Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hormonal and reproductive influences and risk of melanoma in women.

BACKGROUND Evidence linking female hormones to the development of malignant melanoma has been contradictory. The purpose of this study was to examine the risk of melanoma in relation to exogenous and endogenous hormonal variables in women, including oral contraceptives, replacement oestrogens, pregnancy, and menopause. METHODS Hormonal and reproductive factors were evaluated using data from a personal-interview population-based case-control study of melanoma in women conducted in Connecticut during 1987-1989. Caucasian female incident invasive melanoma cases (n = 308) were confirmed by standardized histopathological review. Caucasian female controls (n = 233) were selected by random digit dialling and frequency-matched on age. Data were analysed using multivariate logistic regression. RESULTS Ever being pregnant, age at first pregnancy, current use of replacement oestrogens, ever use of oral contraceptives, duration of use of oral contraceptives, and age at first use of oral contraceptives were not associated with melanoma. Among other variables, cases were more than twice as likely as controls to report a single pregnancy lasting >6 months, but this association lacked a dose-response relationship. Menopause and body mass index were not independently associated with risk of melanoma. However, this analysis did suggest that menopause and body mass index may be interactive risk factors. Melanoma cases were three times more likely than controls to be obese and report natural menopause when compared to thin/acceptable premenopausal women (OR = 3.00, 95% CI: 1.03-8.73). CONCLUSIONS These data do not provide strong evidence that hormonal and reproductive factors are associated with risk of melanoma in women, although the few positive results should be explored further.
A parallel approach of spectrometry Raman image processing using OpenCL

Raman spectrometry is a technique that allows detecting chemical products through a number of representative peaks found in an image spectrum or numeric series of data. Raman spectrometry is a necessary technic in many fields such as physics, chemistry and Biology. The Raman spectrometry machine analyses a product and generates images as a curve. The interpretation of the curves peaks permits to detect the chemical origin of the analyzed product. Scientists do this operation manually, which makes it hard and long in terms of time. The aim of the present paper is to automate the molecule detection operation using image-processing techniques. We propose a parallel solution to detect the peaks using OpenCL on Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). GPUs allow us to make the application faster and more efficient, thanks to its multicore architecture.
Electromagnetic Marchenko imaging in 1D

We present a one-dimensional scheme to compute an image of a dissipative medium from two single-sided reflection responses without using any model information. One reflection response is measured at or above the top reflector of a dissipative medium and the other is computed as if measured at or above a medium with negative dissipation. The reflection response of a medium with negative dissipation can be computed from measured double-sided reflection and transmission data from a dissipative medium. These two reflection responses together can be used to construct two focusing wavefields. One focuses at the chosen location in the subsurface of the dissipative medium and the other inside the medium with negative dissipation. From the focusing functions and reflection responses the Green's functions for a virtual receiver can be computed. The Green's function are used to construct the image. We show with a numerical example that the method works well for a synthesised layered sample in a waveguide that could be used for measurements in a laboratory.
A development and management environment based on UML

Software development is exhibiting some noticeable characteristics: model-based development, team work, parallel development, incremental and iterative development, transregional development and so on. The development process is becomes so complicated that a CASE environment is requested to support some mechanisms: mass tool integration, staff cooperation, process management, extensive data sharing, data management etc. So, along with mass, cooperating integrative development tools, a management environment with the ability to accomplish the above-mentioned tasks is also in great demand. UML (Unified Modeling language) is one of the latest achievements in the field of software engineering. Based on the experience of process engineering, the authors are constructing a development and management environment supporting UML. They discuss in detail how this environment effectively supports the object-oriented (OO) development process based on UML, and how this environment satisfies the characteristics listed above. They devote themselves to solving problems in process management and the collaboration on data.
48-Hour Depressive Cycling induced by Antidepressant

Several cases of increases in frequency of mood cycling have recently been reported in women as a result of tricyclic antidepressant treatment (Siris et al, 1979; Wehr and Goodwin, 1979). We report here the occurrence of 48-hour rapid cycling in a man with recurrent unipolar depression after treatment with dibenzepin (Noveril), an atypical tricyclic antidepressant. Alterations in urinary cyclic adenosine monophosphate (AMP) have been reported with mood changes and were therefore evaluated at the same time.
Direct acquisition of matrix-assisted laser Desorption/Ionization time-of-flight mass spectra from laser capture microdissected tissues

