Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Studies in the Classification of Affective Disorders

This is the second of two papers dealing with the classification of affective disorders in which the relationship between anxiety states and depressive illnesses is examined. The question at issue is whether a line of demarcation may be drawn between the two disorders or whether they are more appropriately regarded as merging insensibly along a continuum of affective disturbance.
School Influences on Parents' Role Beliefs

This study examined potential links among parents' role beliefs for involvement and social-contextual variables contributing to its development. A sample of parents from two Title I middle schools responded to surveys assessing their perceptions of student and teacher invitations to involvement, school expectations of involvement, school climate, childhood schooling experiences, and their role beliefs. Parents' perceptions of student invitations to involvement, school expectations of involvement, and school climate had the largest effects on parents' role beliefs in one school, while school climate was the sole predictor of parents' role beliefs in the other. Teachers' invitations to involvement were not directly related to role beliefs in either school. Differences between schools are discussed in relation to social and cultural capital.
ElasTraS: An elastic, scalable, and self-managing transactional database for the cloud

A database management system (DBMS) serving a cloud platform must handle large numbers of application databases (or tenants) that are characterized by diverse schemas, varying footprints, and unpredictable load patterns. Scaling out using clusters of commodity servers and sharing resources among tenants (i.e., multitenancy) are important features of such systems. Moreover, when deployed on a pay-per-use infrastructure, minimizing the system's operating cost while ensuring good performance is also an important goal. Traditional DBMSs were not designed for such scenarios and hence do not possess the mentioned features critical for DBMSs in the cloud. We present ElasTraS, which combines three design principles to build an elastically-scalable multitenant DBMS for transaction processing workloads. These design principles are gleaned from a careful analysis of the years of research in building scalable key-value stores and decades of research in high performance transaction processing systems. ElasTraS scales to thousands of tenants, effectively consolidates tenants with small footprints while scaling-out large tenants across multiple servers in a cluster. ElasTraS also supports low-latency multistep ACID transactions, is fault-tolerant, self-managing, and highly available to support mission critical applications. ElasTraS leverages Albatross, a low overhead on-demand live database migration technique, for elastic load balancing by adding more servers during high load and consolidating to fewer servers during usage troughs. This elastic scaling minimizes the operating cost and ensures good performance even in the presence of unpredictable changes to the workload. We elucidate the design principles, explain the architecture, describe a prototype implementation, present the detailed design and implementation of Albatross, and experimentally evaluate the implementation using a variety of transaction processing workloads. On a cluster of 20 commodity servers, our prototype serves thousands of tenants and serves more than 1 billion transactions per day while migrating tenant databases with minimal overhead to allow lightweight elastic scaling. Using a cluster of 30 commodity servers, ElasTraS can scale-out a terabyte TPC-C database serving an aggregate throughput of approximately one quarter of a million TPC-C transactions per minute.
Pain and Its Treatment in Patients with Cancer in Korea

Substantial pain is experienced by a lot of patients with cancer, and undertreated pain significantly undermines their quality of life. Despite international and national guidelines on cancer pain management, the practical effectiveness of management is still problematic. We did a prospective cross-sectional survey on pain prevalence, pain intensity, its impact on daily activity, and adequacy of pain management in 823 patients treated by medical oncologists and radiologic oncologists. At the time of the survey, 29.7% of the patients had pain that was moderate or severe. Performance status and tumor extent were significant predictors of pain presence and its intensity. Pain severity and the proportion of the patients whose function is impaired are highly associated. Among the patients with pain, only 37% rated pain relief as satisfactory. Forty-one percent of the patients with pain received inadequate pain management. Physicians did not adjust the analgesic prescription in about 53% of the patients who reported severe pain. These results demonstrate the alarming degree of undertreatment of pain in patients with cancer in Korea, and indicate the need to improve the management of cancer-related pain. Future research should elucidate the factors that impede adequate pain management in order to overcome obstacles to adequate treatment.
Atypical Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase Phosphatase Implicated in Regulating Transition from Pre-S-Phase Asexual Intraerythrocytic Development of Plasmodium falciparum

