Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Folate determination in human milk.

Dear Editor: With great interest, we read the article by Sakurai et al. ( 1 ) describing the longitudinal changes in nutrient contents of human milk. We, however, would like to point out that their method of measuring folate content may not be suitable. Sakurai et al. ( 1 ) used an HPLC method with fluorescent detection after alkaline extraction followed by permanganate oxidation. This method was originally developed by Allfrey et al. ( 2 ) in 1949 to measure pteroylglutamic acid (folic acid), a synthetic form of the vitamin not usually present in biological specimens. Although some forms of folate, including folic acid, are stable under alkaline pHs ( 3 ), alkaline extraction of folates in the absence of a reducing agent, such as ascorbate, is known to be unsuitable for biological samples that contain principally reduced forms of folate. When the method by Allfrey et al. ( 2 ) is used for biological samples, the values are generally lower than those obtained by other methods, such as microbiological assay ( 4 ). The use of a reducing agent during the extraction procedure to protect reduced folates is essential ( 5 ). Furthermore, C-9–N-10 cleavage by permanganate oxidation is suitable for detecting folic acid (and perhaps dihydrofolate and tetrahydrofolate); however, the cleavage is not complete when a sample contains other folates, such as 5-methyltetrahydrofolate and 10formyltetrahydrofolate ( 6 ). These fully-reduced folates comprise the majority of folates found in biological samples. Human milk folates consist of polyglutamates of reduced folate, particularly of 5-methyltetrahydrofolate ( 7 – 9 ). The microbiological assay using Lactobacillus rhamnosus preceded by trienzyme extraction (using amylase, protease and folate conjugase) is considered to be the most suitable means to determine human milk folate content ( 10 ). Trienzyme extraction is essential to release folate from carbohydrate or protein matrices before folate analysis, and this method is becoming widely used for folate assay not only for milk samples but also for foods ( 11 ). Therefore, the method used by Sakurai et al. ( 1 ) is not appropriately applied to human milk for folate analysis. The method would be acceptable for measuring synthetic folic acid that is added to infant formulas, but would not allow for accurate detection of endogenous folates supplied by natural ingredients of the formulas. Because information on human milk nutrient contents is vital to our understanding of the nutritional needs of rapidly growing infants ( 12 ), it is essential that suitable methods for analysis be employed. Sincerely yours,
Phase 1 dose escalation study of AQ4N, a selective hypoxic cell cytotoxin, with fractionated radiotherapy (RT): First report.

2091 Background: Most solid tumours contain hypoxic cells which are relatively radioresistant. AQ4N is designed to be non toxic until selectively activated by bioreduction in hypoxic cells to AQ4, a highly potent, stable Topoisomerase II inhibitor. Animal in vivo models have shown enhancement of the effects of radiation by AQ4N, enabling a 50% reduction in the radiation dose for the same antitumour effect. Here we report the first Phase 1 study to determine the pharmacokinetics (PK) and toxicity of AQ4N in humans. METHODS 13 patients with advanced esophageal carcinoma (7 adenocarcinoma and 6 Squamous carcinoma) suitable for palliative RT were recruited (ages 55-88 years, M 8, F 5). AQ4N was administered as a 30 min IV infusion on Days 1 and 14, with the first RT fraction given six hours after the second dose of AQ4N. The total RT dose was 20Gy in 5 daily fractions. Sequential plasma samples were taken on day 1. The dose was escalated from 22.5 to 246 mg /m2. RESULTS There were no drug related deaths. 1 patient died after the first AQ4N dose of a non drug related cause and is not evaluable. The most frequent adverse event was transient blue discolouration of the skin and urine. There were 8 other episodes, in 4 patients, of grade 3 or 4 toxicity possibly related to AQ4N; lymphocytopenia (n=2), fatigue (n=3), hyponatremia (n=3), hyperuricemia (n=1). None of these was clinically significant. PK studies showed a predictable dose related increase in AUC with mean clearance of 2.91 l h m-2 (range 1.84-5.2) and a t 1/2 of 2.9h (range 2.4-5.1). Cmax at 246 mg/m2 was 40.3ug ml-1. A mean 48% of dose was excreted unchanged in the urine within 24 hrs, with metabolites representing <2% of parent compound. CONCLUSION AQ4N is generally well tolerated with favourable PK, meriting further investigation. The MTD and DLT have not yet been reached with the RT doses used in this study. No additional normal tissue radiation related toxicity has been observed. (study supported by BTG International, UK) [Table: see text].
Comparison of Edge Detectors