Recent studies have demonstrated the usefulness of laser capture microdissection (LCM) in gene expression studies of pure cell populations derived from healthy and diseased tissues (1)(2)(3). However, mRNA expression does not necessarily correlate with protein abundance or predict posttranslational modifications (4). Currently, a few groups have reported details of protein expression profiling of cells captured by LCM, using two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2D-PAGE) followed by peptide mass fingerprinting of selected proteins (5)(6). Although such an approach represents the gold standard for global analysis of protein expression, 2D-PAGE often is impractical for diagnostic applications. We describe a rapid and sensitive method to obtain an abridged protein expression profile from microdissected cells by the direct acquisition of matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-ToF) mass spectra from LCM transfer films. LCM uses an infrared laser to transiently and focally melt an ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) thermoplastic film applied to a tissue section. During the infrared laser pulse, the EVA transfer film fuses with the underlying cells, which remain adherent when the film is separated from the tissue section. In most applications, the transfer film is subsequently immersed in a lysis buffer to extract soluble molecules from the captured cells and their microenvironment, and the lysate is used in further analysis. Our approach is to obtain MALDI-ToF mass spectra directly from microdissected cells of interest. MALDI-ToF allows the simultaneous molecular mass characterization of a broad variety of biological molecules up to 100 kDa or higher. Mass measurements of 1 pmol of an analyte present in a 1-μL specimen are routine for pure analytes and simple mixtures. …
Advances in the Understanding and Operations of Superconducting Colliders

Chromaticity drift during injection is a well-known phenomenon in superconducting colliders, such as the Tevatron, HERA and RHIC. Imperfect compensation of the drift effects can contribute to beam loss and emittance growth. It is caused by the drift of the sextupole component in the dipole magnets due to current redistribution in its superconducting coils. Recently extensive studies of chromaticity drift were conducted at the Tevatron, aiming at the improvement of the luminosity performance in the ongoing run II. These studies included not only beam experiments, but also extensive off-line magnetic measurements on spare Tevatron dipoles. Less known, until recently, is that chromaticity drift is often accompanied by tune and coupling drift. This was recently discovered in the Tevatron. We believe that these effects are the product of systematic beam offset in conjunction with the sextupole drifts (and their compensation in the chromaticity correctors). These discoveries are most relevant to the upcoming LHC, where the drift effects will have even more dramatic consequences given the high beam current. It is therefore not a surprise that CERN has been the source of major advances in the understanding of dynamic effects during the LHC superconducting magnet development. The following will briefly review the CERN results as well as those of the recent Fermilab studies. A new result, which will be presented here also, is related to fast drifts occurring in the first few seconds of the injection plateau.
Aalborg Universitet Apathy towards the Integration of Usability Work

In this article we report from a case study of a software development organization and we study in particular the developers’ and product managers’ attitudes towards integrating usability work into software development. We offer explanations based on system justification theory illuminating what would-be integrators might be up against. The analysis shows how the developers only pay lip service to usability work and how they treat users superficially. It further shows how that leads to stereotyping of usability designers and users in order to preserve status quo, and how internalization of inequality between the developers and usability designers rationalizes the preservation of status quo. These findings will have significant implications for managers of software development.
Cytochrome P 450 CYP 81 A 12 and CYP 81 A 21 Are Associated with Resistance to Two Acetolactate Synthase Inhibitors in Echinochloa phyllopogon 1 [ W ]

Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Kitashirakawa-Oiwake-cho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606–8502, Japan (S.I., T.I.); Plant Genome Engineering Research Unit, Agrogenomics Research Center, National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, Tsukuba 305–8602, Japan (M.E., H.S., S.T.); The Japan Association for Advancement of Phyto-Regulators, Ushiku 300–1211, Japan (J.O., N.N., M.Y.); and Crop Production Systems Division, NARO Agricultural Research Center, Tsukuba 305–8666, Japan (H.W., A.U.)
Detecting disease-associated genomic outcomes using constrained mixture of Bayesian hierarchical models for paired data

Detecting disease-associated genomic outcomes is one of the key steps in precision medicine research. Cutting-edge high-throughput technologies enable researchers to unbiasedly test if genomic outcomes are associated with disease of interest. However, these technologies also include the challenges associated with the analysis of genome-wide data. Two big challenges are (1) how to reduce the effects of technical noise; and (2) how to handle the curse of dimensionality (i.e., number of variables are way larger than the number of samples). To tackle these challenges, we propose a constrained mixture of Bayesian hierarchical models (MBHM) for detecting disease-associated genomic outcomes for data obtained from paired/matched designs. Paired/matched designs can effectively reduce effects of confounding factors. MBHM does not involve multiple testing, hence does not have the problem of the curse of dimensionality. It also could borrow information across genes so that it can be used for whole genome data with small sample sizes.
Interference Alignment-based Precoding and User Selection with Limited Feedback in Two-cell Downlink Multi-user MIMO Systems

