Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
[Evaluation of platelet indices for differential diagnosis of thrombocytosis by ADVIA 120].

BACKGROUND For the diagnosis of essential thrombocythemia (ET), no single clinical or laboratory finding of diagnostic value is available and a differential diagnosis of other myeloproliferative neoplasms or reactive thrombocytosis (RT) is needed. Following recent developments in automated blood cell analyzers, various platelet indices can now be measured. In this study, we analyzed whether platelet counts and 6 platelet indices can be used for the differentiation of ET from RT in patients with a platelet count of 600x10(3)/microL or more. METHODS The subjects studied were 31 patients with ET and 224 patients with RT. The platelet counts, mean platelet volume (MPV), plateletcrit (PCT), platelet distribution width (PDW), mean platelet mass (MPM), mean platelet component concentration (MPC) and large platelets (LPLT) were measured by ADVIA 120 (Bayer Diagnostics, USA). The mean values of each item were compared between the two patient groups and the sensitivity and specificity of each item in the diagnosis of ET were determined by ROC curve analysis. RESULTS In essential thrombocythemia, all parameters except MPC were significantly higher than in reactive thrombocytosis. For the diagnosis of ET, the sensitivity and specificity were: 74.2% and 84.4%, when the platelet count was > or = 820 x 10(3)/microL; 80.6% and 80.0%, when the plateletcrit was > or = 0.63%; and 64.5% and 99.1%, respectively, when LPLT was > or = 23 x 10(3)/microL. CONCLUSIONS The platelet counts and platelet indices are useful for the differential diagnosis of thrombocytosis. The plateletcrit and LPLT are particularly useful for the diagnosis of ET when the platelet count is markedly increased.
Safety verification of hybrid systems by constraint propagation-based abstraction refinement

This paper deals with the problem of safety verification of nonlinear hybrid systems. We start from a classical method that uses interval arithmetic to check whether trajectories can move over the boundaries in a rectangular grid. We put this method into an abstraction refinement framework and improve it by developing an additional refinement step that employs interval-constraint propagation to add information to the abstraction without introducing new grid elements. Moreover, the resulting method allows switching conditions, initial states, and unsafe states to be described by complex constraints, instead of sets that correspond to grid elements. Nevertheless, the method can be easily implemented, since it is based on a well-defined set of constraints, on which one can run any constraint propagation-based solver. Tests of such an implementation are promising.
A linear-time algorithm for optimal barrier placement

We want to perform compile-time analysis of an SPMD program and place barriers in it to synchronize it correctly, minimizing the runtime cost of the synchronization. This is the barrier minimization problem. No full solution to the problem has been given previously.Here we model the problem with a new combinatorial structure, a nested family of sets of circular intervals. We show that barrier minimization is equivalent to finding a hierarchy of minimum cardinality point sets that cut all intervals. For a single loop, modeled as a simple family of circular intervals, a linear-time algorithm is known. We extend this result, finding a linear-time solution for nested circular interval families. This result solves the barrier minimization problem for general nested loops.
A SOFT way for openflow switch interoperability testing

The increasing adoption of Software Defined Networking, and OpenFlow in particular, brings great hope for increasing extensibility and lowering costs of deploying new network functionality. A key component in these networks is the OpenFlow agent, a piece of software that a switch runs to enable remote programmatic access to its forwarding tables. While testing high-level network functionality, the correct behavior and interoperability of any OpenFlow agent are taken for granted. However, existing tools for testing agents are not exhaustive nor systematic, and only check that the agent's basic functionality works. In addition, the rapidly changing and sometimes vague OpenFlow specifications can result in multiple implementations that behave differently. This paper presents SOFT, an approach for testing the interoperability of OpenFlow switches. Our key insight is in automatically identifying the testing inputs that cause different OpenFlow agent implementations to behave inconsistently. To this end, we first symbolically execute each agent under test in isolation to derive which set of inputs causes which behavior. We then crosscheck all distinct behaviors across different agent implementations and evaluate whether a common input subset causes inconsistent behaviors. Our evaluation shows that our tool identified several inconsistencies between the publicly available Reference OpenFlow switch and Open vSwitch implementations.
Unconscious inhibition separates two forms of cognitive control

In the human brain, cognitive-control processes are generally considered distinct from the unconscious mechanisms elicited by subliminal priming. Here, we show that cognitive control engaged in situations of response conflict interacts with the negative (inhibitory) phase of subliminal priming. Thus, cognitive control may surprisingly share common processes with nonconscious brain mechanisms. In contrast, our findings reveal that subliminal inhibition does not, however, interact with control adaptation—the supposed modulation of current control settings by previous experience of conflict. Therefore, although influential models have grouped immediate cognitive control and control adaptation together as products of the same conflict detection and control network, their relationship to subliminal inhibition separates them. Overall, these results suggest that the important distinction lies not between cognitive or top-down processes on the one hand and nonconscious priming mechanisms on the other hand but between responsive (poststimulus) mechanisms that deal with sensorimotor activation after it has occurred and preparatory (prestimulus) mechanisms that are modulated before stimulus arrival.
Therapeutic target database update 2012: a resource for facilitating target-oriented drug discovery

