Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of serum inflammatory markers on the prognosis of adult and pediatric patients with Guillain–Barré syndrome

Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate blood neutrophil–lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet–lymphocyte ratio (PLR), C-reactive protein (CRP), and albumin levels for their prognostic value in adult Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS-A) and pediatric Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS-P) patients. Patients and methods We retrospectively analyzed the medical records of 68 Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS) patients (36 adults, 32 children) who were treated as inpatients at Harran University Faculty of Medicine, Neurology and Pediatric Neurology Departments. The pretreatment NLR, PLR, CRP, and albumin levels and Hughes scores at hospital admission, discharge, and third-month control were documented. Results In GBS-A patients, the mean CRP and NLR levels at admission/discharge and third-month control were significantly higher, and the mean albumin level was significantly lower in the Hughes disability scale (HDS)≥3 group. In GBS-P group, the mean NLR level at third month was significantly higher in the HDS≥3 group. GBS-A patients had higher mean NLR, PLR, and CRP levels and lower mean albumin values than GBS-P patients. Both GBS-A and GBS-P patients had higher mean NLR, PLR, and CRP levels and lower mean albumin values than healthy controls. Only the albumin level of the GBS-A group was found to be a significant predictor of prognosis at discharge from hospital. Conclusion NLR, CRP, and albumin levels in the GBS-A group and NLR levels in the GBS-P group may be helpful in predicting the prognosis of the disease. The albumin level of GBS-A patients is an independent risk factor for prognosis at discharge from hospital.
Functional Consequences of Synapse Remodeling Following Astrocyte-Specific Regulation of Ephrin-B1 in the Adult Hippocampus

Astrocyte-derived factors can control synapse formation and functions, making astrocytes an attractive target for regulating neuronal circuits and associated behaviors. Abnormal astrocyte-neuronal interactions are also implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders and neurodegenerative diseases associated with impaired learning and memory. However, little is known about astrocyte-mediated mechanisms that regulate learning and memory. Here, we propose astrocytic ephrin-B1 as a regulator of synaptogenesis in adult hippocampus and mouse learning behaviors. We found that astrocyte-specific ablation of ephrin-B1 in male mice triggers an increase in the density of immature dendritic spines and excitatory synaptic sites in the adult CA1 hippocampus. However, the prevalence of immature dendritic spines is associated with decreased evoked postsynaptic firing responses in CA1 pyramidal neurons, suggesting impaired maturation of these newly formed and potentially silent synapses or increased excitatory drive on the inhibitory neurons resulting in the overall decreased postsynaptic firing. Nevertheless, astrocyte-specific ephrin-B1 knock-out male mice exhibit normal acquisition of fear memory but enhanced contextual fear memory recall. In contrast, overexpression of astrocytic ephrin-B1 in the adult CA1 hippocampus leads to the loss of dendritic spines, reduced excitatory input, and impaired contextual memory retention. Our results suggest that astrocytic ephrin-B1 may compete with neuronal ephrin-B1 and mediate excitatory synapse elimination through its interactions with neuronal EphB receptors. Indeed, a deletion of neuronal EphB receptors impairs the ability of astrocytes expressing functional ephrin-B1 to engulf synaptosomes in vitro. Our findings demonstrate that astrocytic ephrin-B1 regulates long-term contextual memory by restricting new synapse formation in the adult hippocampus. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT These studies address a gap in our knowledge of astrocyte-mediated regulation of learning and memory by unveiling a new role for ephrin-B1 in astrocytes and elucidating new mechanisms by which astrocytes regulate learning. Our studies explore the mechanisms underlying astrocyte regulation of hippocampal circuit remodeling during learning using new genetic tools that target ephrin-B signaling in astrocytes in vivo. On a subcellular level, astrocytic ephrin-B1 may compete with neuronal ephrin-B1 and trigger astrocyte-mediated elimination of EphB receptor-containing synapses. Given the role EphB receptors play in neurodevelopmental disorders and neurodegenerative diseases, these findings establish a foundation for future studies of astrocyte-mediated synaptogenesis in clinically relevant conditions that can help to guide the development of clinical applications for a variety of neurological disorders.
Serum Homocysteine Level in Parkinson's Disease and Its Association with Duration, Cardinal Manifestation, and Severity of Disease

