Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The cardiovascular effects and pharmacokinetics of intranasal tetracaine plus oxymetazoline: preliminary findings.

BACKGROUND The authors evaluated the cardiovascular effects and pharmacokinetics of an intranasal 3 percent tetracaine/0.05 percent oxymetazoline spray developed to provide needle-free anesthesia of maxillary teeth. METHODS The authors administered to 12 participants a proposed maximum recommended dose (MRD) (18 milligrams tetracaine/0.3 mg oxymetazoline) as three bilateral pairs of 0.1-milliliter nasal sprays. They administered two times this dose (36 mg tetracaine/0.6 mg oxymetazoline) as six bilateral pairs one to three weeks later. The authors recorded the patients' heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen saturation. They drew blood samples at baseline and 15 times during the two hours after drug administration. RESULTS Physiological measures remained fairly stable throughout the two-hour period, with small but significant decreases (P < .05) in heart rate at 40 and 50 minutes for the two-times MRD (6.1 beats/minute) and MRD (7.5 beats/minute) administrations, respectively, and a significant increase in diastolic blood pressure (5.9 millimeters of mercury) for the two-times-MRD administration at 90 minutes. Mean oxygen saturation remained above 99 percent. Tetracaine plasma levels were undetectable in most participants, whereas concentrations of its major metabolite parabutylaminobenzoic acid from the two-times-MRD administration were approximately twice that from the MRD administration. Oxymetazoline concentrations from the two-times-MRD administration were approximately 50 percent greater than those from the MRD administration, with a half-life of 1.72 to 2.32 hours. CONCLUSIONS Intranasal tetracaine/oxymetazoline mist generally was well tolerated in study participants. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS The safety profile and pharmacokinetics of this intranasal formulation indicate that it appears to be generally well tolerated in patients for achieving anesthesia of the maxilla. Additional safety and efficacy data are required, particularly in patients with cardiovascular disease and other comorbidities.
Comparison of thallium-201 and gallium-67 imaging in evaluation of head and neck tumors.

PURPOSE 201Tl imaging was compared with 67Ga imaging in the detection of malignant head and neck tumors. METHOD Eighteen patients with tumors in the head and neck region underwent both planar and SPECT imaging using 201Tl-chloride and 67Ga-citrate. The detection of primary tumors and lymph node (LN) metastases by visual evaluation was compared between 201Tl and 67Ga imaging. Additionally, quantitative analysis of the SPECT images was performed in eight patients. RESULTS On visual evaluation, primary tumor uptake was detectable in 100% on the 201Tl SPECT images compared with 44% on the 67Ga SPECT images. The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of 201Tl in detecting LN metastases were higher than those of 67Ga SPECT; however, there was no statistical difference between 201Tl and 67Ga. The tumor-to-background ratio was significantly higher on 201Tl SPECT than on 67Ga SPECT. CONCLUSION This study suggested that 201Tl could be useful in the evaluation of malignant tumors in the head and neck region.
Filtro de Kalman no Seguimento de Movimento em Visão Computacional

Este relatorio aborda o problema de seguimento de entidades representadas em sequencias de imagens usando Visao Computacional. Para tal utiliza-se um metodo estocastico, o filtro de Kalman, aliado a um metodo de optimizacao global, no sentido de obter os melhores conjuntos de correspondencias, e portanto garantir a optimizacao global do seguimento. Nesta metodologia tambem se inclui um modelo de gestao de entidades seguidas que possibilita avaliar em cada instante se se deve continuar o seguimento de cada entidade considerado no modelo. Deste modo, a abordagem proposta permite lidar com casos de oclusao temporaria, desaparecimento definitivo, aparecimento ou reaparecimento de entidades, mantendo um numero controlado de entidades seguidas em cada instante, o que reduz o custo computacional associado ao estritamente necessario.A metodologia proposta e neste trabalho testada e validada em exemplos de seguimento de entidades representadas em imagens sinteticas e reais.
Nucleotide sequence of the structural gene for class I pilin from Neisseria meningitidis: homologies with the pilE locus of Neisseria gonorrhoeae