Knowledge and investigation of therapeutic targets (responsible for drug efficacy) and the targeted drugs facilitate target and drug discovery and validation. Therapeutic Target Database (TTD, http://bidd.nus.edu.sg/group/ttd/ttd.asp) has been developed to provide comprehensive information about efficacy targets and the corresponding approved, clinical trial and investigative drugs. Since its last update, major improvements and updates have been made to TTD. In addition to the significant increase of data content (from 1894 targets and 5028 drugs to 2025 targets and 17 816 drugs), we added target validation information (drug potency against target, effect against disease models and effect of target knockout, knockdown or genetic variations) for 932 targets, and 841 quantitative structure activity relationship models for active compounds of 228 chemical types against 121 targets. Moreover, we added the data from our previous drug studies including 3681 multi-target agents against 108 target pairs, 116 drug combinations with their synergistic, additive, antagonistic, potentiative or reductive mechanisms, 1427 natural product-derived approved, clinical trial and pre-clinical drugs and cross-links to the clinical trial information page in the ClinicalTrials.gov database for 770 clinical trial drugs. These updates are useful for facilitating target discovery and validation, drug lead discovery and optimization, and the development of multi-target drugs and drug combinations.
The next generation of HIV/AIDS drugs: novel and developmental antiHIV drugs and targets

There are presently 42 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS, the majority of which have limited access to antiretrovirals. Even if worldwide penetration was possible, our current chemotherapeutic strategies still suffer from issues of cost, patient compliance, deleterious acute and chronic side effects, emerging single and multidrug resistance, and generalized treatment and economic issues. Even our best antiretroviral therapeutic strategy, highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), falls short of completely suppressing HIV replication. Therefore, expansion of current therapeutic options by discovering new antiretrovirals and targets will be critical in the coming years. This review addresses the current status of reverse transcriptase and protease inhibitor development, and summarizes the progress in emerging classes of HIV inhibitors, including entry (T-20, T-1249), coreceptor (SCH-C, SCH-D), integrase (β-Diketos) and p7 nucleocapsid Zn finger inhibitors (thioesters and PATEs). In addition, the processes of virus entry, PIC transport to the nucleus, HIV interaction with nuclear pores, Tat function, Rev function and virus budding (Tsg101 and ubiquitination) are examined, and proof of concept inhibitors and potential antiviral targets discussed.
Microsatellite Instability Use in Mismatch Repair Gene Sequence Variant Classification

Inherited mutations in the DNA mismatch repair genes (MMR) can cause MMR deficiency and increased susceptibility to colorectal and endometrial cancer. Microsatellite instability (MSI) is the defining molecular signature of MMR deficiency. The clinical classification of identified MMR gene sequence variants has a direct impact on the management of patients and their families. For a significant proportion of cases sequence variants of uncertain clinical significance (also known as unclassified variants) are identified, constituting a challenge for genetic counselling and clinical management of families. The effect on protein function of these variants is difficult to interpret. The presence or absence of MSI in tumours can aid in determining the pathogenicity of associated unclassified MMR gene variants. However, there are some considerations that need to be taken into account when using MSI for variant interpretation. The use of MSI and other tumour characteristics in MMR gene sequence variant classification will be explored in this review.
Circulating markers of prognosis and response to treatment in patients with midgut carcinoid tumours

Background and aims: Midgut carcinoid tumours are uncommon tumours with an unpredictable clinical behaviour and few useful prognostic markers. Somatostatin analogues are widely used in treatment but a survival advantage has not been proven. We analysed features associated with poor prognosis and assessed the clinical implications of the biochemical response to therapy. Methods: Clinical and biochemical data were collected for patients with midgut carcinoid tumours attending a tertiary referral neuroendocrine clinic from 1978 to 2000. Using death as the end point, univariate and multivariate survival analyses were performed to identify prognostic indicators. The significance of altering biomarkers with therapy was also studied by including repeated measurements of the most prognostic biochemical parameter in a time dependent covariate survival analysis. Results: We identified 139 patients with sufficient data for our analyses. Factors associated with a poor outcome on univariate analysis included: plasma neurokinin A (NKA), urinary 5-hydroxyindolacetic acid output, age, and ⩾5 liver metastases. Plasma NKA was the strongest and only independent predictor of outcome on multivariate analysis. Patients in whom NKA continued to rise despite somatostatin analogues had a significantly worse survival than those in whom NKA stabilised or fell (one year survival rate 40% v 87%). Time dependent covariate analysis concluded that survival was better predicted by the most recent plasma NKA value rather than by the initial value. Conclusions: Plasma NKA is an accurate marker of prognosis for midgut carcinoid tumours. This is the first paper to support a survival advantage in patients in whom plasma NKA is altered by somatostatin analogues.
The Spanish pronominal clitic system