Background and Purpose Due to the high prevalence of Parkinson's disease (PD) in the elderly, a large financial burden is imposed on the families and health systems of countries in addition to the problems related to the mobility impairment caused by the disease for the patients. Studies on controversial issues in this disease are taken into consideration, and one of these cases is the role of serum homocysteine level in Parkinson's patients. In this study, the serum level of homocysteine and its association with various variables in relation to this disease was compared with healthy individuals. Materials and Methods In this study, 100 patients with PD and 100 healthy individuals as control group were investigated. Serum homocysteine level and demographic and clinical data were included in the checklist. Data were analyzed by SPSS version 23. In all tests, the significance level was below 0.05. Results The mean level of serum homocysteine in case and control groups was 14.93 ± 8.30 and 11.52 ± 2.86 µmol/L, respectively (95% CI: 1.68; 5.14, P < 0.001). In total patients, 85 had normal serum homocysteine level, while 15 had high serum homocysteine level. In controls, the homocysteine level was 98 and 2, respectively (P=0.002). In multivariate logistic regression analysis, serum homocysteine level higher than 20 µmol/L was accompanied by 8.64-fold in Parkinson's disease involvement (95% CI: 1.92; 38.90, P=0.005). Conclusion Increasing serum homocysteine level elevates the rate to having PD. Serum homocysteine levels did not have any relationship with the duration of the disease, type of cardinal manifestation, and the severity of Parkinson's disease.
Cochrane in CORR®: Intra-articular Corticosteroid For Knee Osteoarthritis.

Knee osteoarthritis (OA) affects more than 9 million adults aged 45 years or older in the United States [6]. It is the mostcommon cause of knee pain in this population and imposes substantial global health and economic burdens. By the year 2020, OA will become the fourth-leading cause of disability globally [9]. One estimate suggests that 10% of individuals older than 55 years of age have knee OA, and of those 25% are severely limited by knee pain [8]. As the population continues to age, the incidence of knee OA will continue to increase, further burdening an alreadystrained healthcare system [3]. The majority of patients with knee OA are treated without surgery, using some combination of oral and topical anti-inflammatory medications, patient weight loss, physiotherapy, and various knee injectables. The goals of nonsurgical treatment include symptom relief and improved function. Nonsurgical management can help to delay knee replacement in young patients for whom knee replacement would not be expected to be a lifelong solution, and for older patients to try to minimize their exposure to surgical risk. Intra-articular corticosteroid injections are widely used for nonoperative management of knee OAsymptoms. ThisCochraneReviewof randomized or quasi-randomized control trials evaluated the benefits and harms of intraarticular corticosteroids compared with sham or no intervention in people with knee OA in terms of pain, physical function, quality of life, and safety.
Structural Influence on the Dominance of Virus-Specific CD4 T Cell Epitopes in Zika Virus Infection

Zika virus (ZIKV) has recently caused explosive outbreaks in Pacific islands, South- and Central America. Like with other flaviviruses, protective immunity is strongly dependent on potently neutralizing antibodies (Abs) directed against the viral envelope protein E. Such Ab formation is promoted by CD4 T cells through direct interaction with B cells that present epitopes derived from E or other structural proteins of the virus. Here, we examined the extent and epitope dominance of CD4 T cell responses to capsid (C) and envelope proteins in Zika patients. All patients developed ZIKV-specific CD4 T cell responses, with substantial contributions of C and E. In both proteins, immunodominant epitopes clustered at sites that are structurally conserved among flaviviruses but have highly variable sequences, suggesting a strong impact of protein structural features on immunodominant CD4 T cell responses. Our data are particularly relevant for designing flavivirus vaccines and their evaluation in T cell assays and provide insights into the importance of viral protein structure for epitope selection and antigenicity.
ECCount: Efficient and Consistent Counter for High-Speed Network Devices

Nowadays, 10Gbps and higher speed network devices have become ubiquitous. These devices typically exploit multiple CPU cores to process packets to avoid overwhelming a single CPU core. The involving of multiple cores, however, brings tricky parallel programming issues. One of them is the miscount in statistical counter, which is the algorithm that has been widely used in high-speed network devices to track fundamental information such as the number of packets received and transmitted. As a result, modern high-speed network devices merely provides weak consistency guarantee on the counting results it returns; that is, the returned results may be inaccurate. This paper first analyses the miscount issue in modern high-speed network devices. Then we present ECCount, a novel counting algorithm which (1) is competitive to the best known solutions in performance, and (2) provides strong consistency guarantee in counting results returned. Experiments show that it takes ECCount 10ns and 1,500ns to perform an update operation and a read operation, respectively. And the counting results returned are accurate.
New insights for estimating the genetic value of F1 apple progenies for irregular bearing during the first years of tree production

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. New insights for estimating the genetic value of F1 apple progenies for irregular bearing during the first years of tree production Jean-Baptiste Durand, Baptiste Guitton, Jean Peyhardi, Yan Holtz, Yann Guédon, Catherine Trottier, Evelyne Costes
Determination of Tobramycin in M9 Medium by LC-MS/MS: Signal Enhancement by Trichloroacetic Acid