The nucleotide sequence has been determined for the expressed pilin (pilE) locus of Neisseria meningitidis strain C311 which produces class I pili that areantigenically and structurally similar to those of gonococci. The deduced amino acid sequence of the N. meningitidis pilE translation product contains a 7amino acid N‐terminal pre‐pilin leader sequence which is identical to that found in gonococcal pilin and which is characteristic of N‐methylphenylalanine pili in general. The succeeding N‐terminal 53 amino acids are identical to those found in the equivalent position in antigenically variant gonococcal pilins and confirm direct peptide sequencing of the amino‐terminus of atleast one type of meningococcal pilin. Other regions that are conserved in variant pilin potypeptides from Neisseria gonorrhoeae are conserved at the aminoacid level in the class I meningococcal pilin but the coding DNA contains numerous base substitutions when compared with the equivalent gonococcal pH sequence. Sequences extending downstream for about 140bp on the 3′ side of the coding region for both pilin genes are only about 85% homologous.
Multi-Label Annotation Aggregation in Crowdsourcing

As a means of human-based computation, crowdsourcing has been widely used to annotate large-scale unlabeled datasets. One of the obvious challenges is how to aggregate these possibly noisy labels provided by a set of heterogeneous annotators. Another challenge stems from the difficulty in evaluating the annotator reliability without even knowing the ground truth, which can be used to build incentive mechanisms in crowdsourcing platforms. When each instance is associated with many possible labels simultaneously, the problem becomes even harder because of its combinatorial nature. In this paper, we present new flexible Bayesian models and efficient inference algorithms for multi-label annotation aggregation by taking both annotator reliability and label dependency into account. Extensive experiments on real-world datasets confirm that the proposed methods outperform other competitive alternatives, and the model can recover the type of the annotators with high accuracy. Besides, we empirically find that the mixture of multiple independent Bernoulli distribution is able to accurately capture label dependency in this unsupervised multi-label annotation aggregation scenario.
Lexique-grammaire des adjectifs coréens et analyse syntaxique automatique

We present a systematic description of morphological variations and syntactic properties of Korean adjectives in order to implement an automatic parser of Korean texts. We classified 5, 300 simple adjectives according to the morpholo- gical variations of their root and inflectional suffixes. In addition, these adjectives were classified into 15 syntactic classes on the basis of formal criteria. The lexical analysis of Korean adjectives is extremely complex, since a great number of inflectional suffixes are attached to adjectival roots (an adjective generates about 6, 000 inflectional forms) ; moreover, some complements of adjectives can be found attached to adjectival roots. The fact that one must consider one or several nouns inside an adjectival string leads to a quite heavy parsing algorithm. One cannot avoid this situation without morphological and syntactic information. Therefore, it is necessary to construct on-line dictionaries as complete as possible.
The Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status (Modified): Relation with a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment

The modified Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status (TICS-m) is a widely used screening instrument for (Alzheimer's) dementia. Psychometric evaluation of the TICS-m is limited. This study examined the relation between the TICS-m and a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment in older persons (n = 243) without cognitive deficits. The TICS-m total score correlated with multiple cognitive domains (range r = .22–.49). Factor analysis of the TICS-m items yielded four interpretable factors: “verbal memory,” “orientation/mental tracking,” “language/reasoning,” and “attention/working memory,” which also showed (modest) correlations with the neuropsychological assessment (r = .02–.48). The TICS-m appears to reflect a “general cognitive ability” rather than, for example, memory functioning alone.
Relationship of Body Condition Score at Estrus and Conception Rate in Graded Murrah Buffaloes