ABSTRACT Intraerythrocytic development of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum appears as a continuous flow through growth and proliferation. To develop a greater understanding of the critical regulatory events, we utilized piggyBac insertional mutagenesis to randomly disrupt genes. Screening a collection of piggyBac mutants for slow growth, we isolated the attenuated parasite C9, which carried a single insertion disrupting the open reading frame (ORF) of PF3D7_1305500. This gene encodes a protein structurally similar to a mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) phosphatase, except for two notable characteristics that alter the signature motif of the dual-specificity phosphatase domain, suggesting that it may be a low-activity phosphatase or pseudophosphatase. C9 parasites demonstrated a significantly lower growth rate with delayed entry into the S/M phase of the cell cycle, which follows the stage of maximum PF3D7_1305500 expression in intact parasites. Genetic complementation with the full-length PF3D7_1305500 rescued the wild-type phenotype of C9, validating the importance of the putative protein phosphatase PF3D7_1305500 as a regulator of pre-S-phase cell cycle progression in P. falciparum.
Perioperative heart failure in coronary surgery and timing of intra‐aortic balloon pump insertion

Background: Perioperative heart failure (HF) in coronary operations is accompanied by a high operative mortality rate. An intra‐aortic balloon pump (IABP) is often used to treat this syndrome. The correct timing for IABP insertion after completion of the operation has not yet been investigated. The aim of this study was to investigate the operative mortality in perioperative HF patients who had undergone coronary operations with respect to the early or the late use of IABP.
A dictionary on microRNAs and their putative target pathways

While in the last decade mRNA expression profiling was among the most popular research areas, over the past years the study of non-coding RNAs, especially microRNAs (miRNAs), has gained increasing interest. For almost 900 known human miRNAs hundreds of pretended targets are known. However, there is only limited knowledge about putative systemic effects of changes in the expression of miRNAs and their regulatory influence. We determined for each known miRNA the biochemical pathways in the KEGG and TRANSPATH database and the Gene Ontology categories that are enriched with respect to its target genes. We refer to these pathways and categories as target pathways of the corresponding miRNA. Investigating target pathways of miRNAs we found a strong relation to disease-related regulatory pathways, including mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling cascade, Transforming growth factor (TGF)-beta signaling pathway or the p53 network. Performing a sophisticated analysis of differentially expressed genes of 13 cancer data sets extracted from gene expression omnibus (GEO) showed that targets of specific miRNAs were significantly deregulated in these sets. The respective miRNA target analysis is also a novel part of our gene set analysis pipeline GeneTrail. Our study represents a comprehensive theoretical analysis of the relationship between miRNAs and their predicted target pathways. Our target pathways analysis provides a ‘miRNA-target pathway’ dictionary, which enables researchers to identify target pathways of differentially regulated miRNAs.
Evaluation of Semantic Similarity across MeSH Ontology: A Cairo University Thesis Mining Case Study

Knowledge exaction and text representation are considered as the main concepts concerning organizations nowadays. The estimation of the semantic similarity between words provides a valuable method to enable the understanding of texts. In the field of biomedical domains, using Ontologies have been very effective due to their scalability and efficiency. The problem of extracting knowledge from huge amount of data is recorded as an issue in the medical sector. In this paper, we aim to improve knowledge representation by using MeSH Ontology on medical theses data by analyzing the similarity between the keywords within the theses data and keywords after using the MeSH ontology. As a result, we are able to better discover the commonalities between theses data and hence, improve the accuracy of the similarity estimation which in return improves the scientific research sector. Then, K-means cluster algorithm was applied to get the nearest departments that can work together based on medical ontology. Experimental evaluations using 4, 878 theses data set in the medical sector at Cairo University indicate that the proposed approach yields results that correlate more closely with human assessments than other by using the standard ontology (MeSH). Results show that using ontology correlates better, compared to related works, with the similarity assessments provided by experts in biomedicine.
Chapter 7 Development of Semi-coarsening Techniques 7.1 Introduction

