Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Potential Beneficial Effects Of Intrathecal Opioids In Cardiac Surgical Patients

Background: Postoperative pain control plays an important role on prognosis of patients undergoing thoracic surgery. The length of stay in the intensive care units and hospital is correlated with the quality of pain management. We assessed the potential role of intrathecal opioid supplement for fast tracking cardiac surgery patients. Methods: This is a retrospective, chart review of 133 consecutive patients undergoing open-heart procedure at Buffalo VA Medical Center. They were studied with respect to time-to-extubation, the degree of pain relief, and postoperative parentral narcotic use. Sixty-four patients received supplemental intrathecal opioids and 69 patients received conventional opioid-based anesthesia. Postoperative visual analog pain scores and 24 h analgesic requirements were measured as indices of postoperative pain. Time to extubation, partial pressure of oxygen and carbon dioxide were measured as indices of respiratory function. Results: Patients receiving intrathecal opioids appeared to be more comfortable (VAS = 2 vs. 7) upon arrival at the surgical intensive care unit (SICU) and 24 h after surgery (VAS = 3 vs. 5). These patients also required less parentral morphine in the first 24 hours after surgery (11.4 ± 3.1-mg vs. 52.6 ± 6.2; p<0.05). The majority of patients receiving intrathecal opioids were extubated in the operating room following termination of surgery, suggesting a lower incidence of postoperative respiratory depression. This was associated with a lower need for reintubation that those receiving IV opioids. Conclusion: We believe that the addition of spinal opioids was beneficial in the early postoperative care of cardiac surgery patients with respect to pain management and ventilatory requirements.
Avaliação Automática da Qualidade de Objetos de Aprendizagem dentro de Repositórios

As the amount of learning objects is rapidly growing inside the existing repositories, there is an urgent need to create new approaches for evaluating their quality without relying only on human work. The availability of evaluative metadata inside some repositories has opened the possibility of contrasting intrinsic features of the resources in order to discover metrics associated to quality that can be used for the generation of models for automated quality assessment. The present work describes the first results of such approach by using data of learning objects collected from the MERLOT repository. The results found here point out the feasibility of such approach for the evaluated subsets, and reinforce that models for automated quality assessment must be developed taking into consideration the many possible combinations of categories of discipline and types of materials available in the repository. The present work also presents two possible usage scenarios for the models once they are implemented inside a repository.
Mind-body-spirituality

The argument of this paper is that the modern brain-consciousness debate has left out one important element: the question of a transpersonal or spirit-like element of consciousness. Thus the problem really is not a mind-body-problem or brain-consciousness problem, but a mind-body-spirit or brain-consciousness-soul problem. Looking at the history of the debate it can be seen that, explicitly or implicitly, this aspect has always been part of the philosophical debate. Most notably, this can be seen in the Aristotelian concept of the soul, which held that form and matter were both together necessary to constitute a unity. But on top of that, a Platonic strand of teaching existed in Aristotle, which was lost. This tradition stipulated an aspect of the soul, the active intellect, that was separate and separable. This idea has inspired other and later writers into postulating an immortal part of the soul. In the modern debate this tradition has been lost and was frequently amalgamated with dualist positions. Phenomenological descriptions of mystical experiences, as well as other unusual (or exceptional) mind-matter anomalies suggest that this aspect of the problem needs reconsideration. For this purpose a transcendental kind of monism is suggested which does not violate the consensus that only a monist description of the world is scientifically viable. Such a position would, in addition, provide the option to incorporate the transpersonal side of the debate
“underdetermination”的三层内涵——从劳丹的解读看

