Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Early response to chemotherapy: a surrogate for final outcome of Hodgkin's disease patients that should influence initial treatment length and intensity?

BACKGROUND Early adjustment of treatment may benefit the patient. In order to guide treatment adjustment, use of early response (ER) or early complete response (ECR), judged after the few initial cycles of chemotherapy, is common in pediatric and also adult Hodgkin's and non-Hodgkin's studies. Paradoxically, almost no data support this strategy. PATIENTS AND METHODS The influence of ECR on outcome was evaluated in three series of advanced Hodgkin's disease (HD), leading to a series of questions. RESULTS The 1982 EORTC study assessed prospectively the time frame needed to reach an apparent complete response (CR) through repeated tumor measurements. In patients assessed at mid-treatment before the fifth cycle, both 15 year freedom from progression (FFP) and overall survival (OS) were superior in ECR patients compared with other patients continued on the same treatment (61% versus 37%; P < 0.001). A series of questions arise from these observations. Question 1: is the shortening of treatment detrimental? In a randomized Swedish trial, in one arm treatment was shortened in patients evaluated from the fifth cycle as ECR as compared with the standard eight cycles arm, 10 year cause-specific-survival (CSS) was 53 versus 69% [not significant (ns)]; 10 year OS 49% versus 58% (ns). Conversely, in the EORTC 20884 study, ECR patients given only six cycles did as well as patients entering CR later and, for this reason, given eight cycles (identical 6 year event-free survival 75%). Question 2: is early treatment adaptation in patients who failed to reach ER beneficial? In the French MDH 90 trial, 15% of children failed to reach ECR after four cycles; in these children only, anthracyclines plus alkylating agents were given and the dose of radiotherapy increased, improving the results observed in the previous trial. In the EORTC 20884 study, patients who failed to reach an ECR were switched earlier to involved field RT: their results matched those of ECR patients, at the difference of the previous trial. Question 3: is ER a predicting factor that can be used with any type of treatment? Probably not, based on the German Hodgkin's Lymphoma Study Group trial HD 9: ECR is highly dependent on specific interval from treatment start and on treatment intensity. DISCUSSION More general questions stem from these results. Question 4: is the definition of ER secured? With conventional imaging, the different methods for response assessment at end treatment also lead to different response rates; the assessment in the middle of treatment itself and the use of newer imaging techniques may further increase the variation. Indeed, question 5 is: is ER a concept based on any biology? Correlation to markers, 99mTc uptake, PET and hematological tolerance might help to pinpoint how and why ER represents a surrogate for final outcome. CONCLUSION ER is a surrogate for final outcome, reflecting both tumor burden and activity. This predictability may, and possibly should, impact on treatment.
Multi-view Face Detection Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

In this paper we consider the problem of multi-view face detection. While there has been significant research on this problem, current state-of-the-art approaches for this task require annotation of facial landmarks, e.g. TSM [25], or annotation of face poses [28, 22]. They also require training dozens of models to fully capture faces in all orientations, e.g. 22 models in HeadHunter method [22]. In this paper we propose Deep Dense Face Detector (DDFD), a method that does not require pose/landmark annotation and is able to detect faces in a wide range of orientations using a single model based on deep convolutional neural networks. The proposed method has minimal complexity; unlike other recent deep learning object detection methods [9], it does not require additional components such as segmentation, bounding-box regression, or SVM classifiers. Furthermore, we analyzed scores of the proposed face detector for faces in different orientations and found that 1) the proposed method is able to detect faces from different angles and can handle occlusion to some extent, 2) there seems to be a correlation between distribution of positive examples in the training set and scores of the proposed face detector. The latter suggests that the proposed method's performance can be further improved by using better sampling strategies and more sophisticated data augmentation techniques. Evaluations on popular face detection benchmark datasets show that our single-model face detector algorithm has similar or better performance compared to the previous methods, which are more complex and require annotations of either different poses or facial landmarks.
They are different: molecular approach on Tirathaba pest infesting oil palm and coconut tree