Seventy graded Murrah parous buffaloes presented for the first postpartum AI maintained under village system of rearing free from apparent pathological abnormalities of the reproductive tract were selected to study the effect of body condition score (BCS) and size of the preovulatory follicle on conception rate. After evaluating Body condition score (BCS) by visual examination and estrus intensity based on the score card, Preovulatory follicle (POF) sizes were measured ultrasonographically and grouped as small preovulatory follicle (SPOF), medium preovulatory follicle (MPOF) and large preovulatory follicle (LPOF). The mean values of BCS, intensity of estrus and serum progesterone at AI and on day 10 post AI were estimated and the relation to conception rate was analyzed. Positive correlation was observed with the body condition of the buffaloes at the time of AI to POF size and intensity of estrus. The mean values of BCS in pregnant and non pregnant buffaloes did not differ significantly and it has a nonsignificant (P>0.05) negative correlation with pregnancy status, however proper nutrition during breeding season is necessary for acceptable reproduction. It was concluded from the present study that physiological maturity of the follicle rather than its diameter influenced the fertility in graded Murrah buffaloes under field conditions.
Comparison of in-car UWB and 60 GHz channel measurements

A comparison of ultra-wideband (UWB) and 60 GHz channels inside a car is carried out in this paper. Measurements with a vector network analyzer (VNA) in the frequency bands of 5–8.5 GHz and 67–70.5 GHz have been carried out and the large-scale and small-scale parameters have been investigated. The results are shown for different antenna configurations and polarizations as well as for an empty car and a car occupied with persons. Furthermore, a link budget analysis for both systems based on the measurements is carried out.
Structure-Guided Evolution of Potent and Selective CHK1 Inhibitors through Scaffold Morphing

Pyrazolopyridine inhibitors with low micromolar potency for CHK1 and good selectivity against CHK2 were previously identified by fragment-based screening. The optimization of the pyrazolopyridines to a series of potent and CHK1-selective isoquinolines demonstrates how fragment-growing and scaffold morphing strategies arising from a structure-based understanding of CHK1 inhibitor binding can be combined to successfully progress fragment-derived hit matter to compounds with activity in vivo. The challenges of improving CHK1 potency and selectivity, addressing synthetic tractability, and achieving novelty in the crowded kinase inhibitor chemical space were tackled by multiple scaffold morphing steps, which progressed through tricyclic pyrimido[2,3-b]azaindoles to N-(pyrazin-2-yl)pyrimidin-4-amines and ultimately to imidazo[4,5-c]pyridines and isoquinolines. A potent and highly selective isoquinoline CHK1 inhibitor (SAR-020106) was identified, which potentiated the efficacies of irinotecan and gemcitabine in SW620 human colon carcinoma xenografts in nude mice.
Lattice adaptive filtering-based method for acoustic feedback cancellation in hearing aids with robustness against sudden changes in the feedback path

This paper proposes a new method for continuous acoustic adaptive feedback cancelation (AFC) in digital hearing aids. The proposed method employs two adaptive filters working in tandem. The first adaptive filter is excited by the receiver (output) signal of the hearing aid, and uses microphone signal as its desired response. The lattice-predictor based adaptive algorithm is used to updated the coefficients of the first adaptive filter. The second adaptive filter is excited by a (random) probe signal. We propose coefficient monitoring strategy with two fold objectives: 1) both adaptive filters converge to a good estimate of the acoustic feedback path, and that 2) both adaptive filter are re-initialized when a sudden change in the acoustic feedback path is detected. Finally, the injected probe noise is controlled via time-varying gain in such a way that a low level noise is used when the system is operating in its steady state. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves good modeling accuracy, preserves good speech quality, and provides robust performance for the sudden changes in acoustic feedback path∗.
Effect of Amifostine on Lipid Peroxidation Caused by Cisplatin in Rat Kidney

Cisplatin, a heavy metal complex, is one of the most active drugs used in a variety of certain tumors, including lung, head and neck, ovary, testis, bladder and refractory lymphoma 1. Despite beneficial outcome for some patients, cisplatin treatment has various side effects—especially renal, neurological and ototoxicity 2,3. Tubular damage is the primary expression of renal toxicity from cisplatin. Cisplatin induced renal toxicity can be associated with considerable morbidity 4. The protective activity of amifostine against the tissue damaging effects of cytotoxic agents is well known 5,6. The mechanism of its protective effects are understood. Chemotherapy or radiotherapy kills cells by chemically altering DNA either by ionisation of DNA or by production of highly reactive, diffusable free radicals generated by ionisation of other cellular constituents. Endogen thiols and their ions react with both free and chemical or irradiationinduced DNA free radicals and may increase cell survive if the interactions occur prior to DNA damage or fixation and the effect produced by thiol oxidation reactions. Amifostine is also effective in reducing cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity 2,6. Journal of Chemotherapy Vol. 13 n. 3 (337-339) 2001
Processing Social Media Images by Combining Human and Machine Computing during Crises