Interference alignment (IA) is a new approach to address interference in modern multiple-input multiple-out (MIMO) cellular networks in which interference is an important factor that limits the system throughput. System throughput in most IA implementation schemes is significantly improved only with perfect channel state information and in a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) region. Designing a simple IA scheme for the system with limited feedback and investigating system performance at a low-to-medium SNR region is important and practical. This paper proposed a precoding and user selection scheme based on partial interference alignment in two-cell downlink multi-user MIMO systems under limited feedback. This scheme aligned inter-cell interference to a predefined direction by designing user’s receive antenna combining vectors. A modified singular value decomposition (SVD)-based beamforming method and a corresponding user-selection algorithm were proposed for the system with low rate limited feedback to improve sum rate performance. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves a higher sum rate than traditional schemes without IA. The modified SVD-based beamforming scheme is also superior to the traditional zero-forcing beamforming scheme in low-rate limited feedback systems. The proposed partial IA scheme does not need to collaborate between transmitters and joint design between the transmitter and the users. The scheme can be implemented with low feedback overhead in current MIMO cellular networks.
5.2/5.7-GHz 48-dB Image Rejection GaInP/GaAs HBT Weaver Down-Converter Using LO Frequency Quadrupler

A GaInP/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) down-converter using the Weaver architecture is demonstrated in this paper. The Weaver system is a double-conversion image rejection heterodyne system which requires no bandpass filters in the signal path and no quadrature networks. The Weaver down-converter has the image rejection ratios of 48 dB and 44 dB when the RF frequency is 5.2 GHz and 5.7 GHz, respectively. A new frequency quadrupler is employed in the down-converter to generate the local oscillator (LO) signals. The frequency quadrupler is designed to minimize the phase error when generating LO signals and thus the image rejection performance is improved. A diagrammatic explanation using the complex mixing technique to analyze the image rejection mechanism of the Weaver architecture is developed in this paper. From our analysis, the image rejection can be further improved by making the LO1 and LO2 signals coherent
Locating bridging faults using dynamically computed stuck-at fault dictionaries

Novel algorithms for locating bridging faults, based on the voting and wired models, in combinational circuits are presented. The algorithm uses small portions of the stuck-at fault dictionary, not the bridge fault dictionary, computed during fault location. This, along with an implicit representation of bridging faults, contributes significantly to the efficiency of the algorithm. Experimental evaluation of the algorithm on ISCAS circuits is presented.
Analysis of Protein Expression in Cell Microarrays: A Tool for Antibody-based Proteomics

Tissue microarray (TMA) technology provides a possibility to explore protein expression patterns in a multitude of normal and disease tissues in a high-throughput setting. Although TMAs have been used for analysis of tissue samples, robust methods for studying in vitro cultured cell lines and cell aspirates in a TMA format have been lacking. We have adopted a technique to homogeneously distribute cells in an agarose gel matrix, creating an artificial tissue. This enables simultaneous profiling of protein expression in suspension- and adherent-grown cell samples assembled in a microarray. In addition, the present study provides an optimized strategy for the basic laboratory steps to efficiently produce TMAs. Presented modifications resulted in an improved quality of specimens and a higher section yield compared with standard TMA production protocols. Sections from the generated cell TMAs were tested for immunohistochemical staining properties using 20 well-characterized antibodies. Comparison of immunoreactivity in cultured dispersed cells and corresponding cells in tissue samples showed congruent results for all tested antibodies. We conclude that a modified TMA technique, including cell samples, provides a valuable tool for high-throughput analysis of protein expression, and that this technique can be used for global approaches to explore the human proteome.
A Unified Hardware/Software Priority Scheduling Model for General Purpose Systems

Migrating functionality from software to hardware has historically held the promise of enhancing performance through exploiting the inherent parallel nature of hardware. Many early exploratory efforts in repartitioning traditional software based services into hardware were hampered by expensive ASIC development costs. Recent advancements in FPGA technology have made it more economically feasible to explore migrating functionality across the hardware/software boundary. The flexibility of the FPGA fabric and availability of configurable soft IP components has opened the potential to rapidly and economically investigate different hardware/software partitions. Within the real time operating systems community, there has been continued interest in applying hardware/software co-design approaches to address scheduling issues such as latency and jitter. Many hardware based approaches have been reported to reduce the latency of computing the scheduling decision function itself. However continued adherence to classic scheduler invocation mechanisms can still allow variable latencies to creep into the time taken to make the scheduling decision, and ultimately into application timelines. This dissertation explores how hardware/software co-design can be applied past the scheduling decision itself to also reduce the non-predictable delays associated with interrupts and timers. By expanding the window of hardware/software co-design to these invocation mechanisms, we seek to understand if the jitter introduced by classical hardware/software partitionings can be removed from the timelines of critical real time user processes. This dissertation makes a case for resetting the classic boundaries of software thread level scheduling, software timers, hardware timers and interrupts. We show that reworking the boundaries of the scheduling invocation mechanisms helps to rectify the current imbalance of traditional hardware invocation mechanisms (timers and interrupts) and software scheduling policy (operating system scheduler). We re-factor these mechanisms into a unified hardware software priority scheduling model to facilitate
In vitro effect of hydrocortisone on the attachment and ingestion phases of immunoglobulin G- and complement component 3b-mediated phagocytosis by human neutrophils