It is well known that ion-pairing reagents cause ion suppression in LC-MS/MS methods. Here, we report that trichloroacetic acid increases the MS signal of tobramycin. To support studies of an in vitro pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic simulator for bacterial biofilms, an LC-MS/MS method for determination of tobramycin in M9 media was developed. Aliquots of 25 μL M9 media samples were mixed with the internal standard (IS) tobramycin-d5 (5 µg/mL, 25 µL) and 200 µL 2.5% trichloroacetic acid. The mixture (5 µL) was directly injected onto a PFP column (2.0 × 50 mm, 3 µm) eluted with water containing 20 mM ammonium formate and 0.14% trifluoroacetic acid and acetonitrile containing 0.1% trifluoroacetic acid in a gradient mode. ESI+ and MRM with ion m/z 468 → 324 for tobramycin and m/z 473 → 327 for the IS were used for quantification. The calibration curve concentration range was 50–25000 ng/mL. Matrix effect from M9 media was not significant when compared with injection solvents, but signal enhancement by trichloroacetic acid was significant (∼3 fold). The method is simple, fast, and reliable. Using the method, the in vitro PK/PD model was tested with one bolus dose of tobramycin.
NETRA: Enhancing IoT Security Using NFV-Based Edge Traffic Analysis

This is the era of smart devices or things which are fueling the growth of Internet of Things (IoT). It is impacting every sphere around us, making our life dependent on this technological feat. It is of high concern that these smart things are being targeted by cyber criminals taking advantage of heterogeneity, minuscule security features, and vulnerabilities within these devices. Conventional centralized IT security measures have limitations in terms of scalability and cost. Therefore, these smart devices are required to be monitored closer to their location ideally at the edge of IoT networks. In this paper, we explore how some security features can be implemented at the network edge to secure these smart devices in a smart home/enterprise environment. We explain the importance of network function virtualization (NFV) in order to deploy security functions at the network edge. To achieve this goal, we introduce NETRA–a novel lightweight docker-based architecture for virtualizing network functions to provide IoT security. Also, we highlight the advantages of the proposed architecture over the standardized NFV architecture in terms of storage, memory usage, latency, throughput, load average, and scalability and explain why the standardized architecture is not suitable for IoT. We study the performance of proposed NFV-based edge analysis for IoT security and show that attacks can be detected with more than 95% accuracy in less than a second.
Analogical Reasoning in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evidence From an Eye-Tracking Approach

The present study examined analogical reasoning in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and its relationship with cognitive and executive functioning and processing strategies. Our findings showed that although children with ASD were less competent in solving analogical problems than typically developing children, this inferior performance was attributable to general cognitive impairments. Eye-movement analyses revealed that children with ASD paid less attention to relational items and showed fewer gaze shifts between relational locations. Nevertheless, these eye-movement patterns did not predict autistic children’s behavioral performance. Together, our findings suggest that ASD per se does not entail impairments in analogical reasoning. The inferior performance of autistic children on analogical reasoning tasks is attributable to deficits in general cognitive and executive functioning.
Mining API Aspects in API Reviews

With the proliferation of online developer forums as informal documentation, developers share their opinions about the APIs they use. While many developers refer to and rely on opinion-rich information about APIs, we found little research that investigates the use and benefits of public opinions as well as the feasibility of automatically harnessing such valuable knowledge into quick and digestable insights. To understand the potential benefits of API reviews, we conducted a case study of opinions in Stack Overflow. We observed that opinions about diverse API aspects (e.g., usability) are prevalent and offer insights that can shape developer perception and decisions related to software development. Motivated by the finding, we built a suite of techniques to automatically mine opinionated sentences about APIs from forum posts. First, we detected API mentions in the forum posts with up to 95% precision. Second, we associated each opinionated sentence in a forum post to the API mention about which the opinion was provided with 7295% precision. Third, we build a suite of machine learning classifiers that can detect the presence of an API aspect in a sentence with up to 80% precision.
Collaborative Sensor Network Localization: Algorithms and Practical Issues

Emerging communication network applications including fifth-generation (5G) cellular and the Internet-of-Things (IoT) will almost certainly require location information at as many network nodes as possible. Given the energy requirements and lack of indoor coverage of Global Positioning System (GPS), collaborative localization appears to be a powerful tool for such networks. In this paper, we survey the state of the art in collaborative localization with an eye toward 5G cellular and IoT applications. In particular, we discuss theoretical limits, algorithms, and practical challenges associated with collaborative localization based on range-based as well as range-angle-based techniques.
HCES: helper context engine system to predict relevant state of patients in COPD domain using naïve bayesian

