Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stereoselective Quantification of Methadone and a d6-labeled Isotopomer Using High Performance Liquid Chromatography-Atmospheric Pressure Chemical Ionization Mass-Spectrometry: Application to a Pharmacokinetic Study in a Methadone Maintained Subject

There is evidence that the apparent oral clearance of rac-methadone is induced during the early phase of methadone maintenance treatment. However, it is not known if this is due to changes in bioavailability or if this phenomenon is stereoselective. This knowledge can be obtained by administering a dose of stable-labeled methadone at selected times during ongoing treatment. Therefore, the authors developed a stereoselective high performance liquid chromatography-atmospheric pressure chemical ionization mass-spectrometry assay for the quantification of the enantiomers of methadone and a d6-labeled isotopomer. The compounds were quantified in a single assay after liquid-liquid extraction and stereoselective high performance liquid chromatograph with atmospheric pressure chemical ionization-mass spectrometry detection. The following ions were monitored: m/z 310.15 for unlabeled methadone; m/z 316.15 for methadone-d6; and m/z 313.15 for the methadone-d3 (internal standard). Calibration curves ranged from 0.5 to 75 ng/mL for each compound. Extraction recovery was approximately 80% for all analytes, without evidence of differences between the unlabeled and stable-labeled compounds or concentration dependency. Minor ion promotion was observed (<15%) but this was identical for all analytes including the d3-labeled internal standard, with peak area ratios in extracted samples identical to control injections. The isotopomers did not alter each others’ ionisation, even at 10:1 concentration ratios, and 10-fold diluted samples were within 10% of the nominal concentration. Assay performance was acceptable, with interassay and intra-assay bias and precision <10% for all compounds, including the upper and lower limits of quantitation. In conclusion, the assay was successfully applied to quantify the concentration of the methadone enantiomers of both orally administered unlabeled methadone and an intravenous 5 mg dose of methadone-d6 in a patient receiving chronic oral methadone maintenance therapy.
MOEP based design of PSS and FACTS for transient stability improvement under symmetrical and unsymmetrical fault conditions

A Multi-Objective Evolutionary Programming (MOEP) based approach to Static Synchronous Series Compensator (SSSC) has been presented in this paper. The multi-objective optimization problem is formulated to the design problem of SSSC, in which the system transient stability is improved by minimizing several system behavior measure criterions. Then, MOEP is used to design the Flexible Alternating Current Transmission Systems (FACTS) controller parameters. The usefulness of the proposed control scheme was demonstrated with a three machine nine bus power system under different fault conditions. The nonlinear simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method to damp out the rotor oscillations and enhance greatly the system stability over a wide range of system configurations. By minimizing the time-domain based multi objective function, in which the deviations in the oscillatory rotor angle, rotor speed and accelerating power of the generator are involved, stability performance of the system is greatly improved. The proposed method is an effective one for the tuning of multi-controllers in large power systems.
Morphometric vertebral fractures in postmenopausal women with primary hyperparathyroidism.

CONTEXT An increased risk of fracture in patients with primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT) compared to the general population has been reported, but available data are controversial. OBJECTIVE The aim of the study was to evaluate the rate of vertebral fractures (VFs) by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry in postmenopausal women with sporadic PHPT and compare the results with a control group. DESIGN AND SETTING A case-control study was performed at a referral center. PARTICIPANTS A total of 150 consecutive patients and 300 healthy women matched for age and menopausal age participated in the study. RESULTS VFs were detected in 37 of 150 (24.6%) patients and 12 of 300 (4.0%) controls (P < 0.0001). The majority of VFs were mild. Stepwise multiple logistic regression analysis showed that in PHPT patients lumbar spine bone mineral density was the only variable independently associated with the prevalence of VFs (P = 0.003). The rate of fracture was higher in symptomatic (34.1%) than asymptomatic (21.1%) patients, but this difference was not statistically significant (P = 0.15). Among asymptomatic patients, fracture rate was significantly higher in those who met the criteria for parathyroidectomy (28.1%) than in those who did not (11.1%) (P = 0.03). Compared to controls, the fracture rate was significantly higher in patients with symptomatic and asymptomatic PHPT who met the criteria for surgery (P < 0.0001), but not in those who did not meet the criteria (P = 0.06). CONCLUSIONS VF rate is increased in postmenopausal women with PHPT compared to controls, independently of whether they are classified as symptomatic or asymptomatic. The question of whether the finding of mild morphometric VFs in the latter represents an indication for parathyroid surgery remains to be established.
Achieving the Goals of Day Treatment