High infestation rate of Tirathaba mundella was reported from many oil palm plantations established on peat Masijan et al. [1]. The infestation is identified by the presence of long tubes of silk and frass which is built by the pest. The larvae stage of pest does most of the damage by feeding or scraping leaving holes on immature fruitlets. Larvae of early instar stage often attack on male inflorescences while larvae of older instar stage attack on female inflorescences and bunch Yaakop & Manaf [2]. A new damage caused by Tirathaba mundella is visible as moist and reddish brown faeces on brunches while an old damage is characterized as dry and brownish black faeces. Another Tirathaba that also regarded as agricultural pest is Tirathaba fructivora. It was first observed in Fiji and Java, Indonesia Paine [3] and later in Sumatra, Indonesia and Malaysia (Kalshoven, I981). The pest causes destructive effect to the coconut plantation in Philippines. Tirathaba fructivora together with another coconut spike moth, Tirathaba rufivena Walker are making damage to coconut flower. Both pests attack the inflorescence of coconut, causing the young and soft flower to drop off from the plant. Falling of flower prevents the formation of nuts Alouw et al. [4]. Tirathaba fructivora has a total development period of around 25 days from the stage of egg deposition to adult emergence. The newly laid egg of Tirathaba fructivora is white in colour and it turns dark yellow or dark orange when it is about to hatch. Hatching took about 4 days from egg deposition. The larvae have five instars level with a larval stadium of around I7 days and pupal period of around 8 days.
Tissue plasminogen activator and plasminogen are critical for osmotic homeostasis by regulating vasopressin secretion

Systemic osmotic homeostasis is regulated mainly by neuroendocrine system of arginine‐vasopressin (AVP) in mammalians. In the present study, we demonstrated that the immunoreactivity of tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) was observed specifically at neurosecretory granules of AVP‐positive magnocellular terminals and that of plasminogen was seen at astrocytes in the neurohypophysis (NH). Both tPA and plasminogen knockout (KO) mice revealed higher plasma osmolarity upon water deprivation, a chronic osmotic stimulation, as compared with their wild‐type (WT) animals, indicating abnormal osmotic control in these KO mice. tPA KO mice but not plasminogen ones revealed lower ability in secreting AVP into the blood circulation upon an acute osmotic stimulation. Both tPA and plasminogen KO animals showed lower ability in secreting AVP into the blood circulation upon a chronic osmotic stimulation. The recombinant tPA was able to promote the release of AVP from isolated NH. Chronic osmotic stimulation decreased the laminin expression level of neurohypophysial microvessel in WT mice but not in plasminogen KO ones. We suggest that AVP secretion is critically regulated by tPA‐dependent facilitation of AVP release from terminals and plasminogen‐dependent increase of AVP permeability across microvessels possibly via laminin degradation. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Cold-Induced Male Meiotic Restitution in Arabidopsis thaliana Is Not Mediated by GA-DELLA Signaling

Short periods of cold stress induce male meiotic restitution and diploid pollen formation in Arabidopsis thaliana by specifically interfering with male meiotic cytokinesis. Similar alterations in male meiotic cell division and gametophytic ploidy stability occur when gibberellic acid (GA) signaling is perturbed in developing anthers. In this study, we found that exogenous application of GA primarily induces second division restitution (SDR)-type pollen in Arabidopsis, similar to what cold does. Driven by the close similarity in cellular defects, we tested the hypothesis that cold-induced meiotic restitution is mediated by GA-DELLA signaling. Using a combination of chemical, genetic and cytological approaches, however, we found that both exogenously and endogenously altered GA signaling do not affect the cold sensitivity of male meiotic cytokinesis. Moreover, in vivo localization study using a GFP-tagged version of RGA protein revealed that cold does not affect the expression pattern and abundance of DELLA in Arabidopsis anthers at tetrad stage. Expression study found that transcript of RGA appears enhanced in cold-stressed young flower buds. Since our previous work demonstrated that loss of function of DELLA causes irregular male meiotic cytokinesis, we here conclude that cold-induced meiotic restitution is not mediated by DELLA-dependent GA signaling.
Neoadjuvant and Adjuvant Chemotherapy of Cervical Cancer

