Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
[Prenatal diagnosis of fetal chromosome aneuploidy by massively parallel genomic sequencing].

OBJECTIVE To perform non-invasive prenatal diagnosis (NIPD) of chromosome aneuploidy by detecting free DNA in maternal peripheral plasma by massively parallel genomic sequencing and determine the feasibility of detecting cell-free fetal DNA in chromosomal copy. METHODS The plasma samples from 1 264 gravidas were collected from February 2012 to July 2013 at our center. Those pregnant women with a gestational age of 13 to 33 weeks having high risks in serological screening or aged over 35 years or abnormal fetus on ultrasonography. The peripheral venous blood samples were drawn from pregnant women and plasma DNA was extracted for preparing a sequencing library. By using Illumina HiSeq2000, high-throughput sequencing was performed. Amnocentesis and karyotypic analysis were conducted for positive cases and those with negative results were followed up. RESULTS By massively parallel genomic sequencing, 20 of them showed positive results. By the standard of chromosomal karyotypic analysis, there were 21 positive cases of 13 trisomy and the diagnostic accordance rate was 100%. Among 18 positive cases of 6 trisomy, there were amniocentesis (n = 5, except for one dead fetus), trisomy 18 (n = 4) and normal karyotype with placenta chimera (n = 1). One positive case of 13 trisomy was in accordance with karyotypic analysis. CONCLUSION Massively parallel sequencing for NIPD may be used as further screening for pregnant women with high risks of serological screening. And this technology is highly consistent with karyotypic analysis in terms of sensitivity and specificity.
How sensitive and specific is urinalysis ‘dipstick’ testing for detection of hyperglycaemia and ketosis? An audit of findings from coronial autopsies

Aims: Biochemical analysis of glucose and ketones in the vitreous humour obtained at post-mortem examination is representative of the levels in the blood prior to death. Elevated levels can be indicative of conditions including diabetic ketoacidosis, which can be a cause for unexpected death. A rapid screening test for such conditions can be performed during the autopsy through urinalysis using test strips (urine ‘dipstick’ testing). The aim of this study was to assess the utility of urinalysis testing for post-mortem detection of derangements of glucose and ketone levels. Methods: The results of vitreous biochemical analysis and urinalysis were collated from 188 forensic autopsy cases. Results: A vitreous glucose result of above 10 mmol/L was regarded as high. When this was compared to urinalysis results it was found that any urinalysis result above negative had a sensitivity of 0.83 and a specificity of 0.93. A vitreous ketone level of above 5 mmol/L was regarded as significantly elevated; a urinalysis result above negative had a sensitivity of 1, but a specificity of 0.12. Conclusions: Urinalysis (‘dipstick’ testing) for glucose has a good sensitivity and specificity for high vitreous glucose levels, which are regarded as indicative of pathological hyperglycaemia during life. It was found that urine testing for ketones either has an excellent sensitivity with low specificity or a poor sensitivity with a good specificity; however, this finding has to be viewed in the context of uncertainty of the biochemical level of significant ketosis.
Putting the Public Back in Public Education: Community Advocacy and Education Leadership under the Every Student Succeeds Act

In this article, we argue that ESSA provides a unique policy window for district-level leaders to advance an equity agenda by working closely with local community advocates. Drawing from a larger qualitative, multiple case study on the role of school boards in three U.S. Mountain West school districts, we focus on community advocacy committed to expanding educational equity and opportunity for underserved Black, Latinx, and English learner students Guided by community equity literacy as an organizing framework grounded in the literature on school–community relations, partnerships, and collaboration, we find that community advocates, who in some cases became school board members, identified educational inequities through various forms of knowledge, and then took deliberate actions to dismantle inequities in their respective school districts. We conclude with recommendations for how district-level leaders might leverage community advocacy and education leadership at the local level under ESSA.
Resistance of mice to reinfection after E-aminocaproic acid treatment of primary influenza virus infection.

The effect of proteolysis inhibitors on the formation of resistance to virus challenge has been studied in experimental influenza of mice. E-aminocaproic acid (E-ACA) when used in the treatment of influenza decreased the virus reproduction in lungs and also enhanced the humoral immune response. The antibody titre on days 14 to 21 post infection (p.i.) was significantly higher in the treated animals. On day 30 after challenge with the homologous strain (H3N2) the virus reproduced to low levels in the lungs of untreated convalescent mice, but no virus was detected in the lungs of mice which had been treated with E-ACA during primary infection. Marked increase of the antibody level was found in such mice. Upon challenge with lethal doses of the virulent strain (H1N1), the protection was significantly higher among animals treated with E-ACA during primary infection with a sublethal virus dose. We believe that the immunomodulatory action of E-ACA may play an important role in the increased resistance to challenge exhibited by such treatment.
Young children's understanding of the mind-body distinction.