The problem of defining relevant goals in the rehabilitation of severely ill psychiatric patients was addressed in a day treatment program. A method was evolved from a detailed assessment of each patient's specific community functioning. Behavioral treatment strategies were individually tailored to meet the needs of a wide variety of patients in an intensive time-limited day treatment program. The provision of long term supportive outpatient services as well as overnight hospital care was considered essential for the program. Evaluation of the effectiveness of the day treatment program suggested that it did meet the needs of severely ill psychiatric patients; that good outcome was associated with high levels of participation of patients in defining their goals; and that goals concerning social and vocational functioning were achieved more frequently than intrapersonal goals.
Detection of HER2 polymorphism and expression using circulating DNA and RNA as a tool in lung adenocarcinoma patients: a case control study.

BACKGROUND Circulating DNA and RNA is an important prognostic tool for noninvasive malignant disease detection and in disease prognosis. Study aimed to evaluate the possible prognostic role of HER2 (-3444C/T) promoter polymorphism and its mRNA expression in Lung adenocarcinoma patients using circulating DNA and RNA. METHODS One hundred newly diagnosed lung adenocarcinoma patients and 100 age and sex matched healthy controls were included and allele specific (AS) polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used for genotyping and expression was analyzed by quantitative real time PCR. Overall survival of patients was analyzed by Kaplan-Meier method. RESULTS We observed a statistically significant difference in the frequency of HER2 CC, CT, and CT genotype among lung adenocarcinoma cases vs. healthy controls (P=0.001). Compared to the CC genotype, OR 2.51 (1.4-4.51), 5.97 (1.17-30.41) and RR 1.56 (1.17-2.07), 2.83 (0.82-9.73) for heterozygous CT and homozygous TT genotypes suggesting possible dominant effect on risk of lung adenocarcinoma. Cases with CC genotype showed 9.29 fold increased mRNA expression while cases with heterozygous CT and homozygous TT genotype showed 16.26, 16.72 fold increased mRNA expression (P<0.0001). We observed 13.92 fold increased HER2mRNA expression Lung adenocarcinoma patients. Patients in different TNM stages showed significant difference in HER2 mRNA expression which was found to be significantly associated (P<0.0001). Patients with distant metastases and without distant metastases had 17.44 and 11.16 fold increased HER2 mRNA expression was also found to be significantly associated (P<0.0001). It was also observed that patients with pleural effusion and without pleural effusion showed significant difference in HER2 mRNA expression (P=0.03). We also analysed patients with CC, TT, CT (P=0.02) and CT + TT (P=0.008) genotype showed 15.8, 7.9, 9.5 and 7.9 months of overall median survival time and found to be significantly associated, respectively. Patients with >13 and ≤13 fold increased HER mRNA expression also showed 7.9 and 11.5 months of overall median survival time was also found to be significantly associated (P=0.01). CONCLUSIONS Our work provides evidence that circulating DNA and RNA may be a potential prognostic tool in Lung adenocarcinoma patients. Promoter polymorphism of HER2 (-3444C/T) gene had significant impact on higher HER2 mRNA expression could be a predictive factor for patients' worse overall survival and metastatic behaviour.
Six-coordinate lanthanide complexes: slow relaxation of magnetization in the dysprosium(III) complex.