Departing from Mulder's semi-coarsening technique for (cid:12)rst-order PDEs, the notion of a grid of grids is introduced and a multi-level (cid:12)nite-volume technique for second order elliptic PDEs is developed. Various grid-transfer operators are investigated, in combination with damped Jacobi-relaxation. Convergence rates as they are predicted by Fourier local mode analysis are compared with practical measurements. The wide variety of grids at our disposal leads to the notion of coherent representations of a function on di(cid:11)erent grids. A sawtooth multi-level algorithm is proposed for the case of multiple semi-coarsening. A hierarchical set of basis-functions for (cid:12)nite volumes on sparse grids is brie(cid:13)y discussed. Note: This research was supported by the Brite-EuRam II Aeronautics R & D Programme of the European Communities (Contract No. AER2-CT92-0040).
Macrophages‐Triggered Sequential Remodeling of Endothelium‐Interstitial Matrix to Form Pre‐Metastatic Niche in Microfluidic Tumor Microenvironment

The primed microenvironment of future metastatic sites, called the pre‐metastatic niche, is a prerequisite for overt metastasis. However, a mechanistic understanding of the contributions of recruited cells to the niche is hindered by complex in vivo systems. Herein, a microfluidic platform that incorporates endothelial cells and extracellular matrix (ECM) scaffolds is developed, and the distinct role of recruited monocytes and macrophages in establishing pre‐metastatic niches is delineated. It is observed that monocyte‐derived matrix metalloproteinase 9 facilitates cancer cell extravasation through destruction of endothelial tight junctions. Furthermore, subsequent cancer cell invasiveness is significantly enhanced. Close examination of ECM structures reveals that cancer cells move within characteristic “microtracks” generated by macrophages, suggesting that macrophages could serve as a compensatory mechanism for the reduced migratory capacity of cancer cells. Thus, the first evidence of monocyte/macrophage‐induced remodeling is shown, and these findings will open up new horizons for improving characterization of the pre‐metastatic niche and corresponding immunotherapies.
Multipath characterization of indoor power-line networks

The time- and frequency-varying behavior of an indoor power-line network is the result of variable impedance loads connected to its termination points. In fact, any signal transmitted through such a communications network is subject to time-varying multipath fading. In this paper, an analytical calculation method is presented, which can be used to determine the multipath components of any point-to-point channel in the indoor power-line environment. The method calculates all transmission characteristics of the network and, therefore, it can be exploited in the process of designing proper transmission algorithms for optimizing system performance. The proposed method is applied to an example network to demonstrate its usefulness in explaining the network's time-dependent behavior and in estimating channel parameters, such as subchannel bandwidth, multipath delay spread, fading conditions, etc.
Evaluation of BLID and LOC399959 as candidate genes for high myopia in the Chinese Han population

Purpose BH3-like motif containing, cell death inducer (BLID) and LOC399959 are two genes associated with the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs577948, which is a susceptibility locus for high myopia in Japanese subjects. The purpose of this study was to determine if BLID and LOC399959 are associated with high myopia in Chinese Han subjects. Methods High myopia subjects (n=476) had a spherical refractive error of less than −6.00 D in at least one eye and/or an axial length greater than 26 mm. Genomic DNA was extracted and genotyped from peripheral blood leukocytes of high myopes and controls (n=275). Using a case-control association study of candidate regions, linkage disequilibrium blocks for 19 tag SNPs (tSNPs), including rs577948, harbored within and surrounding the BLID and LOC399959 genes were analyzed on a MassArray platform using iPlex chemistry. Each of the tSNPs had an r2>0.8 and minor allele frequency >10% in the Chinese Han population. Haplotype association analysis was performed on Haploview 4.1 using Chi-square (χ2) tests. Results None of the 19 tSNPs were statistically associated with high myopia. Conclusions While rs577948 may be associated with high myopia in Japanese subjects, it and the other tSNPs near the BLID and LOC399959 genes are not susceptibility loci for high myopia in the Chinese Han population. Thus, associations of SNPs with high myopia as determined by Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) may be restricted to certain ethnic or genetically distinct populations. Without systematic replication in other populations, the results of GWAS associations should be interpreted with great caution.
Randomized Phase III Trial of Standard Therapy Plus Low Molecular Weight Heparin in Patients With Lung Cancer: FRAGMATIC Trial.