Context-aware1 systems have been employed to help users in their daily lives. In the recent years, researchers are exploring how context aware systems can benefit humanity through assisting patients, specifically those who suffer incurable diseases, to cope with their illness. In this paper, we direct our work to help people who suffer from COPD. Existing solutions have limits in terms of choosing relevant parameters and the accuracy of detecting exacerbations in the COPD. We propose HCES (Helper Context-aware Engine System) that aims to support chronic disease patients and doctors on any level of disease risk. To accomplish this system, HCES adopts ontology for representing and modeling context to well understand the scenario that we can use to monitor COPD's patients, uses an efficacy algorithm to select relevant attributes instead of a no cited one, predicts exacerbations with high accuracy by adding the discretization step, and arranges the pertinent attributes to use the most pertinent in an emergency case. These steps are beneficial in handling the uncertainty of context-aware systems. Furthermore, a comparison between algorithms for selecting attributes is done to choose the best one for COPD diseases. The main goal of this paper is to help medical personnel (patients, doctors or nurses) to take an efficient decision by identifying the most context-relevant attributes and predicting patient exacerbations.
Post-Treatment of Silicon Nanocrystals Produced by Ultra-Short Pulsed Laser Ablation in Liquid: Toward Blue Luminescent Nanocrystal Generation

Blue luminescent colloidal silicon nanocrystals (Si-NCs) were produced in a two-stage process. In the first step, synthesis of Si-NCs was achieved by femtosecond pulsed laser ablation of a silicon wafer, which was immersed in deionized water. The size and the structural and the chemical characteristics of colloidal Si-NCs were investigated by TEM and EDAX analyses, and it is found out that the Si-NCs are in spherical shape and the particle diameters are in the range of 5−100 nm. In the second step, ultrasonic waves and filtering chemical-free post-treatment of colloidal Si-NCs solution was performed to reduce the particle size. High-resolution TEM (HRTEM) studies on post-treated colloidal solution clearly show that small (1−5.5 nm in diameter) Si-NCs were successfully produced. Raman spectroscopy results clearly confirms the generation of Si nanoparticles in the crystalline nature, and the Raman scattering study of post-treated Si-NCs confirms the reduction of the particle size. The UV−vis absorption and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy studies elucidate the quantum confinement effect of Si-NCs on the optical properties. The colloidal Si-NCs and post-treated Si-NCs solutions present strong absorption edge shifts toward UV region. Broadband PL emission behavior is observed for the initial colloidal Si-NCs, and the PL spectrum of post-treated Si-NCs presents a blue-shifted broadband PL emission behavior due to the particle size reduction effect.
O‐, N‐Atoms‐Coordinated Mn Cofactors within a Graphene Framework as Bioinspired Oxygen Reduction Reaction Electrocatalysts

Manganese (Mn) is generally regarded as not being sufficiently active for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) compared to other transition metals such as Fe and Co. However, in biology, manganese‐containing enzymes can catalyze oxygen‐evolving reactions efficiently with a relative low onset potential. Here, atomically dispersed O and N atoms coordinated Mn active sites are incorporated within graphene frameworks to emulate both the structure and function of Mn cofactors in heme–copper oxidases superfamily. Unlike previous single‐metal catalysts with general M‐N‐C structures, here, it is proved that a coordinated O atom can also play a significant role in tuning the intrinsic catalytic activities of transition metals. The biomimetic electrocatalyst exhibits superior performance for the ORR and zinc–air batteries under alkaline conditions, which is even better than that of commercial Pt/C. The excellent performance can be ascribed to the abundant atomically dispersed Mn cofactors in the graphene frameworks, confirmed by various characterization methods. Theoretical calculations reveal that the intrinsic catalytic activity of metal Mn can be significantly improved via changing local geometry of nearest coordinated O and N atoms. Especially, graphene frameworks containing the Mn‐N3O1 cofactor demonstrate the fastest ORR kinetics due to the tuning of the d electronic states to a reasonable state.
Liquid crystalline systems containing Vitamin E TPGS for the controlled transdermal nicotine delivery

Transdermal nicotine patches have been used in smoking cessation therapy, suggested for the treatment of skin disorders with eosinophilic infiltration and have been found to improve attention performance in patients with Alzheimer's disease and age-associated memory impairment. However, skin irritation with extended patch use is still a problem. The aim of this work was to develop a simple to prepare liquid crystalline system containing vitamin E TPGS that would be able to control nicotine delivery and reduce irritation and sensitization problems. The liquid crystalline phases were macroscopically characterized by visual analysis and examined microscopically under a polarized light microscope. Topical and transdermal delivery of nicotine were investigated in vitro using porcine ear skin mounted on a Franz diffusion cell. Nicotine skin permeation from the developed cubic phase followed zero-order kinetics (r = 0.993) and was significantly enhanced after 12 h when compared to the control formulation (nicotine solution) (p < 0.05) (138.86 ± 20.44 and 64.91 ± 4.06 μg/cm2, respectively). Cubic phase was also able to target viable skin layers in comparison to control solution (8.18 ± 1.89 and 2.63 ± 2.51 μg/cm2, respectively). Further studies to evaluate skin sensitization and irritation are now necessary.