A series of six-coordinate lanthanide complexes {(H3O)[Ln(NA)2]⋅H2O}n (H2NA=5-hydroxynicotinic acid; Ln=Gd(III) (1⋅Gd); Tb(III) (2⋅Tb); Dy(III) (3⋅Dy); Ho(III) (4⋅Ho)) have been synthesized from aqueous solution and fully characterized. Slow relaxation of the magnetization was observed in 3⋅Dy. To suppress the quantum tunneling of the magnetization, 3⋅Dy diluted by diamagnetic Y(III) ions was also synthesized and magnetically studied. Interesting butterfly-like hysteresis loops and an enhanced energy barrier for the slow relaxation of magnetization were observed in diluted 3⋅Dy. The energy barrier (Δ(τ)) and pre-exponential factor (τ0) of the diluted 3⋅Dy are 75 K and 4.21×10(-5) s, respectively. This work illustrates a successful way to obtain low-coordination-number lanthanide complexes by a framework approach to show single-ion-magnet-like behavior.
Proposal of all-optical wavelength-selective switching using waveguide-type Raman amplifiers and 3-dB couplers

We propose a new optical switch that can enable wavelength-selective high-speed switching for applications to photonic wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) Internet protocol (IP) packet routing. The switch utilizes characteristics of waveguide-type Raman amplifiers and 3-dB couplers, and so it operates all-optically at a few tens of picosecond or faster speed. The operation of the switch is studied by coupled-mode theory and is verified numerically using a beam-propagation method (BPM). As a result, we found that optical waves having arbitrary wavelengths among those of incident WDM waves are amplified and switched when the amplification rate of each waveguide-type Raman amplifier is set to the proper value by pump wave injection. Moreover, the dynamic range over 30 dB was also obtained from the simulation results of the switch.
Molecular characterisation of a mosaicism with a complex chromosome rearrangement: evidence for coincident chromosome healing by telomere capture and neo-telomere formation

Background: Broken chromosomes must acquire new telomeric “caps” to be structurally stable. Chromosome healing can be mediated either by telomerase through neo-telomere synthesis or by telomere capture. Aim: To unravel the mechanism(s) generating complex chromosomal mosaicisms and healing broken chromosomes. Methods: G banding, array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH), fluorescence in-situ hybridisation (FISH) and short tandem repeat analysis (STR) was performed on a girl presenting with mental retardation, facial dysmorphism, urogenital malformations and limb anomalies carrying a complex chromosomal mosaicism. Results & discussion: The karyotype showed a de novo chromosome rearrangement with two cell lines: one cell line with a deletion 9pter and one cell line carrying an inverted duplication 9p and a non-reciprocal translocation 5pter fragment. aCGH, FISH and STR analysis enabled the deduction of the most likely sequence of events generating this complex mosaic. During embryogenesis, a double-strand break occurred on the paternal chromosome 9. Following mitotic separation of both broken sister chromatids, one acquired a telomere vianeo-telomere formation, while the other generated a dicentric chromosome which underwent breakage during anaphase, giving rise to the del inv dup(9) that was subsequently healed by chromosome 5 telomere capture. Conclusion: Broken chromosomes can coincidently be rescued by both telomere capture and neo-telomere synthesis.
The logistic growth of duckweed (Lemna minor) and kinetics of ammonium uptake

Mathematical models have been developed to describe nitrogen uptake and duckweed growth experimentally to study the kinetics of ammonium uptake under various concentrations. The kinetics of duckweed ammonium uptake was investigated using the modified depletion method after plants were grown for two weeks at different ammonium concentrations (0.5–14 mg/L) in the culture medium. The maximum uptake rate and Michaelis–Menten constant for ammonium were estimated as 0.082 mg/(g fresh weight·h) and 1.877 mg/L, respectively. Duckweed growth was assessed when supplied at different total nitrogen (TN) concentrations (1–5 mg/L) in the culture medium. The results showed that the intrinsic growth rate was from 0.22 to 0.26 d−1, and TN concentrations had no significant influence on the duckweed growth rate.
Chemical Extractability of Lead in Field-Contaminated Soils: Implications for Estimating Total Lead

Lead (Pb) is frequently present in urban soils at concentrations of concern for human health. Regulations for Pb are based on total soil concentrations as determined by acid digestion, but a less expensive screening test for Pb would be useful in facilitating more thorough soil testing of urban areas if it could be shown to correlate strongly to total soil Pb. In this study, three extractants (0.1 M citrate, MM, and 1 M nitric acid) were evaluated for their ability to estimate the total Pb in contaminated soils. Nitric acid not only extracted a greater fraction of total soil Pb but also produced the strongest correlation to total Pb and is concluded to be the superior extractant for a soil Pb screening test. As the spatial distribution of Pb was observed in selected soils to be highly heterogeneous on the micron scale, thorough soil homogenization prior to testing is recommended.
Altered Gene Expression in Liver from a Murine Model of Hyperhomocysteinemia*