“underdetermination”概念影响深远且分歧巨大。 从劳丹对underdetermination的解读看，它的第一层休谟式含义是指从证据不能推论出理论正确性，这是科学哲学家和科学知识社会学家共同认可的。 第二层奎因式含义是指与证据相一致，承认经验证据的作用就没有必然导向社会学解释，这是科学哲学家与科学知识社会学家不一致的地方；第三层劳丹式含义是指扩充性科学规则不能完全决定理论正确性，它坚持判定的基础不是经验证据，而是包括经验证据和非经验要素的扩充性科学规则。 即便它也存在特定情形下不完全决定的情形，但它能够解释理论选择的过程，从而捍卫科学和理性。
Dual Parallel Process in Crisis Situations: motivational Foundation

El objetivo de este articulo es presentar un modelo cognitivo-conductual que permite explicar la situacion de crisis (SC) en terminos de intensa afectacion motivacional y sustentar, a partir de ahi, una propuesta de intervencion motivacional breve en SC. La SC exige a la persona implementar estrategias de afrontamiento centradas en el manejo del dano objetivo, asi como en la busqueda del alivio emocional, consideracion que da origen a la denominacion doble procesamiento paralelo en SC (DPP-SC). La intervencion breve afecta los procesos motivacionales, para facilitar que la persona adopte decisiones de afrontamiento que la coloquen en direccion al alivio emocional o a la solucion de la crisis. Se concluye con una sintesis sobre las tres fuentes fundamentales procedentes de la literatura psicologica, para inspirar el diseno del DPP-SC: el doble procesamiento paralelo extendido, la teoria cognitiva sobre el estres y el afrontamiento, y la formulacion por niveles en terapia cognitiva.
Concentration and size distribution of IGF-I in human normal and osteoarthritic synovial fluid and cartilage

The role of free insulin-like growth factor (IGF-I) in stimulating proteoglycan (PG) synthesis in cartilage has been well documented (e.g., McQuillan et al., 1986). Equally well documented is the enhancing effect of serum addition to the incubation medium. However, it is by no means clear what, if any, is the connection between the latter two: thus in scrum IGF-I is not present in free form but exists in the form of complexes, mainly as a “large complex” of MWt around 140 kD and to a lesser extent as a “small complex” of MWt around 50 kD. Molecules of this size are largely excluded from the matrix of normal human articular cartilage. Moreover, it should be remembered that cartilage in vivo is not in contact with blood, but with synovial fluid (SF). Information about IGF-I in SF is scarce: there is only one set of data available (Schalkwijk et al. 1989) and these only for total IGF-I content.
A comparative epidemiological analysis of clinical strains of Staphylococcus aureus in Nigeria and South Africa.

Staphylococcus aureus is recognized as one of the main human pathogens, which has developed resistance to many classes of antibiotics. Information on antibiotic susceptibility pattern is of great importance for clinicians in the selection of empiric antimicrobial therapy. Moreover, data on phenotypic and genetic characterization of S. aureus isolates (especially MRSA) are crucial in monitoring and limiting the intraand interhospital spread in the control of staphylococcal infections. In this study, antibiotic susceptibility of S. aureus isolates obtained from clinical microbiology laboratones in Southwestern Nigeria (200 isolates) and KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province, South Africa (227 isolates) was investigated. All the isolates from both countries were susceptible to teicoplanin, vancomycin and fusidic acid, while the prevalence of MRS A was 1.5% and 27% in Southwestern Nigeria and KZN province, South Africa, respectively. Resistance of methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (MSSA) to sulfonamides, tetracycline, and the number of multi-drug resistant MSSA was significantly higher in Nigeria compared with South Africa. Most of the MRSA isolates (87%) from KZN were resistant to at least four classes of antibiotics. Apart from vancomycin, teicoplanin and fusidic acid, quinipristinldalfopristin, linezolid and fosfomycin are recommended for the treatment of MRS A infections in the two countries. Characterization of MRSA from South Africa indicated the widespread dissemination of strains in pulsotypes a and b, suggesting that there appears to be a major clone circulating in health institutions in KZN, South Africa. Clonal relatedness between one MRSA from Ibadan, Nigeria and EMRSA-15 was identified indicating clonal dissemination of the pandemic clone. The characterization of low-level mupirocin
The sex with the reduced sex chromosome dies earlier: a comparison across the tree of life

