Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Neonatal Mouse Model of Intestinal Perforation: Investigating the Harmful Synergism Between Glucocorticoids and Indomethacin

Background: Early postnatal steroids and indomethacin in combination have been shown to increase the risk of spontaneous intestinal perforation (SIP) in infants with extremely low birth weight (ELBW), but the mechanism behind this synergistic effect is unknown. Materials and Methods: Based on literature in a variety of models suggesting that glucocorticoids and nonsteroidal antiinflammatory agents diminish complementary isoforms of nitric oxide synthase (NOS), we hypothesized that perturbations in NO metabolism contribute to SIP. Results: Our results using newborn wild-type (WT) and endothelial NOS-knockout (eNOS KO) mice treated with dexamethasone and/or indomethacin indicate that indomethacin treatment diminishes ileal eNOS abundance; dexamethasone treatment diminishes ileal inducible NOS and neuronal NOS (nNOS); 100% of dexamethasone-treated eNOS KO mice die after 3 days; eNOS KO mice treated for 2 days with dexamethasone develop acute pyloric stenosis in association with reduced expression of pyloric nNOS; and isolated ileum from eNOS KO mice treated for 2 days with dexamethasone exhibit a significant decrease in spontaneous peristalsis, decreased circumference, and decreased capacitance for forced volume before ileal perforation compared with ileum from untreated controls. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that eNOS and nNOS display functional overlap in the newborn mouse gastrointestinal tract and that simultaneous reduction in the activity of both NOS isoforms may be a risk factor for neonatal ileal perforation. If this holds true in human infants, then it provides a plausible etiologic explanation for the strong temporal association between SIP and the simultaneous treatment of ELBW infants with glucocorticoids and indomethacin.
An Oracle-based co-training framework for writer identification in offline handwriting

State-of-the-art techniques for writer identification have been centered primarily on enhancing the performance of the system for writer identification. Machine learning algorithms have been used extensively to improve the accuracy of such system assuming sufficient amount of data is available for training. Little attention has been paid to the prospect of harnessing the information tapped in a large amount of un-annotated data. This paper focuses on co-training based framework that can be used for iterative labeling of the unlabeled data set exploiting the independence between the multiple views (features) of the data. This paradigm relaxes the assumption of sufficiency of the data available and tries to generate labeled data from unlabeled data set along with improving the accuracy of the system. However, performance of co-training based framework is dependent on the effectiveness of the algorithm used for the selection of data points to be added in the labeled set. We propose an Oracle based approach for data selection that learns the patterns in the score distribution of classes for labeled data points and then predicts the labels (writers) of the unlabeled data point. This method for selection statistically learns the class distribution and predicts the most probable class unlike traditional selection algorithms which were based on heuristic approaches. We conducted experiments on publicly available IAM dataset and illustrate the efficacy of the proposed approach.
Transfusion Studies in von Willebrand's Disease: Effect on Bleeding Time and Factor VIII

VON WILLEBRAND’S disease is a constitutional haemorrhagic diathesis, inherited as a simple Mendelian dominant and characterized by a prolonged bleeding time and a deficiency of Factor VIII (antihaemophilic globulin). It it sometimes referred to as angio-haemophilia, pseudo-haemophilia or vascular haemophilia. The pathogenetic mechanisms involved in this disorder have been investigated by Nilsson, Blomback and their collaborators (Nilsson, Blomback and von Francken, 1957; Nilsson, Blomback, Jorpes, Blomback and Johansson, 1957; Nilsson, Blombiick and BlombHck, 1959). They found that the infusion of Fraction 1-0, prepared by the method of BlombZck and Blombick (1956) from either normal or haemophilic plasma, corrected the bleeding time of patients with von Willebrand’s disease. Furthermore, the results of transfusion experiments suggest that the Factor-VIII deficiency of von Willebrand’s disease differs in its cause from that of haemophilia. Our previous work (Cornu, Larrieu, AIagille and Bernard, 1959; Cornu, Larrieu, Caen and Bernard, 1960, 1961) has partially confirmed the results of Nilsson and her colleagues, but we obtained an inconsistent effect on the bleeding time after the transfusion of Fraction I, prepared by Cohn‘s procedure. This paper presents the results of transfusion of fresh normal or haemophihc blood or plasma in patients with von Willebrand’s disease.
Evaluation of the horizontal to vertical transverse impedance ratio for LHC beam screen using a 2D electrostatic code