Cystathionine β-synthase (CBS) deficiency causes severe hyperhomocysteinemia and other signs of homocystinuria syndrome, in particular a premature atherosclerosis with multiple thrombosis. However, the molecular mechanisms by which homocysteine could interfere with normal cell function are poorly understood in a whole organ like the liver, which is central to the catabolism of homocysteine. We used a combination of differential display and cDNA arrays to analyze differential gene expression in association with elevated hepatic homocysteine levels in CBS-deficient mice, a murine model of hyperhomocysteinemia. Expression of several genes was found to be reproducibly abnormal in the livers of heterozygous and homozygous CBS-deficient mice. We report altered expression of genes encoding ribosomal protein S3a and methylthioadenosine phosphorylase, suggesting such cellular growth and proliferation perturbations may occur in homozygous CBS-deficient mice liver. Many up- or down-regulated genes encoded cytochromes P450, evidence of perturbations of the redox potential in heterozygous and homozygous CBS-deficient mice liver. The expression of various genes involved in severe oxidative processes was also abnormal in homozygous CBS-deficient mice liver. Among them, the expression of heme oxygenase 1 gene was increased, concomitant with overexpression of heme oxygenase 1 at the protein level. Commensurate with the difference in hepatic mRNA paraoxonase 1 abundance, the mean hepatic activity of paraoxonase 1, an enzyme that protects low density lipoprotein from oxidation, was 3-fold lower in homozygous CBS-deficient mice. Heterozygous CBS-deficient mice, when fed a hyperhomocysteinemic diet, have also reduced PON1 activity, which demonstrates the effect of hyperhomocysteinemia in the paraoxonase 1 activity.
Mating behaviour of Echinostoma caproni and E. paraensei in concurrent infections in mice

Abstract Ten-day-old adults of Echinostoma caproni and E. paraensei, some of which had been exposed to 3-H-tyrosine to label sperm, were transplanted to mice in various combinations. Mating behaviour was followed on autoradiograms of worms recovered after 5 days by detecting the transfer of labelled sperm from labelled worms to themselves or to unlabelled worms. When single, labelled E. caproni adults were transplanted with unlabelled E. paraensei, they self-inseminated but did not show evidence of interspecies mating. No interspecies mating but self-insemination was observed when single, labelled E. paraensei and unlabelled E. caproni were transplanted together. When the labelled species had a choice of unlabelled adults of its own species or the opposite species, it mated in similar fashion to that seen in single species infections. The labelled species acted as if the opposite species was not present and showed an unrestricted mating pattern where it would both self- and cross-inseminate. Even though after transplant the E. paraensei adults were found in the duodenum and the E. caproni adults were found in the ileum, approximately 25% of the transplanted worms of both species were found within 1 cm of each other. Thus habitat separation was not a major cause of the lack of interspecies mating. Lack of reproductive recognition is another reason to separate E. caproni and E. paraensei into distinct species.
Optimal operation strategy of battery energy storage system to real-time electricity price in Denmark

Since the hourly spot market price is available one day ahead, the price could be transferred to the consumers and they may have some motivations to install an energy storage system in order to save their energy costs. This paper presents an optimal operation strategy for a battery energy storage system (BESS) in relation to the real-time electricity price in order to achieve the maximum profits of the BESS. The western Danish power system, which is currently the grid area in the world that has the largest share of wind power in its generation profiles and may represent the future of electricity markets in some ways, is chosen as the studied power system in this paper. Two kinds of BESS, based on polysulfide-bromine (PSB) and vanadium redox (VRB) battery technologies, are studies in the paper. Simulation results show, that the proposed optimal operation strategy is an effective measure to achieve maximum profits of the BESS. The results also show that it will take longer time to return the original investment of the VRB battery. So the PSB battery is the better investment choice for the time being.
Small signal stability of weak power system integrated with inertia tuned large scale wind farm