In this paper we present a model of the Spanish pronominal clitic system. We start with a review of the phenomenon, including simple and complex clitic climbing and the related phenomena of reflexives, and also the impersonal passive-reflexive and active-impersonal forms. We also review the status of pronominal clitics and propose that it is a dual phenomenon: on the one hand, enclitics are inflections while proclitics are proper clitics that are realized as independent lexical units. Then the formalization of the model in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar is presented; for this the standard machinery of HPSG is extended with one combination scheme, the Head-Proclitic Rule, and one principle, the clitic principle. This principle states that in well-formed clitic sentences every clitic domain is within the scope of a single phonological host. The notions of clitic domain and clitic scope are also introduced in this paper, in addition to the operations of clitizisation, composition and subsumption through which clitic domains are produced. An implementation of the theory in Linguistics Knowledge Building is also presented.
Neuromuscular electrical stimulation in neurorehabilitation

This review provides a comprehensive overview of the clinical uses of neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) for functional and therapeutic applications in subjects with spinal cord injury or stroke. Functional applications refer to the use of NMES to activate paralyzed muscles in precise sequence and magnitude to directly accomplish functional tasks. In therapeutic applications, NMES may lead to a specific effect that enhances function, but does not directly provide function. The specific neuroprosthetic or “functional” applications reviewed in this article include upper‐ and lower‐limb motor movement for self‐care tasks and mobility, respectively, bladder function, and respiratory control. Specific therapeutic applications include motor relearning, reduction of hemiplegic shoulder pain, muscle strengthening, prevention of muscle atrophy, prophylaxis of deep venous thrombosis, improvement of tissue oxygenation and peripheral hemodynamic functioning, and cardiopulmonary conditioning. Perspectives on future developments and clinical applications of NMES are presented. Muscle Nerve, 2007
Framework for whole-body control of a planar biped during different support phases

The goal of this paper is to prepare a framework for working with a planar biped robot model during different support phases. An approach to modelling and control of a biped model with feet and arms is presented. Partial feedback linearisation is used as a standard control method that moves the robot between key positions using trajectories calculated by the means of the differential inverse kinematics. The assumption is made that all the points are able to come in contact with the ground or other surfaces, so both underactuated and overactuated support phases have to be considered.
Improved DAG SVM: A New Method for Multi-Class SVM Classification

In this paper, we present our method which is a performance improvement to the Directed Acyclic Graph Support Vector Machines (DAG SVM). It suggests a weighted multi-class classification technique which divides the input space into several subspaces. In the training phase of the technique, for each subspace, a DAG SVM is trained and its probability density function (pdf) is guesstimated. In the test phase, fit in value of each input pattern to every subspace is calculated using the pdf of the subspace as the weight of each DAG SVM. Finally, a fusion operation is defined and applied to the DAG SVM outputs to decide the class label of the given input pattern. Evaluation results show the prominence of our method of multi-class classification compared with DAG SVM. Some data sets including synthetic one, the iris, and the wine data sets relative standard DAG SVM, were used for the evaluation.
Thermal conductivity and dielectric properties of bismaleimide/cyanate ester copolymer

The blend was synthesised with bismaleimide (BMI) resin and bisphenol A-based cyanate ester (BADCy) resin. The BMI/BADCy copolymer showed excellent dielectric and thermal conductivity properties. The volume resistivity of the copolymer was a little lower than BADCy system. The volume resistivity of blend was 7.8 × 10 15 Ω·cm when the BMI content was 20 wt%, which still showed good insulation performance. The dielectric property of modified BADCy copolymer remained the good stability from 0.1 Hz to 1 MHz. Compared to pure BADCy system, the breakdown property of BMI/BADCy blend reached the maximum value of 77.9 kV/mm when the content of BMI was 20 wt%, which was still about 1.22 times. The thermal property and thermal conductivity property of the copolymer were higher than BADCy system.
Development of a novel antimicrobial peptide, AG-30, with angiogenic properties