A experiments investigated children's understanding of the mind-body distinction. Children of ages 4 and 5 recognized not only the differential modifiability of changeable versus unchangeable human properties and bodily versus mental properties, but also the independence of activities of bodily organs from a person's intention (Experiment 1). When presented 3 types of causal explanations (i.e., intentional, vitalistic, mechanical), 6-year-olds chose most often as most plausible for bodily functions vitalistic explanations (i.e., those ascribing the phenomena to a relevant bodily organ's initiative and effortful engagement in activity); 8-year-olds chose the vitalistic explanations second most often, following mechanical ones (Experiment 2). However, 6-year-olds, as well as 8-year-olds and adults, did not always choose vitalistic explanations over intentional explanations (Experiment 3); whereas they tended to prefer vitalistic explanations for biological phenomena, they predominantly accepted intentional ones for psychological phenomena (Experiment 3A). These results suggest that children as young as 6 years of age have acquired a form of biology as an autonomous domain which is separate from that of psychology.
Guys and Guns Amok: Domestic Terrorism and School Shootings from the Oklahoma City Bombing to the Virginia Tech Massacre

Introduction: Media Spectacle and the "Virginia Tech Massacre" Chapter 1: Deconstructing the Spectacle: Race, Guns, and the Culture Wars Chapter 2: The Situation of Contemporary Youth Chapter 3: Constructing Male Identities and the Spectacle of Terror Chapter 4: What Is to Be Done?
Low expression of soluble human leukocyte antigen G in early gestation and subsequent placenta‐mediated complications of pregnancy

Abnormal placentation is a common pathogenic mechanism of many placenta‐mediated complications of late pregnancy, including pre‐eclampsia, fetal growth restriction, stillbirth, and placental abruption. During successful placentation, the trophoblast (which is a semi‐allograft) is not rejected by decidual immune cells because of maternal immune tolerance, mainly induced by human leukocyte antigen G (HLA‐G). Deficient HLA‐G expression seems to be associated with the development of complications of pregnancy. The aim of this study was to determine whether low soluble HLA‐G (sHLA‐G) levels in maternal blood at the beginning of pregnancy may be associated with subsequent placenta‐mediated complications.
The development and testing of a survey to measure patient and family experiences with injury care

BACKGROUND To deliver patient-centered trauma care, we must capture patient and family experiences with the services they receive. We developed and pilot tested a survey to measure patient and family experiences with major injury care. METHODS We conducted a structured literature review and focus groups to generate survey items. We pilot tested the survey at a Level I trauma center and assessed feasibility of implementation and construct validity with Spearman’s correlation coefficients. Open ended questions were qualitatively analyzed to explore whether responses corroborated survey content. RESULTS We developed a survey with two parts: acute care component (46 items) and post–acute care component (27 items) with nine domains. We offered the survey (acute care component offered before hospital discharge, post–acute care component offered 1–7 months after discharge) to 170 patients/families, of whom 134 (79%) responded. Patients were primarily male (73%) with major injuries (median Injury Severity Score, 18; interquartile range, 16–25). Overall, respondents for both the acute care and post–acute care components of the survey reported being completely (47% vs. 26%), very (37% vs. 38%), or mostly (16% vs. 21%) satisfied with their injury care, whereas a minority reported being slightly (0% vs. 9%) or very (0% vs. 6%) dissatisfied (p = 0.002 Fischer’s exact test). Most survey items were significantly correlated with overall satisfaction (46 of 60 items). Almost all qualitatively identified themes matched survey domains, adding support to the survey content. CONCLUSION This pilot study demonstrates the feasibility of implementing a survey to capture patient and family experiences associated with major injury care and provides preliminary evidence of the instrument’s content and construct validity. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE Epidemiologic study, level III.
Demo paper: A content creation system for interactive 3D animations

Nowadays tablet devices are considered most important category of information-processing devices, because they attract not only PC users, but also all generation of people including small kids to elderly people. However, 3D graphics is mostly used by games and only few well-known applications exist. In this paper, we propose a new content creation system for interactive 3D animation, which dynamically changes the story dependent on the users' gesture. We introduce a state transition model to efficiently achieve smooth transition of multiple sequence of 3D animations. We also propose a content creation tools which help user to easily make such 3D animation.
Twin concordance for a binary trait: III. A bivariate analysis of hay fever and asthma