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy is indicated in patients who can tolerate the side effects of a chemotherapy and with preoperative presentation of one of the following clinical risk situations: bulky disease with a maximal tumor diameter of > 4 cm, suspicious lymph nodes in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT) scan or endosonography, histopathologically confirmed lymph node metastasis, or histopathologically documented risk factors such as G3 and L1V1. A neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by surgery should be performed with cisplatin at a dosage of > 25 mg/m2 per week and an application interval of < 14 days. The previously published data suggests an improved rate of complete resection and reduced incidences of positive lymph nodes and parametric infiltration. Accordingly, the percentage of patients in need for adjuvant radiochemotherapy after operation can be significantly reduced. Some studies demonstrated a prolongation of progression-free and overall survival. Following the previously published studies, adjuvant chemotherapy after operation or after radiochemotherapy has no significant effect on the overall survival and, following the current guidelines, should be avoided.
An AI aid to the editors. Exploring the possibility of an AI assisted article classification system

This work is a preliminary exploratory study of how we could progress a step towards an AI assisted article classification sys- tem in academia. The proposed system aims to aid the journal editors in their decisions by pinpointing the potential weaknesses or strengths of a submitted manuscript. From a large collection of articles and corresponding author-editor interactions we explore the possible reasons that lead to a paper being not forwarded for review. Our investigation reveals that in most cases either it is be- cause the prospective manuscript is out of scope of the journal or the manuscript does not satisfy the minimum quality requirements to maintain the standard of the journal. We extract several features to quantify the quality of a paper and the degree of in-scope explor- ing keyword search, citation analysis, reputations of authors and affiliations, similarity with respect to accepted papers. With these features we train standard machine learning classifiers to develop a classification system. On a decent set of test data our approach yields promising results across 3 different journals. We believe that our approach is generic and could be adapted to other journals with appropriate adjustments.
Needed Interventions to Reduce Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Health.

Large racial/ethnic and socioeconomic status (SES) differences in health persist in the United States. Eliminating these health disparities is a public health challenge of our time. This article addresses what is needed for social and behavioral interventions to be successful. We draw on important insights for reducing social inequalities in health that David Mechanic articulated more than a decade ago in his article "Disadvantage, Inequality, and Social Policy. " We begin by outlining the challenge that interventions that have the potential to improve health at the population level can widen social inequalities in health. Next, given that there are racial differences in SES at every level of SES, we review research on race/ethnicity-related aspects of social experience that can contribute to racial inequalities in SES and health. We then explore what is needed for social and behavioral interventions to be successful in addressing disparities and consider the significance of race/ethnicity in designing and developing good policies to address this added dimension of inequality. We conclude that there is a pressing need to develop a scientific research agenda to identify how to build and sustain the political will needed to create policy to eliminate racial/ethnic health disparities.
Tailor-made pH-sensitive polyacrylic acid functionalized mesoporous silica nanoparticles for efficient and controlled delivery of anti-cancer drug Etoposide

