, a new primary peak was seen at 410 nm with secondary peaks observed at 505, 540, and 580 nm due to the accumulation of porphyrins in oral lesions. The FE spectral bands of the WDSCC lesions resemble the typical absorption spectra of a porphyrin. Three potential ratios (I410/I505, I410/I540, and I410/I580) were calculated from the FE spectra and used as input variables for a stepwise linear discriminant analysis (SLDA) for normal and WDSCC groups. Leave-one-out (LOO) method of cross-validation was performed to check the reliability on spectral data for tissue characterization. The diagnostic sensitivity and specificity were determined for normal and WDSCC lesions from the scatter plot of the discriminant function scores. It was observed that diagnostic algorithm based on discriminant function scores obtained by SLDA–LOO method was able to distinguish WDSCC from normal lesions with a sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 100%. Results of the pilot study demonstrate that the FE spectral changes due to porphyrin have a good diagnostic potential; therefore, porphyrin can be used as a native tumor marker.
Data-Driven Program Completion

We introduce program splicing, a programming methodology that aims to automate the commonly used workflow of copying, pasting, and modifying code available online. Here, the programmer starts by writing a "draft" that mixes unfinished code, natural language comments, and correctness requirements in the form of test cases or API call sequence constraints. A program synthesizer that interacts with a large, searchable database of program snippets is used to automatically complete the draft into a program that meets the requirements. The synthesis process happens in two stages. First, the synthesizer identifies a small number of programs in the database that are relevant to the synthesis task. Next it uses an enumerative search to systematically fill the draft with expressions and statements from these relevant programs. The resulting program is returned to the programmer, who can modify it and possibly invoke additional rounds of synthesis. We present an implementation of program splicing for the Java programming language. The implementation uses a corpus of over 3.5 million procedures from an open-source software repository. Our evaluation uses the system in a suite of everyday programming tasks, and includes a comparison with a state-of-the-art competing approach as well as a user study. The results point to the broad scope and scalability of program splicing and indicate that the approach can significantly boost programmer productivity.