Self‐reported histories of hay fever and asthma were obtained from 3,808 pairs of adult twins 18 years and over registered with the Australian National Health Medical Research Council Twin Registry (1232 MZF, 567 MZM, 751 DZF, 352 DZM, 906 DZO). The prevalence of hay fever and asthma was 0.32 and 0.13, respectively, with little variation with zygosity, sex, and age. The associations between twin pairs for these two traits were analysed, under the assumption of constant prevalences, as a special case of a log‐linear model for binary traits in pedigrees using the statistical package GLIM. The model assumption that there are no secondor higher‐order interactions was tested in the 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 table of twin by disease outcomes without revealing strong evidence of departure, even in this large data set. The log‐linear modelling showed that only three first‐order interactions, namely 1) between hay fever in a twin pair, 2) asthma in a twin pair, and 3) hay fever and asthma in the same twin, were necessary to describe the data. The first two interaction terms were significantly larger in identical pairs; the third was independent of zygosity. Under this parsimonious model, there was a significant difference between identical and fraternal pairs in marginal correlation, both in asthma and hay fever, and in the cross‐correlation between hay fever in one twin and asthma in the other. This suggests that genetic factors are implicated in both hay fever and asthma and that some of these genetic factors are common (at least among a subgroup of individuals) to both traits.
Onboard Real-Time Estimation of Vehicle Lateral Tire–Road Forces and Sideslip Angle

The principal concerns in driving safety with standard vehicles or cybercars are understanding and preventing risky situations. A close examination of accident data reveals that losing control of the vehicle is the main reason for most car accidents. To help to prevent such accidents, vehicle-control systems may be used, which require certain input data concerning vehicle-dynamic parameters and vehicle-road interaction. Unfortunately, some fundamental parameters, like tire-road forces and sideslip angle are difficult to measure in a car, for both technical and economic reasons. Therefore, this study presents a dynamic modeling and observation method to estimate these variables. One of the major contributions of this study, with respect to our previous work and to the largest literature in the field of the lateral dynamic estimation, is the fact that lateral tire force at each wheel is discussed in details. To address system nonlinearities and unmodeled dynamics, two observers derived from extended and unscented Kalman filtering techniques are proposed and compared. The estimation process method is based on the dynamic response of a vehicle instrumented with available and potentially integrable sensors. Performances are tested using an experimental car. Experimental results demonstrate the ability of this approach to provide accurate estimations, and show its practical potential as a low-cost solution for calculating lateral tire forces and sideslip angle.
Dendritic Cell Immunization Induces Nonprotective WT1-specific CTL Responses in Mouse

In the present article we describe the immunogenicity in the mouse of 2 epitopes from the tumor-associated antigen Wilms tumor 1 antigen (WT1). The newly described Kb-restricted pWT330 epitope stimulates high-avidity allo-major histocompatibility complex restricted cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) capable of killing WT1-expressing tumor cell lines. The epitope pWT126 has been previously described as a Db-restricted CTL epitope. Both epitopes are weakly immunogenic as immunization with incomplete Freund adjuvant induced poor CTL responses. In contrast, when coated onto dendritic cells (DCs) both peptides readily induced CTL responses. However, these peptide-specific CTL were of low avidity and unable to recognize WT1-expressing tumor cells in vitro and to protect against tumor challenge in vivo. In contrast, vaccination with DCs coated with peptides derived from the nonself antigen ovalbumin (OVA) induced CTL that recognized OVA-expressing tumor cells and protected against tumor growth in vivo. These data show that although DC vaccination readily stimulated CTL against WT1 peptides, these CTL did not display antitumor activity in vitro and in vivo. This suggests that tolerance to the 2 WT1 epitopes interferes with the generation of protective CTL immunity in mice.
Carbohydrate Detection Failure Analysis via Biosensoring

The causes of implantable carbohydrate biosensor sensitivity reduction have been investigated by means of fault tree analysis (FTA) relying on fuzzy reasoning to account for uncertainty. Using the fuzzy FTA methodology proposed herein all ultimate causes or combination of causes, attributed to the device components, the surrounding tissue and their intra/inter-relations at both, the surface- and the deep-knowledge level, that are responsible for or contribute to the top event have been recognized and quantified based on: (a) measurements for the deterministic contributors; and (b) experience for the stochastic contributors. The tree structure has been designed by combining deduction and induction, top-down and bottom-up techniques, thus establishing a dialectic trade-off which brings this method closer to scientific logic, permitting the introduction of deeper knowledge into the surface or experiential knowledge level characterizing usual FTA applications. The partitioning of the space of the variables and the determination of the fuzzy rules serving as the inference engine for diagnosis has been achieved by using experts' opinion through a modified 4-stage Delphi method. The approach suggested may contribute significantly to the self-optimisation of the measuring equipment from one generation to the next as it supports the flexible ad hoc tailor made development, thus potentiating the progress of epidemics from statistics to individualisation
Cellular Retinol-binding Protein-supported Retinoic Acid Synthesis