The effective inertia of the power system would reduce if the penetration of variable speed wind farms (WFs) increases. The case becomes more serious in a weak grid, which can cause instability issues. As a result, WFs are usually required to provide inertia response by some grid codes. This paper analyzes small signal stability (SSS) of the weak power system connected with the inertia tuned WF based on systematic nonlinear simulations and modal analyses. As indicated in this paper, the inertia tuned WF improves the frequency response of the system. At the same time, the WF remarkably engages in the power oscillations and induces a new critical oscillation mode, which threatens SSS of the system. To avoid the instability problem, a cost-effective damping controller based on the local signal is also proposed for the inertia tuned WF. The simulation results show that the controller can help to stabilize the system without affecting the frequency support capability of the WF.
Edge-and-corner-directed interpolation

This paper proposes an edge-and-corner-directed interpolation for image rescaling. While edge-only-directed interpolation reconstructs edges very well over traditional image interpolation methods such as bi-linear or bi-cubic, it often produces critical artifacts, if there is a corner where two or more edges sharply join. In our method, we first try to find a global linear edge direction in a given n * n window. If it fails, we divide the window into 4 sub-windows and try to find an edge direction in each sub-window to determine whether corner exists. The results show that new interpolation preserves the crispiness of edges and improves the overall perceptual image quality as well.
Modèles de langue exploitant la similarité structurelle entre séquences pour la reconnaissance de la parole. (Language models exploiting the structural similarity between sequences for automatic speech recognition)

Un modele de langue stochastique a pour role de donner la meilleure estimation possible de la probabilite d’une suite de mots dans une langue donnee. C’est un composant essentiel des logiciels de reconnaissance de la parole duquel depend grandement leurs performances. Les modeles etat-de-l’art les plus utilises sont les moeles n-grammes lisses par la technique de Kneser-Ney. Ces modeles utilisent les statistiques d’occurrence de sequences de mots d’une longueur maximale typiquement de 5, statistiques calcules sur un vaste corpus d’apprentissage. Cette these commence par une etude empirique des erreurs d’un systeme de reconnaissance de la parole etat-de-l’art en francais. Il est apparu que de nombreux phenomenes langagiers reguliers sont hors de portee des modeles n-grammes. Cette these explore donc une approche duale du paradigme statistique dominant en utilisant des modeles a base de memoire qui traitent efficacement les phenomenes specifiques en synergie avec les modeles n-grammes qui modelisent efficacement les grandes tendances. La notion de similarite entre longs n-grammes est etudiee, de facon a identifier les contextes particuliers a prendre en compte dans un premier modele de langue de similarite. Les informations ainsi extraites du corpus sont combinees via un noyau Gaussien pour calculer un nouveau score. L’integration de ce modele non probabiliste, a permis d’ameliorer les performances d’un systeme de reconnaissance. Un deuxieme modele est propose, probabiliste et permettant ainsi une meilleur integration de l’approche par similarite avec les modeles existants et qui ameliore les performances en perplexite sur du texte.
Maintenance DNA Methylation of Nucleosome Core Particles*

The enzyme responsible for maintenance methylation of CpG dinucleotides in vertebrates is DNMT1. The presence of DNMT1 in DNA replication foci raises the issue of whether this enzyme needs to gain access to nascent DNA before its packaging into nucleosomes, which occurs very rapidly behind the replication fork. Using nucleosomes positioned along the 5 S rRNA gene, we find that DNMT1 is able to methylate a number of CpG sites even when the DNA major groove is oriented toward the histone surface. However, we also find that the ability of DNMT1 to methylate nucleosomal sites is highly dependent on the nature of the DNA substrate. Although nucleosomes containing the Air promoter are refractory to methylation irrespective of target cytosine location, nucleosomes reconstituted onto the H19 imprinting control region are more accessible. These results argue that although DNMT1 is intrinsically capable of methylating some DNA sequences even after their packaging into nucleosomes, this is not the case for at least a fraction of DNA sequences whose function is regulated by DNA methylation.