The fluorescence quenching method (FQ method) was used to investigate the effect of hydrocortisone on the attachment and ingestion phases of immunoglobulin G (IgG)- and complement component 3b (C3b)-mediated phagocytosis by human neutrophils (PMNs). The results were compared with metabolic activity (O2- release) of the phagocytes. When the PMNs were treated with 5 X 10(-5) M hydrocortisone or more, both IgG-mediated and C3b-mediated interactions decreased. The number of intracellular particles decreased as the total number of PMN-associated particles decreased, indicating an effect mainly on particle attachment. This was substantiated by the fact that pretreatment of the PMN with cytochalasin B resulted in a hydrocortisone dose-related decrease of interacting particles. The FQ method made it possible to quantify the stimulus-phagocyte interaction in relation to the metabolic response. Superoxide anion release decreased at the highest concentration of hydrocortisone used (5 X 10(-3) M), which merely reflected the decreased number of interacting particles. No reduction in metabolic activation was obtained when the superoxide anion release was correlated with the number of interacting yeast-IgG particles. The results indicate that hydrocortisone primarily affects the binding capacity of Fc and C3b receptors, resulting in decreased metabolic activation. The effector functions, e.g., ingestion and metabolic activation, were not affected by hydrocortisone in this study.
Cost-Effective Silicon Vertical Diode Switch for Next-Generation Memory Devices

In this letter, a cost-effective vertical diode scheme for next-generation memory devices, including phase-change memories (PCMs), is realized. After the contact formation for diodes with only one mask layer, an amorphous silicon (a-Si) film was deposited within the contacts using SiH4 ramp-up ambient in a conventional batch-type furnace in order to minimize the growth of native oxide. A deposition/etch-back/deposition scheme enabled us to achieve robust vertical diodes without any seams or interfacial oxide layer within the vertical diode pillars. Subsequent annealing at 600 °C provided solid-phase epitaxial alignment of the a-Si layer. An ideality factor revealed that the new scheme provided noticeable crystallinity of the silicon diodes. Moreover, the electrical characteristics of the diodes verified that the scheme was suitable for full operation of PCM devices.
eutriconodonts implications for the evolution of obtuse-angled molars and A new mammal skull from the Lower Cretaceous of China with Supplementary data tml

Supplementary data tml http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing. org/content/suppl/2009/09/02/rspb.2009. 1014.DC1. h "Data Supplement" References http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing. org/content/277/1679/237.full. html#ref-list-1 This article cites 35 articles Subject collections (2221 articles) evolution  (299 articles) taxonomy and systematics  (134 articles) palaeontology  Articles on similar topics can be found in the following collections
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis can Mimic Orthopedic Disease - Cases Report

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disorder of unknown cause. It is characterized by diffuse involvement of cortical, bulbar and spinal motor neurons. The diagnostic of this disorder is based in demonstrating of abnormalities of upper motor neurons with involvement of low motor neuron. In Europe and the United States, ALS affects about 2 people per 100 000 habitants per year. Neurophysiological studies are a basic tool for ALS diagnostic; they are useful to differentiate ALS from other neurological diseases. Image studies, especially Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI) is very useful to differentiate ALS from others diseases, like cervical spondylotic myelopathy, medullar tumor, syringomyelia, that look like ALS. We have wanted to report three cases of ALS patients who had short time
Serial Infusion Effects of Hydroxyethyl Starch on ESR, Blood Typing and Crossmatching and Serum Amylase Levels 1

Abstract. Eight normal healthy volunteers underwent a series of three plasmaphereses, prior to the infusion of 250, 500, and 750 ml hydroxyethyl starch (HES), respectively, in order to ascertain the effect of this agent on erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), blood typing and crossmatching, and serum amylase levels. The bolus injection of either 500 or 750 ml HES produced a significant increase in the ESR, which was sustained over a 5‐hour period. Rouleaux formation was observed to be dose related and only observed following administration of >500 ml (575 mg/dl whole blood concentration). The rouleaux formation was, however, easily dispersed by the addition of saline. Blood typing and crossmatching studies were normal, but caution must be taken in regard to false positives when the estimated blood concentration of HES exceeds 575 mg/dl. a‐Amylase activity corrected for hemodilution was not significantly altered immediately following infusion of HES in these reported amounts. Recommendation of a new method of HES administration during centrifugal leucapheresis is discussed.