This study shows that microsomal retinol dehydrogenases, versus cytosolic retinol dehydrogenases, provide the quantitatively major share of retinal for retinoic acid (RA) biogenesis in rat tissues from the predominant substrate available physiologically, holo-cellular retinol-binding protein, type I (CRBP). With holo-CRBP as substrate in the absence of apo-CRBP microsomal retinol dehydrogenases have the higher specific activity and capacity to generate retinal used for RA synthesis by cytosolic retinal dehydrogenases. In the presence of apo-CRBP, a potent inhibitor of cytosolic retinol dehydrogenases (IC = 1 μM), liver microsomes provide 93% of the total retinal synthesized in a combination of microsomes and cytosol. Cytosolic retinol dehydrogenase(s) and the isozymes of alcohol dehydrogenase expressed in rat liver had distinct enzymatic properties; yet ethanol inhibited cytosolic retinol dehydrogenase(s) (IC = 20 μM) while stimulating RA synthesis in a combination of microsomes and cytosol. At least two discrete forms of cytosolic retinol dehydrogenase were observed: NAD- and NADP-dependent forms. Multiple retinal dehydrogenases also were observed and were inhibited partially by apo-CRBP. These results provide new insights into pathways of RA biogenesis and provide further evidence that they consist of multiple enzymes that recognize both liganded and nonliganded states of CRBP.
Tradeoffs between settling time and jitter in phase locked loops

In most phase locked loops, an obvious trade-off exists between settling time, output jitter and power consumption. However, dependence of jitter on settling time is commonly ignored while evaluating PLL designs. In this paper, the tradeoffs between settling time and jitter is analyzed for different types of All-Digital PLLs (ADPLLs). Based on these analytical results, a Figure of Merit (FoM) for evaluating PLLs, which takes settling time into consideration, is suggested. Survey carried out over state-of-the-art PLLs indicates that the proposed FoM provides a much better trend compared to previously used FoM that does not take the settling time into account. Finally, a 2.4-GHz Direct-Digital Synthesis based AD-PLL model, which combines phase detection switching, adaptive gain and FSM based mechanism, is explored to gain simultaneous optimization of PLL performance parameters.
Dissemination of Acinetobacter baumannii Clones with OXA-23 Carbapenemase in Colombian Hospitals

ABSTRACT During 2005, 66 carbapenem-resistant isolates of Acinetobacter baumannii were collected from seven tertiary-care hospitals participating in a nationwide surveillance network in Colombia. The isolates were multidrug resistant and produced the carbapenemases OXA-23 and OXA-51. Forty-five belonged to four clones while 21 were unique pulsotypes. One clone was present in two hospitals within one city, while another had spread between two hospitals in different cities. Blood, secretions, and abdominal fluids were the most frequent sites of isolation. This is the first description of widespread dissemination of OXA-23 in South America.
Readmissions to Intensive Care: A Prospective Multicenter Study in Australia and New Zealand*

Objectives: To determine factors independently associated with readmission to ICU and the independent association of readmission with subsequent mortality. Design: Prospective multicenter observational study. Setting: Forty ICUs in Australia and New Zealand. Patients: Consecutive adult patients discharged alive from ICU to hospital wards between September 2009 and February 2010. Interventions: Measurement of hospital mortality. Measurements and Main Results: We studied 10,210 patients and 674 readmissions. The median age was 63 years (interquartile range, 49–74), and 6,224 (61%) were male. The majority of readmissions were unplanned (84.1%) but only deemed preventable in a minority (8.9%) of cases. Time to first readmission was shorter for unplanned than planned readmission (3.2 vs 6.9 d; p < 0.001). Primary diagnosis changed between admission and readmission in the majority of patients (60.2%) irrespective of planned (58.2%) or unplanned (60.6%) status. Using recurrent event analysis incorporating patient frailty, we found no association between readmissions and hospital survival (hazard ratios: first readmission 0.88, second readmission 0.90, third readmission 0.44; p > 0.05). In contrast, age (hazard ratio, 1.03), a medical diagnosis (hazard ratio, 1.43), inotrope use (hazard ratio, 3.47), and treatment limitation order (hazard ratio, 17.8) were all independently associated with outcome. Conclusions: In this large prospective study, readmission to ICU was not an independent risk factor for mortality.
Principal component reconstruction: With application to target recognition in SAR image

This paper proposes a classification method based on principal component reconstruction (PCR) for target recognition in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image. To characterize the SAR image and alleviate the influence of different intensity of the same targets on target recognition, the SAR image is mapped into the principal component space by the principal component analysis with zero mean. In the principal component space, the query sample is reconstructed by a combination of the nearest training samples from the specific class, respectively. Then, the identity is decided by evaluating the minimum reconstruction error with respect to each class. Specifically, the reconstruction coefficients are constrained to be positive, which is more reasonable to the certain application. Extensive experiments carried out on the moving and stationary target acquisition and recognition (MSTAR) dataset illustrate the effective performance of the proposed method on ten-class targets recognition and configuration variation.