Abstract A multifaceted therapeutic platform has been proposed for controlled delivery of Etoposide (ETS) leading to a synergistic advantage of maximum therapeutic efficacy and diminished toxicity. A state of the art pH responsive nanoparticles (NPs) MSNs-PAA consisting of mesoporous silica nanoparticles core and polymeric shell layers, were developed for controlled release of model anti-cancer drug ETS. Graft onto strategy was employed and amination served as an interim step, laying a vital foundation for functionalization of the MSN core with hydrophilic and pH responsive polyacrylic acid (PAA). MCM-41-PAA were investigated as carriers for loading and regulated release of ETS at different pH for the first time. The PAA-MSNs contained 20.19% grafted PAA as exhibited by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), which enormously improved the solubility of ETS in aqueous media. The synthesized PAA-MSNs were characterized by various techniques viz, SEM-EDS, TEM, BET, FT-IR and powder XRD. ETS was effectively loaded into the channels of PAA-MSN via electrostatic interactions. The cumulative release was much rapid at extracellular tumor (6.8) and endosomal pH (5.5) than that of blood pH (7.4). Hemolysis study was done for the prepared NPs. MTT assay results showed that the drug-loaded ETS-MCM-41-PAA NPs were more cytotoxic to both prostate cancer cells namely PC-3 and LNCaP than free ETS, which was attributed to their slow and sustained release behavior. The above results confirmed that PAA-MSN hold a great potential as pH responsive carriers with promising future in the field of cancer therapy.
Biomarkers of Environmental Enteric Dysfunction: The good, the bad and the ugly.

Environmental enteric dysfunction (EED) has been described as altered enteric architecture and function resulting in poor absorption, increased permeability, and chronic mucosal inflammation among infants and children who live in low and middle income countries (LMIC) (1–3). EED has been hypothesized to underlie high rates of stunting and growth failure among these vulnerable children (4–7), as well as impaired immune response to vaccines (4) and suboptimal cognitive development (8). The etiology of the condition has been thought to be related to chronic gastrointestinal exposure to enteropathogens via an unhygienic environment, although other contributing factors may include altered mucosal and/or systemic immune function, preceding acute infectious illnesses, micronutrient deficiencies, both pre-and post-natal infant-maternal interactions, heavy metal exposures, and other as yet undiscovered factors.
Soot: a Java bytecode optimization framework

This paper presents Soot, a framework for optimizing Java* bytecode. The framework is implemented in Java and supports three intermediate representations for representing Java bytecode: Baf, a streamlined representation of bytecode which is simple to manipulate; Jimple, a typed 3-address intermediate representation suitable for optimization; and Grimp, an aggregated version of Jimple suitable for decompilation. We describe the motivation for each representation, and the salient points in translating from one representation to another. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of the framework, we have implemented intraprocedural and whole program optimizations. To show that whole program bytecode optimization can give performance improvements, we provide experimental results for 12 large benchmarks, including 8 SPECjvm98 benchmarks running on JDK 1.2 for GNU/Linuxtm. These results show up to 8% improvement when the optimized bytecode is run using the interpreter and up to 21% when run using the JIT compiler.
Developing engagement, linkage and exchange between health services managers and researchers: Experience from the UK

Objectives The UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Service Delivery and Organisation (SDO) Management Fellowship programme enabled health services managers and university researchers to collaborate on research projects with the aim of improving research, managers’ research knowledge and skills, and the use of research in management. Our aim was to evaluate whether the programme encouraged greater engagement, linkage and exchange between researchers and managers. Methods A case-study approach with each case-study centred on 11 health care managers appointed as Fellows, chief investigators (n = 13) and Fellows’ line managers (n = 12). Data were collected through semi-structured face-to-face and telephone interviews. Interviews were analysed thematically to explore the impact of the programme, reported issues and to identify any lessons learned. Results Researchers benefited from the flow of (insider) knowledge and contacts from the workplace via the Fellow to the project. Engagement, linkage and exchange as a result of the Fellowship were less developed for the workplace. Reasons for this related to the fit of the research project with workplace interests, Fellows’ contact with the health care organization, feedback structures and training. The potential for co-production of knowledge was under-developed. A transactional notion of exchange was found in operation in workplaces. Conclusions The programme’s aim to enhance engagement, linkage and exchange was largely achieved, although exchange tended to be narrowly conceived. Knowing how models of exchange work in practice can ensure effort is put to best use.
Evaluation of infant membrane oxygenator in sheep.