ABSTRACT The extensive use of social media platforms, especially during disasters, creates unique opportunities for humanitarian organizations to gain situational awareness as disaster unfolds. In addition to textual content, people post overwhelming amounts of imagery content on social networks within minutes of a disaster hit. Studies point to the importance of this online imagery content for emergency response. Despite recent advances in computer vision research, making sense of the imagery content in real-time during disasters remains a challenging task. One of the important challenges is that a large proportion of images shared on social media is redundant or irrelevant, which requires robust filtering mechanisms. Another important challenge is that images acquired after major disasters do not share the same characteristics as those in large-scale image collections with clean annotations of well-defined object categories such as house, car, airplane, cat, dog, etc., used traditionally in computer vision research. To tackle these challenges, we present a social media image processing pipeline that combines human and machine intelligence to perform two important tasks: (i) capturing and filtering of social media imagery content (i.e., real-time image streaming, de-duplication, and relevancy filtering); and (ii) actionable information extraction (i.e., damage severity assessment) as a core situational awareness task during an on-going crisis event. Results obtained from extensive experiments on real-world crisis datasets demonstrate the significance of the proposed pipeline for optimal utilization of both human and machine computing resources.
Design, in vitro and in vivo evaluation of glipizide Eudragit microparticles

Glipizide microparticles made with Eudragit (RS 100 and RL 100), prepared by emulsion solvent evaporation technique were evaluated for various in-vitro properties viz. encapsulation efficiency, particle size and surface morphology, drug release pattern and in-vivo hypoglycaemic activity. The optimized formulation parameters were used to prepare smooth and spherical microparticles (2–32 µm) with higher entrapment efficiency (67–89%). Drug release patterns of glipizide microparticles of Eudragit RS 100 and Eudragit RL 100 with drug-to-polymer ratio of 1 : 4 (i.e. EGM14 and ELGM14) have shown gradual and extended release for 24 h with cumulative release of glipizide to the extent of 72.3% and 83.9%, respectively. However, EGM14 showed a significant in-vivo hypoglycaemic effect up to 12 h in rabbits while ELGM14 showed for 9 h. Hence, glipizide microparticles of Eudragit RS 100 (glipizide: polymer 1 : 4) is better suited for oral sustained release formulation.
Interconnection Wire-Length Estimation in VLSI Standard Cell Placement Via Neural Network

Neural Network is used as a tool for estimating interconnection wire-length in VLSI standard cell placement problem. Conventional methods for estimating the interconnection wire-length viz., Bounding Rectangle method, provide inaccurate estimate of the interconnection wire-length and does not depict the interconnection procedure in a layout and separates routing and placement tasks distinctly. The proposed mechanism utilizes the neural network characteristics in understanding the functional mapping between input and output, to estimate the interconnection wire-length. Experiments were performed for different number of cells with varying complexity of interconnections. In all the cases, the performance of the Neural Network is found to be superior to the results obtained using Bounding Rectangle procedure.
Systematic Review of Population Pharmacokinetic Analyses of Imatinib and Relationships With Treatment Outcomes