PURPOSE Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is common in cancer patients. Evidence has suggested that low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) might improve survival in patients with cancer by preventing both VTE and the progression of metastases. No trial in a single cancer type has been powered to demonstrate a clinically significant survival difference. The aim of this trial was to investigate this question in patients with lung cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS We conducted a multicenter, open-label, randomized trial to evaluate the addition of a primary prophylactic dose of LMWH for 24 weeks to standard treatment in patients with newly diagnosed lung cancer of any stage and histology. The primary outcome was 1-year survival. Secondary outcomes included metastasis-free survival, VTE-free survival, toxicity, and quality of life. RESULTS For this trial, 2,202 patients were randomly assigned to the two treatment arms over 4 years. The trial did not reach its intended number of events for the primary analysis (2,047 deaths), and data were analyzed after 2,013 deaths after discussion with the independent data monitoring committee. There was no evidence of a difference in overall or metastasis-free survival between the two arms (hazard ratio [HR], 1.01; 95% CI, 0.93 to 1.10; P = .814; and HR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.91 to 1.08; P = .864, respectively). There was a reduction in the risk of VTE from 9.7% to 5.5% (HR, 0.57; 95% CI, 0.42 to 0.79; P = .001) in the LMWH arm and no difference in major bleeding events but evidence of an increase in the composite of major and clinically relevant nonmajor bleeding in the LMWH arm. CONCLUSION LMWH did not improve overall survival in the patients with lung cancer in this trial. A significant reduction in VTE is associated with an increase in clinically relevant nonmajor bleeding. Strategies to target those at greatest risk of VTE are warranted.
Integrin-Mediated Dendrite Branch Maintenance Requires Abelson (Abl) Family Kinases

Dendrite arbor structure is a critical determinant of nervous system function that must be actively maintained throughout life, but the signaling pathways that regulate dendrite maintenance are essentially unknown. We report that the Abelson (Abl) and Abl-related gene (Arg) nonreceptor tyrosine kinases are required for maintenance of cortical dendrites in the mouse brain. arg-/- cortical dendrites initially develop normally and are indistinguishable from wild-type dendrites at postnatal day 21. Dendrite branches are not efficiently maintained in arg-/- neurons, leading to a reduction in dendrite arbor size by early adulthood. More severe dendrite loss is observed in abl-/-arg-/- neurons. Elevation of Arg kinase activity in primary cortical neurons promotes axon and dendrite branching. Activation of integrin receptors by adhesion to laminin-1 or Semaphorin 7A also promotes neurite branching in cortical neurons, but this response is absent in arg-/- neurons because of the reduced dynamic behavior of mutant neurite branches. These data suggest that integrin signaling through Abl and Arg support cortical dendrite branch maintenance by promoting dendrite branch dynamics in response to adhesive cues.
Systematic Review of the Risk of Enteric Infection in Patients Taking Acid Suppression