Edge detection is a fundamental task in computer vision. In this assignment, I compared six different algorithms for edge detection, including Sobel, Canny [2], BEL [3], gPb [1], Sketch Token [5], and Structured Forest [4]. The Berkeley Segmentation Dataset (BSDS300) [6] and benchmark are used to compare the edge detectors. For image processing methods, Canny and Sobel, the precisions are below 50% though their frame rate can up to 20 and 200 FPS. For learning based algorithms, gPb, Sketch Token, and Structured Forest have the precision above 70%. while Structured Forest has the best performance on speed.
State and disturbance observers in mechanical sensorless control of PMSM

Linear and nonlinear observers have found wide interest in mechanical sensorless control of PMSM. In this paper, we study the application of nonlinear state observers and linear disturbance observers to the sensorless control of PMSM modeled in a particular Park /spl delta/-/spl gamma/ reference frame. We prefer this frame because of its non-alternative variables. The stability of the augmented system is analyzed and the stability conditions are given. In order to improve the robustness of the system with respect to the parameter variations, an on-line parameter identification method may be added to presented observers. The simulation and experimental results illustrate the validity of the analytical approach and the efficiency of the proposed methods.
Disruption of six novel yeast genes located on chromosome II reveals one gene essential for vegetative growth and two required for sporulation and conferring hypersensitivity to various chemicals

A PCR‐based method for targeted gene deletion by kanMX4 module was used to construct complete deletion mutants of six individual open reading frames from chromosome II: YBR128c, YBR131w, YBR133c, YBR137w, YBR138c and YBR142w. The ORFs were deleted in two diploid strains, FY1679 and W303. Sporulation and tetrad analysis revealed that only one ORF, YBR142w, encoding a putative DEAD‐box RNA helicase, is an essential gene. A systematic phenotypic analysis of the deleted mutants was carried out. Homozygous diploids ybr128cΔ/ybr128cΔ and ybr131wΔ/ybr131wΔ did not sporulate. The ybr131cΔ mutant whether haploid or homozygous diploid, in addition displayed an increased sensitivity to Caffeine, Calcium and Zinc, and to emphasize this phenotype we named the gene CCZ1. ORF YBR133c was independently reported by others as Histone Synthetic Lethal (HSL7) (Ma et al., 1996). We found that the aberrant morphology characteristic for ybr133cΔ (hsl7Δ) cells was observed in W303 but not in FY1679 genetic background. Furthermore, we observed that deletion of YBR133c had a pleiotropic effect under a wide range of conditions, including increased sensitivity to calcium, caffeine, calcofluor white, vanadate and verapamil. The effects of the deletion were reinforced in W303 background. We found no phenotypic effects of the two remaining deletions, ybr137wΔ and ybr138cΔ. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
SMG 6 interacts with the exon junction complex via two conserved EJC-binding motifs ( EBMs ) required for nonsense-mediated mRNA decay

Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) is a quality control mechanism that detects and degrades mRNAs containing premature stop codons (PTCs). In vertebrates, PTCs trigger efficient NMD when located upstream of an exon junction complex (EJC). Degradation of PTC-containing mRNAs requires the endonucleolytic activity of SMG6, a conserved NMD factor; nevertheless, the precise role for the EJC in NMD and how the SMG6 endonuclease is recruited to NMD targets have been unclear. Here we show that SMG6 interacts directly with the EJC via two conserved EJC-binding motifs (EBMs). We further show that the SMG6–EJC interaction is required for NMD. Our results reveal an unprecedented role for the EJC in recruiting the SMG6 endonuclease to NMD targets. More generally, our findings identify the EBM as a protein motif present in a handful of proteins, and suggest that EJCs establish multiple and mutually exclusive interactions with various protein partners, providing a plausible explanation for the myriad functions performed by this complex in post-transcriptional mRNA regulation.
Protein-inorganic Nanohybrids: A Potential Symbiosis in Tissue Engineering.

BACKGROUND Recently, a great interest has been paid to the development of hybrid proteininorganic nanoparticles (NPs) for tissue engineering applications to combine the merits of both inorganic and protein nanocarriers. OBJECTIVE This short review primarily discusses the most important advances in the application of the hybrids of proteins (gelatin, zein, silk fibroin,….etc) with inorganic NPs (calcium phosphate NPs, cadmium QDs, carbon nanotubes,…etc) in tissue engineering. RESULTS Various strategies that have been utilized for the preparation of protein-functionalized inorganic NPs are discussed. Nanocomposite films, electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds, nanostructured colloidal composite gels and nanocomposite lyophilized sponges are among the most common platforms of protein-inorganic nanohybrid formulations used in regenerative medicine. CONCLUSION protein-inorganic nanohybrids could serve as promising platforms for different biomedical applications including bone and cartilage tissue regeneration, imaging of engineered tissues, development of antithrombogenic implant biomaterials and anti-bacterial wound dressing as well.
An Integration of Hidden Markov Model and Neural Network for Phoneme Recognition