The classical 2 wires method is not suitahle for high precision transverse impedance measurements on a homogeneous copper beam-pipe with non circular crosssection due to measurement noise limitations in case of narrow wire spacing. Thus we tackled the problem by simulating the 2D electrostatic field and image charge distribution of that setup and subsequently calculating the corresponding surface current for a TEM wave excitation. In this computer simulation the 2 wires can be assumed lossless, which is not possible in a practical bench setup. The theoretical justification for the method and certain limitations are discussed. The results compare very well to several independent numerical and analytical results.
Vasculitis and Vasculopathy in Rheumatic Diseases

Vessels and the vascular endothelium are involved in the pathogenesis of inflammatory rheumatic diseases a family of related disorders that include rheumatoid arthritis (RA), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and systemic sclerosis (SSc). In these conditions vascular involvement is very important. This chapter aims to give an overview of the prevalence of the different forms of vasculopathy/vasculitis that can be encountered in the RA, SLE and SSc patients, describe their pathogenesis, and address their impact on disease severity and outcome. All of these rheumatic diseases involve some level of underlying vasculitis.
Three-dimensional kinematics at the ankle joint complex in rheumatoid arthritis patients with painful valgus deformity of the rearfoot.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the three-dimensional (3D) kinematics of the ankle joint complex (AJC) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients with painful valgus deformity of the rearfoot. METHODS Fifty patients with RA underwent gait analysis using electromagnetic tracking techniques to measure 3D kinematics at the AJC under barefoot and shod walking conditions. Three axial rotations (dorsiflexion/plantarflexion, inversion/eversion and internal/external rotation) were measured during the gait cycle, and the angular positions at key gait events, range of motion and the motion: time integral were measured. Descriptive and analytical comparisons were made with normative data derived from a sex- and age-matched population (n=45). RESULTS AJC dysfunction in RA was characterized by excessive eversion motion (within an eversion range) and no inversion motion through the neutral joint position for the subtalar component of the joint complex, in both barefoot and shod walking conditions. Motion was coupled such that internal rotation of the leg relative to the rearfoot was greater than normal. AJC motion was different for all rotations between barefoot and shod conditions, but in both situations there were statistically significant between-group differences in the motion:time integral for inversion/eversion (barefoot, P<0.0001; shod, P<0.0001) and external/internal rotation (barefoot, P<0.0001; shod, P<0.0001). There were no statistically significant differences between RA and normative data for dorsiflexion/plantarflexion motion under barefoot (P=0.16) and shod (P=0.50) walking conditions. CONCLUSION Painful valgus deformity of the rearfoot is associated with changes in the 3D kinematics affecting eversion at the AJC and internal rotation of the leg, both when walking barefoot and in shoes.
Proactive auto-scaling of resources for stream processing engines in the cloud

Large scale applications nowadays continuously generate massive amounts of data at high speed. Stream processing engines (SPEs) such as Apache Storm and Flink are becoming increasingly popular because they provide reliable platforms to process such fast data streams in real time. Despite previous research in the field of auto-scaling of resources, current SPEs, whether open source such as Apache Storm, or commercial such as streaming components in IBM Infosphere and Microsoft Azure, lack the ability to automatically grow and shrink to meet the needs of streaming data applications. Moreover, previous research on auto-scaling focuses on techniques for scaling resources reactively, which can delay the scaling decision unacceptably for time sensitive stream applications. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no or limited research using machine learning techniques to proactively predict future bottlenecks based on the data flow characteristics of the data stream workload. In this position paper, we present our vision of a three-stage framework to auto-scale resources for SPEs in the cloud. In the first stage, the workload model is created using data flow characteristics. The second stage uses the output of the workload model to predict future bottlenecks. Finally, the third stage makes the scaling decision for the resources. We begin with a literature review on the auto-scaling of popular SPEs such as Apache Storm.
Effects of Delivery by Caesarean Section on Lung Function in Healthy Newborn Infants