Abstract: Several population pharmacokinetic (PPK) analyses of the anticancer drug imatinib have been performed to investigate different patient populations and covariate effects. The present analysis offers a systematic qualitative and quantitative summary and comparison of those. Its primary objective was to provide useful information for evaluating the expectedness of imatinib plasma concentration measurements in the frame of therapeutic drug monitoring. The secondary objective was to review clinically important concentration-effect relationships to provide help in evaluating the potential suitability of plasma concentration values. Nine PPK models describing total imatinib plasma concentration were identified. Parameter estimates were standardized to common covariate values whenever possible. Predicted median exposure (Cmin) was derived by simulations and ranged between models from 555 to 1388 ng/mL (grand median: 870 ng/mL and interquartile “reference” range: 520–1390 ng/mL). Covariates of potential clinical importance (up to 30% change in pharmacokinetic predicted by at least 1 model) included body weight, albumin, &agr;1 acid glycoprotein, and white blood cell count. Various other covariates were included but were statistically not significant or seemed clinically less important or physiologically controversial. Concentration–response relationships had more importance below the average reference range and concentration–toxicity relationships above. Therapeutic drug monitoring–guided dosage adjustment seems justified for imatinib, but a formal predictive therapeutic range remains difficult to propose in the absence of prospective target concentration intervention trials. To evaluate the expectedness of a drug concentration measurement in practice, this review allows comparison of the measurement either to the average reference range or to a specific range accounting for individual patient characteristics. For future research, external PPK model validation or meta-model development should be considered.
A Nuclear Matrix Protein Interacts with the Phosphorylated C-Terminal Domain of RNA Polymerase II

ABSTRACT Yeast two-hybrid screening has led to the identification of a family of proteins that interact with the repetitive C-terminal repeat domain (CTD) of RNA polymerase II (A. Yuryev et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 93:6975–6980, 1996). In addition to serine/arginine-rich SR motifs, the SCAFs (SR-like CTD-associated factors) contain discrete CTD-interacting domains. In this paper, we show that the CTD-interacting domain of SCAF8 specifically binds CTD molecules phosphorylated on serines 2 and 5 of the consensus sequence Tyr1Ser2Pro3Thr4Ser5Pro6Ser7. In addition, we demonstrate that SCAF8 associates with hyperphosphorylated but not with hypophosphorylated RNA polymerase II in vitro and in vivo. This result suggests that SCAF8 is not present in preinitiation complexes but rather associates with elongating RNA polymerase II. Immunolocalization studies show that SCAF8 is present in granular nuclear foci which correspond to sites of active transcription. We also provide evidence that SCAF8 foci are associated with the nuclear matrix. A fraction of these sites overlap with a subset of larger nuclear speckles containing phosphorylated polymerase II. Taken together, our results indicate a possible role for SCAF8 in linking transcription and pre-mRNA processing.
Predição de Reprovação de Alunos de Educação a Distância Utilizando Contagem de Interações

A possibilidade de prever com antecedencia o risco de reprovacao de um estudante em um curso a distância e de grande valia para professores e tutores, que podem adequar seus metodos para evitar a reprovacao. Neste trabalho mostramos resultados da aplicacao de tecnicas de aprendizado de maquina nesta tarefa, utilizando como atributos unicamente contagens de interacoes ao longo do tempo. Mostramos que redes bayesiana sao adequadas ao problema e que a introducao de atributos derivados das contagens (e.g. medias) sao uteis para previsoes mais precisas quando a quantidade de dados e esparsa. Mostramos ainda a possibilidade de treinar os modelos em diferentes situacoes, como entre turmas e entre semestres diferentes.
A comparison of haemodynamic metrics and intraluminal thrombus burden in common iliac artery aneurysms

Aneurysms of the common iliac artery (CIAA) are most commonly seen in association with an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA). Isolated CIAAs, in the absence of an AAA, are uncommon. Similar to AAAs, CIAA may develop intraluminal thrombus (ILT). As isolated CIAAs have a contralateral common iliac artery for comparison, they provide an opportunity to study the haemodynamic mechanisms behind ILT formation. In this study, we compared a large isolated CIAA and the contralateral iliac artery using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to determine if haemodynamic metrics correlate with the location of ILT. We performed a comprehensive CFD study and investigated the residence time of platelets and monocytes, velocity fields, time-averaged wall shear stress (TAWSS), oscillatory shear index (OSI) and endothelial cell activation potential (ECAP). We then correlated these data to ILT burden determined with computed tomography (CT). We found that high cell residence times, low TAWSS, high OSI and high ECAP all correlate with regions of ILT development. Our results show agreement with previous hypotheses of thrombus formation in AAA and provide insights into the computational haemodynamics of iliac artery aneurysms.