Many taxa show substantial differences in lifespan between the sexes. However, these differences are not always in the same direction. In mammals, females tend to live longer than males, while in birds, males tend to live longer than females. One possible explanation for these differences in lifespan is the unguarded X hypothesis, which suggests that the reduced or absent chromosome in the heterogametic sex (e.g. the Y chromosome in mammals and the W chromosome in birds) exposes recessive deleterious mutations on the other sex chromosome. While the unguarded X hypothesis is intuitively appealing, it had never been subject to a broad test. We compiled male and female longevity data for 229 species spanning 99 families, 38 orders and eight classes across the tree of life. Consistent with the unguarded X hypothesis, a meta-analysis showed that the homogametic sex, on average, lives 17.6% longer than the heterogametic sex. Surprisingly, we found substantial differences in lifespan dimorphism between female heterogametic species (in which the homogametic sex lives 7.1% longer) and male heterogametic species (in which the homogametic sex lives 20.9% longer). Our findings demonstrate the importance of considering chromosome morphology in addition to sexual selection and environment as potential drivers of sexual dimorphism, and advance our fundamental understanding of the mechanisms that shape an organism's lifespan.
GCPersist: an efficient GC-assisted lazy persistency framework for resilient Java applications on NVM

The emergence of non-volatile memory (NVM) has stimulated broad interests in building efficient and persistent systems and programming models. However, most prior work is built atop an eager persistency model, which mandates applications to persist their data as soon as possible and thus causes considerable overhead. Besides, prior work mainly focuses on native languages and overlooks the interactions with the managed runtime system in a high-level language. Such issues limit the scope of applications on NVM, especially for resilient applications that already have reliable but inefficient recovery mechanisms. This paper proposes GCPersist, an easy-to-use NVM programming framework atop a lazy persistency model to defer the persistency of user data for better performance, with the assistance of the garbage collection (GC) module in the managed runtime. GCPersist further provides differentiated persistency modes to reduce the runtime overhead. We have implemented GCPersist on the HotSpot JVM of OpenJDK and the evaluation results on Intel Optane DC persistent memory devices show that GCPersist performs well with resilient applications (like Spark) by reducing the recovery time by up to 3.26X while introducing only 1--6% runtime overhead during normal execution.
“Clinical Profile of Genetically Proven Huntington's Disease Patients from Eastern India”

Background and Aims: To study the clinical profile of genetically proven Huntington's disease (HD) patients from eastern India. Methods: This cross sectional study selected patients of HD after genetic confirmation of expanded CAG repeats in Huntingtin (HTT) gene. We performed detail clinical evaluation including cognitive and neuropsychological assessment, and imaging of brain. Results: This study included 75 patients (male: 57.3%; female: 42.7%). Mean age at onset was 37.12 (range 16-62) years; juvenile variety (onset below 20 years) was detected in 5.3%. Paternal transmission was commoner. Manifestations at onset were motor in 81.3% patients, behavioral in 10.7% and cognitive impairment in 8%. After chorea, next common movement disorder was dystonia. Frontal lobe dysfunction was found in 77.3% patients. Behavioral disturbances were observed in 77.3% patients and commonly manifested as depression, irritable behavior and anxiety. Among the three onset groups (motor/behavioral/cognitive), there was no significant difference regarding age at onset, gender distribution, pattern of inheritance (paternal/maternal), and at the time of evaluation, all groups had essentially similar pattern of clinical features. Mean CAG repeat of the patients was 48.25 (range 40-79). Our study showed some differing clinical characteristics compared to previous studies from the Indian subcontinent. Conclusion: Clinical features in our study showed differences from previous studies from the Indian subcontinent. We had more cognitive-onset patients. However, behavioral onset was lower in our study. Motor, behavioral and cognitive onset groups of HD were comparable regarding demographics, family history, CAG repeat lengths and major clinical features at the time of evaluation.
Micro-computed tomographic evaluation of the apical seal of endodontically treated teeth by two obturating techniques and two post space preparation techniques