ABSTRACT. With the aim of extending previous studies showing differences in lung function after birth between infants delivered vaginally (VD) and by Caesarean section (CS) we investigated lung volumes, ventilation, efficiency of ventilation, and lung mechanics in 24 healthy, full term infants with no clinical signs of respiratory disease, 12 after VD and 12 after CS. Measurements were made on two occasions: 2 and 26 hours after birth. At 2 hours no differences in any measured quantity were found between the groups. The only difference found 24 hours later was that the average thoracic gas volume (TGV), was lower in infants after CS than after VD. The difference in functional residual capacity was, however, not significant. This means that the difference in TGV, previously also found by other workers, did not affect the ventilated air space. Our results do not support the theory of general inferiority in lung performance after birth in healthy, full term infants without respiratory disease delivered by CS.
What part of the cerebellum contributes to a visuospatial working memory task?

Although there is evidence that the cerebellum is involved in working memory (WM), it remains unclear which functions within WM the cerebellum supports and which structures are involved in WM. We tested whether the cerebellum is involved in the filtering of incoming information or in its storage. Using a statistical brain mapping approach in 29 patients with cerebellar ischemic stroke, we found that the cerebellum plays a gatekeeper role, as lesions of the tonsil, the lobus semilunaris inferior, and parts of the vermal pyramid rendered WM susceptible to irrelevant information. We conclude that the cerebellum controls incoming WM information. Ann Neurol 2014;76:754–757
Resolving ambiguities in subspace-based blind receiver for MIMO channels

The problem of subspace based blind channel estimation in FIR-MIMO systems is addressed in this paper. In such blind MIMO methods, some ambiguities always remain. They may be expressed in a form of full rank mixing matrix. In this paper, a two-stage receiver algorithm solving these ambiguities is proposed. The FIR-MIMO model is identified first followed by equalization stage. The ambiguity remaining after the equalizer is modeled as an instantaneous MIMO system. This system is solved using independent component analysis (ICA) using the assumption that transmitted sequences is statistically independent and non-Gaussian.
The trajectory of change over multiple outcome areas during comprehensive outpatient pulmonary rehabilitation

Although pulmonary rehabilitation has proven effectiveness in multiple outcome areas, the optimum duration of this intervention is not clear. We evaluated in an observational study the trajectory of change in upper and lower extremity exercise performance, exertional dyspnea and health status over the course of 12 weeks (24 sessions) of pulmonary rehabilitation in individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Demonstrating a plateau in response in these areas might be of practical use for pulmonary rehabilitation programs. We measured outcomes at baseline and at four session (two week) intervals over the course of our comprehensive outpatient pulmonary rehabilitation program. These included treadmill endurance time at approximately 85% of initial maximal workrate, the number of arm lifts per minute, dyspnea at isotime during treadmill walking and the Chronic Respiratory Disease Questionnaire (CRQ) total score. Thirteen patients with chronic obstructure pulmonary disease (COPD) (five male, eight female) were studied; their age was 66 ± 8 years and their FEV1 was 34 ± 1% of predicted. Improvement was noted in all four outcome areas very early in the course of pulmonary rehabilitation. Treadmill endurance time and arm lifts increased significantly over baseline by the fourth and eighth session, respectively, and both increased in a near linear fashion throughout pulmonary rehabilitation. Exertional dyspnea and CRQ also improved very early, with each showing a significant change from baseline by the fourth session. Their improvement, however, appeared to plateau relatively early during the course of pulmonary rehabilitation. Although the numbers studied are small and the applicability of these results to other programs is undetermined, this study does suggest that 20 or more sessions are needed for optimal acute changes in exercise performance, but improvement in dyspnea and quality of life may occur earlier.
ON THE FORMATION OF DIPEPTIDES IN INTERSTELLAR MODEL ICES