CONTEXT:Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) and H2 receptor antagonists (H2RAs) have become the mainstay of therapy in acid-related upper gastrointestinal disorders. There have been concerns raised about the possible association of PPIs with enteric infections.OBJECTIVE: We conducted a systematic review to evaluate any association between acid suppression and enteric infection. We also assessed differences between types of enteric infections and the type of acid suppression.DATA SOURCES:Electronic searches of MEDLINE (1966–2005), EMBASE (1988–2005), and CINAHL (1982–2005) were undertaken using a combination of subject headings and text words related to PPI therapy, H2RAs, and enteric infections.STUDY SELECTION:All observational studies were eligible, including cross-sectional, case control, and cohort studies that evaluated risk of enteric infection associated with antisecretory therapy. Eligibility assessment was made by two independent researchers.DATA EXTRACTION:Information on study design, patient population, type of acid suppression, type of infection, and outcomes was collected. The odds ratio (OR) of taking acid suppression therapy in cases and controls was calculated and results were synthesized using a random effects model (DerSimonian and Laird, Stats direct version 2.4.4). DATA SYNTHESIS:A total of 12 papers evaluating 2,948 patients with Clostridium difficile were included in the review. There was an increased risk of taking antisecretory therapy in those infected with C. difficile (pooled OR 1.94, 95% CI 1.37–2.75). There was significant heterogeneity between the studies (P = 0.0006) that was not explained by planned subgroup analysis. The association was greater for PPI use (OR 1.96, 95% CI 1.28–3.00) compared with H2RA use (OR 1.40, 95% CI 0.85–2.29). A total of six studies evaluated Salmonella, Campylobacter, and other enteric infections in 11,280 patients. There was an increased risk of taking acid suppression in those with enteric infections (OR 2.55, 95% CI 1.53–4.26). There was significant heterogeneity between the studies (P < 0.0001) that was not explained by subgroup analysis. The association was greater for PPI use (OR 3.33, 95% CI 1.84–6.02) compared with H2RA use (OR 2.03, 95% CI 1.05–3.92). CONCLUSION: There is an association between acid suppression and an increased risk of enteric infection. Further prospective studies on patients taking long-term acid suppression are needed to establish whether this association is causal.
Tissue dependent co-segregation of the novel pathogenic G12276A mitochondrial tRNALeu(CUN) mutation with the A185G D-loop polymorphism

Most of the known disease associated point mutations in mitochondrial DNA (for overviews see Wallace1 and Shoubridge and Molnar2) affect mitochondrial tRNA genes leading to impaired translation of the mitochondrial encoded subunits of the oxidative phosphorylation complexes I, III, IV, and V. Among these, three different point mutations in the mitochondrial tRNALeu(CUN) gene have been identified so far. These rare mutations were reported only in single individuals and were found to be associated with skeletal muscle disorders, including chronic progressive external ophthalmoplegia (CPEO),3 isolated skeletal myopathy,4 and chronic fatigue syndrome.5 However, the detailed pathogenic mechanisms of these tRNA point mutations leading to mitochondrial dysfunction in skeletal muscle have remained elusive. From a diagnostic point of view it is noteworthy that the mitochondrial genome is highly variable, which in turn leads to difficulties in proving the pathogenic role of any particular heteroplasmic mtDNA mutation.6 Therefore, it has become common practice to provide correlation between the mutation load (degree of mtDNA heteroplasmy) and the biochemical pathology (for example, cytochrome c oxidase (COX) negativity) in individual muscle fibres or cybrids. Here, we report a novel heteroplasmic point mutation in the mitochondrial tRNALeu(CUN) gene associated with a mild form of CPEO. This mutation causes, due to its location in the highly conserved DHU-stem, a severe decrease in the steady state levels of this tRNA, explaining the impaired translation of mitochondrial encoded proteins. Interestingly, this mutation strictly co-segregates with one allele of a heteroplasmic D-loop polymorphism. This causes pseudo-correlation of the neutral polymorphism with a pathological biochemical phenotype and might be responsible for routing of the pathogenic mutation into skeletal muscle. ### Case description A 28 year old female patient presented with a history of mild exercise intolerance starting in early childhood. At the age of 13 years she developed …