The utility of various synthetic peptides has been investigated in clinical trials of the treatment of cancers, infectious diseases and endocrine diseases. In the process of functional gene screening with in silico analysis for molecules with angiogenic properties, we generated a small peptide, angiogenic peptide (AG)‐30, that possesses both antimicrobial and pro‐inflammatory activities. AG‐30 has an α‐helix structure with a number of hydrophobic or net positively charged amino acids and a propensity to fold into amphipathic structures. Indeed, AG‐30 exhibited antimicrobial activity against various bacteria, induced vascular endothelial cell growth and tube formation in a dose‐dependent manner and increased neovascularization in a Matrigel plug assay. As a result, AG‐30 up‐regulated expression of angiogenesis‐related cytokines and growth factors for up to 72 hrs in human aortic endothelial cells. To further evaluate the angiogenic effect of AG‐30 in vivo, we developed a slow‐release AG‐30 system utilizing biodegradable gelatin microspheres. In the ischaemic mouse hind limb, slow‐release AG‐30 treatment results in an increase in angiogenic score, an increase in blood flow (as demonstrated by laser Doppler imaging) and an increase in capillary density (as demonstrated by immunostaining with anti‐CD31 antibody). These data suggest that the novel peptide, AG‐30, may have therapeutic potential for ischaemic diseases.
Identifying Missing Node Information in Social Networks

In recent years, social networks have surged in popularity as one of the main applications of the Internet. This has generated great interest in researching these networks by various fields in the scientific community. One key aspect of social network research is identifying important missing information which is not explicitly represented in the network, or is not visible to all. To date, this line of research typically focused on what connections were missing between nodes,or what is termed the "Missing Link Problem. " This paper introduces a new Missing Nodes Identification problem where missing members in the social network structure must be identified. Towards solving this problem, we present an approach based on clustering algorithms combined with measures from missing link research. We show that this approach has beneficial results in the missing nodes identification process and we measure its performance in several different scenarios.
Adapting resources to the Semantic Web: Experience with Entrez Gene

Modern biomedical research is increasingly supported by information technologies. Biologists and physicians rely not only on the biomedical literature (e.g., MEDLINE), but also on the many knowledge bases available online (e.g., through the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s (NCBI) Entrez portal). While these resources are undeniably valuable to humans, most of them are text-based and heterogeneous, and cannot be easily processed by computers. For example, the information retrieved from sources like Entrez Gene (EG) [2] or the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) [4] is represented in XML but follows different data type definitions (DTD). Hence, queries across the different NCBI data sources are only possible through implementation of complex linkages. Moreover, within one data source namely EG, a traditional relational database schema makes it extremely difficult to query for information using the relationships between the concepts. The Biomedical Knowledge Repository (BKR) under development at the National Library of Medicine addresses these limitations. It consists of an extensive collection of normalized assertions (i.e., concept-relationship-concept triples), represented in a common format, and processable by computers. Therefore, it can be understood as a specialized version of the Semantic Web. In this paper, we describe a pilot contribution to the BKR: the transformation of the EG database into the W3C Resource Description Framework (RDF) format [5].
Characterization of Early Microbial Communities on Volcanic Deposits along a Vegetation Gradient on the Island of Miyake, Japan

The 2000 eruption of Mount Oyama on the island of Miyake (Miyake-jima) created a unique opportunity to study the early ecosystem development on newly exposed terrestrial substrates. In this study, bacterial and fungal communities on 9- and 11-year-old volcanic deposits at poorly to fully vegetation-recovered sites in Miyake-jima, Japan, were characterized by conventional culture-based methods and pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA and 18S rRNA genes. Despite the differences in the vegetation cover, the upper volcanic deposit layer samples displayed low among-site variation for chemical properties (pH, total organic carbon, and total nitrogen) and microbial population densities (total direct count and culturable count). Statistical analyses of pyrosequencing data revealed that the microbial communities of volcanic deposit samples were phylogenetically diverse, in spite of very low-carbon environmental conditions, and their diversity was comparable to that in the lower soil layer (buried soil) samples. Comparing with the microbial communities in buried soil, the volcanic deposit communities were characterized by the presence of Betaproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria as the main bacterial class, Deinococcus- Thermus as the minor bacterial phyla, and Ascomycota as the major fungal phyla. Multivariate analysis revealed that several bacterial families and fungal classes correlated positively or negatively with plant species.
Automatically Generating Questions from Queries for Community-based Question Answering

This paper proposes a method that automatically generates questions from queries for community-based question answering (cQA) services. Our query-to-question generation model is built upon templates induced from search engine query logs. In detail, we first extract pairs of queries and user-clicked questions from query logs, with which we induce question generation templates. Then, when a new query is submitted, we select proper templates for the query and generate questions through template instantiation. We evaluated the method with a set of short queries randomly selected from query logs, and the generated questions were judged by human annotators. Experimental results show that, the precision of 1-best and 5best generated questions is 67% and 61%, respectively, which outperforms a baseline method that directly retrieves questions for queries in a cQA site search engine. In addition, the results also suggest that the proposed method can improve the search of cQA archives.