Aim: This study evaluated apical seal of teeth obturated by two techniques and gutta-percha (GP) removed by two methods for post space preparation, using micro-computed tomography (micro-CT). Materials and Methods: Fifty-six single rooted teeth were decapitated at 15mm from the apex and prepared using ProTaper Universal System. Specimens were divided into two main groups of 28 each according to technique of GP Removal and post space preparation: Group A1, GP removed by a penetrating drill and Group A2, GP removed by hot plugger. Each main group was divided into two subgroups according to obturation technique: single cone (SC) and System B. Each subgroup was further divided into two minor subgroups according to storage time—immediately and one-week post-obturation. Approximately 9mm of GP was removed for post space preparation. All specimens were scanned three times by micro-CT: post-preparation, post-obturation, and after post space preparation. Total mean percentage of voids/gaps in the apical portion was calculated at 1, 3, and 5mm from the apex. Data were explored for normality using Kolmogorov–Smirnov and Shapiro–Wilk tests. Paired sample t-test was used to compare between two groups. Independent sample t-test was used to compare between two groups in non-related samples (significant P ≤ 0.05). Results: It showed that group A2 recorded significantly lower voids than group A1 at the two investigation periods. Voids associated with System B technique were lower than those with SC. Conclusion: An immediate removal of GP by hot plugger would not affect the apical seal.
Basics of statistics – 2: Types of clinical studies

Introduction: Statistics is an unpleasant but essential part of an oncologist's academic life. This review is an attempt to simplify the concept of various types of clinical studies. Methods: Various books, articles, and online resources were used to gather information on types, definitions, clinical role, and brief methodology of various retrospective and prospective studies. Results: The collected information has been concisely put together along with relevant examples to make the manuscript reader-friendly. Discussion: This article is a brief account of various types of epidemiological and clinical studies used in medical research. Although some modifications are made time to time to suit the study requirements, basic framework remains the same.
Association of psoriasis with asthma: A systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies

Background: Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that has been associated with various inflammatory comorbidities such as cardiovascular disease and uveitis. Asthma involves inflammation of the airway. The two diseases share cytokine-mediated inflammatory mechanisms. Objectives: The main objective of the study was to examine the association of psoriasis with asthma. Methods: We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies that examined the association of psoriasis with asthma. We searched MEDLINE, Embase, and CENTRAL from inception to May 2, 2019 for relevant case–control, cross-sectional, or cohort studies. The risk of bias of included studies was assessed by using the Newcastle–Ottawa Scale. The random-effects model meta-analysis was used to calculate the odds ratio (OR) for case–control/cross-sectional studies and hazard ratio (HR) for cohort studies. Results: We included six case–control/cross-sectional (one case–control and five cross-sectional studies) and one cohort studies. Three studies were rated with a high risk of bias in case definition, representativeness of the cases, selection of controls, definition of controls, and ascertainment of exposure. Psoriasis was associated with significantly increased odds (OR 1.29; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.20-'1.37) and risk (HR 1.38; 95% CI 1.23-'1.54) for asthma. A subgroup analysis revealed increased odds for asthma in both pediatric and adult patients with psoriasis (pooled OR being 1.24 [95% CI 1.10-'1.41] and OR 1.38 [95% CI 1.27-'1.50], respectively). Conclusion: The current evidence indicates a significant association of psoriasis with asthma. When psoriasis patients present with respiratory symptoms for shortness of breath, wheezing, and chest tightness, referral to pulmonologist may be considered.
Construction & assessment of a unified curated reference database for improving the taxonomic classification of bacteria using 16S rRNA sequence data