The hypothesis of an exogenous origin and delivery of biologically important molecules to early Earth presents an alternative route to their terrestrial in situ formation. Dipeptides like Gly–Gly detected in the Murchison meteorite are considered as key molecules in prebiotic chemistry because biofunctional dipeptides present the vital link in the evolutionary transition from prebiotic amino acids to early proteins. However, the processes that could lead to the exogenous abiotic synthesis of dipeptides are unknown. Here, we report the identification of two proteinogenic dipeptides—Gly–Gly and Leu–Ala—formed via electron-irradiation of interstellar model ices followed by annealing the irradiated samples to 300 K. Our results indicate that the radiation-induced, non-enzymatic formation of proteinogenic dipeptides in interstellar ice analogs is facile. Once synthesized and incorporated into the ‘‘building material'' of solar systems, biomolecules at least as complex as dipeptides could have been delivered to habitable planets such as early Earth by meteorites and comets, thus seeding the beginning of life as we know it.
A distributed system architecture for pedestrian flock detection with participatory sensing

We present distributed system architecture for smartphone-based participatory sensing applications, where the computational load is distributed between the participating devices. The system allows using of static data to reduce the computational load further. Secondly, we present a conceptual participatory sensing application for detecting pedestrian flocks moving into the same direction in certain area, using this architecture. The flock detection is based on selecting an energy efficient set of sensors in the smartphone and available location-based static data, provided by previous computations by the smartphones or by external Web services. Initially, we believe this method reduces energy consumption in the participating devices beyond the previous approaches.
A circular polarization reconfigurable substrate integrated waveguide antenna

In this paper, a cavity-backed substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) antenna with two reconfigurable circular polarizations is proposed and investigated. The circular polarizations are generated by a combination of complementary square split ring on the top layer and a shorting via between the top layer and the ground plane which introduces current perturbation. The polarization states of the proposed antenna can be dynamically switched between left-handed circular polarization (LHCP) and right-handed circular polarization (RHCP) by selectively connecting one of the two symmetrical shorting vias to the bottom ground plane. To validate our design, the proposed antenna is fabricated and measured. The simulated and experimental results are observed, which illustrates good performance of the proposed antenna. This single-port antenna polarization reconfigurable is useful for the design of array antenna for wireless applications.
Cultured human glomerular mesangial cells express the C5a receptor.

BACKGROUND While the association of complement activation and glomerulonephritis has been recognized for decades, the pathogenic mechanisms of complement-mediated glomerular damage are incompletely understood. Expression of the C5a receptor in the kidney suggests that C5a could play a direct role in initiating or promoting glomerulonephritis. METHODS Expression of the C5a receptor by cultured human glomerular mesangial cells (HGMC) was examined by immunofluorescence, by FACS analysis and by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Potential mitogenic effects were examined by analysis of neutral red dye uptake after treatment with recombinant C5a (rC5a). The production of cytokines [interleukin-1 (IL-1), interleukin-8 (IL-8), and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1)] and growth factors [transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) and platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF-AB)] by mesangial cells stimulated with rC5a was examined by ELISA of cell culture supernatants. RESULTS Expression of the C5a receptor by the cultured HGMC was demonstrated by both immunofluorescence and FACS. The presence of mRNA encoding the receptor was confirmed by RT-PCR. Treatment of HGMC in vitro with rC5a resulted in mild cellular proliferation. No IL-1 was detected despite stimulation with up to 100 nM rC5a. Concentrations of IL-8 and TGF-beta did not increase beyond basal levels in control samples at any level of stimulation. Mean MCP-1 concentrations and PDGF-AB concentrations increased by 40% and 70% above control values 48 hours post-stimulation (P = 0.01 and P = 0.003, respectively). CONCLUSIONS These data indicate that the C5a receptor is expressed on HGMC in vitro, and may play a role in mediating glomerular injury by promoting cellular proliferation and the production of cytokines and growth factors.
Gold Nanoparticle-based Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering Spectroscopic Assay for the Detection of Protein–Protein Interactions