OBJECTIVE To analyze the security and efficacy of a new membrane oxygenator, the so-called OXM - 1500. METHODS From May 2005 to September 2006, six sheep of Santa Inês breed (five male and one female, respectively) were studied. The average body weight was 14.1 (+/-5) kg, body surface 0.6 (+/-0.2) m(2) and a mean age 3.8 (+/-1.5) months. All of them were submitted to extracorporeal circulation (CEC) with evaluation at 10, 30, 60, 120, 180 and 240 minutes. The following values were obtained: values of oxygen transference (TTO2) and carbon dioxide transference (TTCO2), haemoglobin (HBS) and free haemoglobin (HBL), the score of platelets and of leucocytes, and heat transference rate. RESULTS TTO2 and TTCO2 were adequate. Lesion of the majority formed blood elements was insignificant; there no modifications in HBS, HBL levels; platelets and leucocytes decreased over time. Heat exchange was effective (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS The membrane OXM--1500 infant oxygenator, tested in sheep, showed adequate oxygenation capacity, CO2 removal capacity, and small alteration of haemoglobin and platelets without significant decrease of leucocytes, as expected. Heat exchanger connected to the oxygenator was efficient in temperature changes.
Number 14

This paper focuses on the design of decentralized state observers based on optimal guaranteed cost control for a class of systems which are composed of linear subsystems coupled by nonlinear time-varying interconnections. One of the main contributions lies in the use of the differential mean value theorem (DMVT) to simplify the design of estimation and control matrices gains. This has the advantage of introducing a general condition on the nonlinear time-varying interconnections functions. To ensure asymptotic stability, sufficient conditions expressed in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) are established to compute the control and the observation gains of the overall system. High performances are shown through numerical simulation of a power system with three interconnected machines.
Sclero-Topometry in Superficial Wear and Metal Processing of Ductile Cast Iron at Boundary Lubrication. Application to Tribological Valorization of Waste Oil

In order to better understand superficial abrasive wear and metal processing sclero-topometric investigations have been developed and applied to spheroidal cast iron at boundary lubrication regime with new, waste and regenerated oils. Recycling of waste oils is the major challenge of worldwide society today, specifically for petroleum resources, and therefore, for derivatives like transformer oil. The contradictory characteristics from physical approach of transformer oil, requiring and insuring simultaneously a high thermal conductivity as well as an electrical resistivity, are specific for their applications. During the efficient lifetime, these characteristics progressively decrease, due to complex pollution (divers pollutions, water absorption, Polychlorobiphenyl (PCB), etc) and degradation (acids, resins, polluted oils, biological invasions, wear debris's du to local frictions, fretting, etc…), ultimately making the oil unsuitable for the initial application. [1] The strategy to upgrade the waste oil is investigated in the presented work using improved sclerometric and topometric characterisations [2,3] on deliberately selected heterogeneous material - ductile cast iron (with spheroidal graphite precipitations) widely manufactured for various transport industry[4].
Karakteristik Film Pelapis Pangan dari Surimi Belut Sawah dan Tapioka

The objective of this research was to determine the characteristics of edible film made of surimi rice field eel and tapioca starch. The treatments consisted of surimi rice field eel concentrations of 4, 6, and 8 (5 v/v) and tapioca starch concentrations (1, 3 and 5 b/v). The experiment was arranged in a Factorial Randomized Block Design with two factors as treatments, and each combination for the treatment was carried out in triplicates. The result showed that surimi concentration, tapioca concentration and interaction between the two treatments significantly affected (at 5% level test) the water activity, thickness, pressure strength, tensile strength, percentage of elongation, and water vapor transmission rate. The best edible film was made of 6% of surimi concentration and 3% of tapioca concentration. The characteristics of the edible film were water activity of 0.27; thickness of 0.11 mm; pressure strength of 6.51 N/m2,; percent elongation of 32%; and water vapor transmission rate of 6.77 g.m2. 24 hours-1. Keywords: edible film, field eel, surimi, tapioca starch, water activity