Background & objectives: For bacterial community analysis, 16S rRNA sequences are subjected to taxonomic classification through comparison with one of the three commonly used databases [Greengenes, SILVA and Ribosomal Database Project (RDP)]. It was hypothesized that a unified database containing fully annotated, non-redundant sequences from all the three databases, might provide better taxonomic classification during analysis of 16S rRNA sequence data. Hence, a unified 16S rRNA database was constructed and its performance was assessed by using it with four different taxonomic assignment methods, and for data from various hypervariable regions (HVRs) of 16S rRNA gene. Methods: We constructed a unified 16S rRNA database (16S-UDb) by merging non-ambiguous, fully annotated, full-length 16S rRNA sequences from the three databases and compared its performance in taxonomy assignment with that of three original databases. This was done using four different taxonomy assignment methods [mothur Naïve Bayesian Classifier (mothur-nbc), RDP Naïve Bayesian Classifier (rdp-nbc), UCLUST, SortMeRNA] and data from 13 regions of 16S rRNA [seven hypervariable regions (HVR) (V2-V8) and six pairs of adjacent HVRs]. Results: Our unified 16S rRNA database contained 13,078 full-length, fully annotated 16S rRNA sequences. It could assign genus and species to larger proportions (90.05 and 46.82%, respectively, when used with mothur-nbc classifier and the V2+V3 region) of sequences in the test database than the three original 16S rRNA databases (70.88-87.20% and 10.23-24.28%, respectively, with the same classifier and region). Interpretation & conclusions: Our results indicate that for analysis of bacterial mixtures, sequencing of V2-V3 region of 16S rRNA followed by analysis of the data using the mothur-nbc classifier and our 16S-UDb database may be preferred.
Indian clinical practice consensus guidelines for the management of oral cavity cancer

1Department of Surgical Oncology, Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, Maharashtra, 2Department of Medical Oncology, Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, Maharashtra, 3Department of Medical Oncology, Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology, Bangalore, Karnataka, 4Department of Surgical Oncology, Cochin Cancer Research Centre, Cochin, Kerala, 5Department of Oral Medicine and Radiology, KLE Society’s Institute of Dental Sciences (KLESIDS), Bangalore, Karnataka, 6Department of Radiation Oncology, Max Super Speciality Hospital, Saket, New Delhi, 7Department of Medical Oncology, HCG Cancer Centre, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, 8Department of Radiodiagnosis and Imaging, Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, Maharashtra, 9Department of Radiation Oncology, Civil Hospital, Shillong, Meghalaya, 10Department of Medical Oncology, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, New Delhi, 11Department of Radiation Oncology, Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre, New Delhi, 12Department of Radiation Oncology, Sri Shankara Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, Bangalore, Karnataka, 13Department of Medical Oncology, Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre, New Delhi, 14Department of Radiotherapy, Christian Medical College, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, 15Department of Surgical Oncology, Max Super Speciality Hospital, Saket, New Delhi, 16Department of Surgical Oncology, HCG Cancer Centre, Bangalore, Karnataka, 17Department of Radiation Oncology, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Narayana Superspeciality Hospital, Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir, 18Department of Radiation Oncology, National Cancer Institute, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, India
Designing novel quercetin derivatives as matrix metalloproteinase-9 inhibitors in colon carcinoma: An In vitro and in silico approach

Background: Matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) plays an important role in activating several signaling molecules and pathways during inflammation, wound healing, and cancer progression. Since flavonoids have been shown to exhibit anti-inflammatory properties, we assessed the antiproliferative activity of quercetin, a flavonoid on colon carcinoma cell line through in vitro assays, and in order to design more specific MMP-9 inhibitors, we have used insilico approach to obtain potent quercetin derivatives. Materials and Methods: The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of quercetin on cell viability and migration on cultured HCT-15 cells using 3-[4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl]-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay and wound healing assay. The docking analysis of quercetin and its derivatives with the crystal structure of MMP-9 (PDB ID: 3OE9) was performed using FlexX software. Result: Quercetin showed an antiproliferative and antimigratory activity on HCT-15 cells in time- and dose-dependent manner. Conclusion: Novel quercetin derivatives targeting MMP-9 have been identified for further synthesis and validation.