In the present work, a sensitive spectroscopic assay based on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) using gold nanoparticles as substrates was developed for the rapid detection protein–protein interactions. Detection is achieved by specific binding biotin-modification antibodies with protein-stabilized 30 nm gold nanoparticles, followed by the attachment of avidin-modification Raman-active dyes. As a proof-of-principle experiment, a well-known biomolecular recognition system, IgG with protein A, was chosen to establish this new spectroscopic assay. Highly selective recognition of IgG down to 1 ng/ml in solution has been demonstrated.
Higher selection pressure from antiretroviral drugs in vivo results in increased evolutionary distance in HIV-1 pol.

We investigated the effect of selection pressures on evolution of HIV-1 pol in 51 patients after switching to a new antiretroviral combination reverse transcriptase (RT) inhibitor therapy. Evolution of the protease (PR) and RT reading frames were analysed separately. Pairwise evolutionary distances (ED) were calculated between sequences from baseline and week 8 and between baseline and week 48 of protocol therapy. ED were calculated for all substitutions and for synonymous and nonsynonymous substitutions separately. At week 8 when HIV RNA reduction (selection pressure) was high, significantly more divergence in pol in both synonymous and nonsynonymous substitutions was found in patients with substantial RNA reduction (strong responders). Separate analyses of PR and RT revealed significantly greater ED in the RT (under selection pressure) of strong compared with nonresponders, whereas divergence between PR genes (not under selection pressure) did not differ in those two groups. Such differential evolution indicates that PR and RT were genetically unlinked and suggests recombination. The rapid increase of ED over the first 8 weeks was followed by only a minimal further rise by week 48, suggesting that selection of preexisting quasispecies accounted for the early changes. A disproportionally high number of synonymous substitutions accounted for the observed divergence and indicated that such genetic changes may not be completely silent.
Alternative view on niche development: situated learning on policy communities, power and agency

ABSTRACT In this article, we analyse how situated learning influences niche development. Situated learning is tied to social action and context, perceiving knowledge and learning as socially constructed. In addition, a dialectic view of structure and agency is adopted. Policymaking is used as an example of a community. A qualitative case study of Finnish energy policy is presented. The regime in Finland is the electricity industry that supports bioenergy, while wind energy development is supported by active individuals and a few niche actors. The full-members of the policymaking community consist of the government and the regime actors. The niche actors did learn how the community functions and developed alternative strategies accordingly, but without success. A reason could be that the niche actors excluded the regime from their strategies. We conclude that situated learning is likely to enhance niche development, but compromises in niche development may be needed.
Sequences Distal to the AP1/E Box Motif Are Involved in the Cell Type‐Specific Expression of the Rat Tyrosine Hydroxylase Gene

Abstract: In order to define cell type‐specific elements associated with the catecholamine biosynthetic enzyme, tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), transient transfections of promoter deletion constructs were used to test relative reporter‐gene activities in TH‐expressing and‐nonexpressing cell lines. Such assays demonstrated that a region between‐503 and‐578 contributed to rat TH promoter activity in the pheochromocytoma cell line PC12. Deletion of these sequences resulted in a 66% loss in cell type‐specific activity. Mutations within the E box/dyad symmetry element (CAGGTGCCTGTGACAGTG) did not affect the basal and cell type‐specific pattern of expression exhibited by the rat TH promoter. Promoter fusion constructs between the rat TH promoter (‐741 and‐197) and the human TH promoter (‐197 and +1) exhibited reporter‐gene activities equivalent to that of wild‐type‐741 rat TH constructs, further demonstrating that sequence elements upstream of the rat E box/dyad symmetry are important for cell type‐specific expression. Gel‐shift experiments indicated that a PC12 nuclear factor could bind to a 39‐bp sequence within this region in a cell type‐specific manner. The size of this factor was 52 kDa as determined by UV cross‐linking experiments.