Speech recognition has been a popular research topic in the past 20 years. Different approaches have been attempted by other research and they exhibit some advantages over another. Hidden Markov Model (HMM) is one common approach iliat has been used in many researches for the past ten years. HMM is a stochastic process which provides an efficient means of modelling the sequential structure such as speech. However, in the past five years HMM approach has been evaluated and its discrimination problem has been another popular topic. In our research, we based on our interpretation of this problem and developed a new model for phoneme recognition. Our model transforms the problem of recognizing dynamic sequential patterns using HMM into a static pattern recognition problem using an integrated HMM-Neural Network approach. We carried out our experiments using the TIMIT multiple speakers speech database. We compared our approach with the HMM approach using 600 speech samples in six phoneme classes. For a training/testing data ratio of 300/300, the integrated approach obtained an increase of 1.3% in recognition rate over the HMM. When the trainin^testing data ratio became 450/150, the integrated approach obtained an increase of 4.7% in recognition rate over the HMM. Based on these results, we conclude that a neural network is justified to partially solve the HMM discrimination problem. Acknowledgements It has been an enjoyable experience to be involved in the speech recognition project supervised by Dr. Lai Wan Chan. She is always patient to explain and discuss the difficulties and problems that we have encountered in this project. Without her valuable advice and insight, this thesis would not have been completed. Table of
Impact of mobility in heterogeneous resource allocations for LTE based femtocell networks

Femto cell deployment creates a pre-dominate effects in the world of Long Terminal Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A). Such deployment in Marco cell will enhance the coverage up to a large extends into building premise. Also, it doesn't need any frequency planning. However, major concern with respect to the Femto deployment is its resource allocations along with Marco and mobility of Home evolved NodeB (HeNodeB) at the building premises. This Paper suggests a method of scheduling in Femto-Marco cell when frequent handover occur at the pedestrian speeds. This demands an improved scheduling in Marco cell and Femto cell. Hence, in this paper we investigate scheduling techniques, namely, Fair Proportion (FP), Modified-Largest Weighted Delay First (MLWDF) and Exponential Scheduling (ES). The performance of the network is analyses in term of spectral efficiency, throughput and delay, found to be more effective compare to existing method used in literature. Combined MLWDF-ES has 38% better spectral efficiency compared to the literature value.
Does early radiography alter remanipulation rates in paediatric forearm fractures?

In paediatric patients with a forearm fracture, treated with manipulation under anaesthesia with fluoroscopic guidance, protocol varies whether a day 1 post‐operative radiograph is performed. The primary aim of this study is to evaluate whether this investigation changes the management of a patient. Secondary aims evaluated number of reinterventions and factors associated with loss of position.
Alternative yeasts for winemaking: Saccharomyces non-cerevisiae and its hybrids

ABSTRACT Wine fermentation has not significantly changed since ancient times and the most traditional aspects are seen by the market as elements that uplift wine nuances and quality. In recent years, new trends have emerged from the sector in line with consumer preferences, and due to the effects of global climate change on grape ripening. In the first cases, the consumers are looking for wines with less ethanol and fruitier aromas and in the second cases the wineries want to reduce the wine alcohol levels and/or astringency. New yeast starters of alternative Saccharomyces species and their hybrids can help to solve some problems that wineries face. In this article we review several physiological and genetic aspects of S. uvarum and S. kudriavzevii and the hybrids, which are especially relevant during the winemaking process, such as their good fermentative capabilities at low temperatures, resulting in wines with lower alcohol and higher glycerol amounts.
A Modified Image Fusion Using Guided Filtering and Bilinear Interpolation

A modified image fusion using guided filtering is proposed in this paper. In this method, a guided filter is used to decompose the source images into base layer and detail layer. A weight map of the base layer is computed by applying gaussian and laplacian pyramidal approach. A fused base layer and detail layer are computed from the weight map of the base layer and decomposed source image output obtained detail layer respectively. The fused base layer and fused detail layer are combined to obtain the fused image and bilinear interpolation is applied to get the resultant fused image. The performance of the fusion method is evaluated using Normalized mutual information, Yang‟s and Cvejic‟s metric. The results show that the proposed fusion method is better than the existing image fusion using guided filtering (IFUGF).
OpenCL-based optimizations for acceleration of object tracking on FPGAs and GPUs

OpenCL support across many heterogeneous nodes (FPGAs, GPUs, CPUs) has increased the programmability of these systems significantly. At the same time, it opens up new challenges and design choices for system designers and application programmers. While OpenCL offers a universal semantic to capture the parallel behavior of applications independent of the target architecture, some customization should take place at the source-level to increase the efficiency of the target platform. In this paper, we study the impact of source-level optimizations on the overall execution time of OpenCL programs on heterogeneous systems. We focus on Meanshift Object Tracking (MSOT) algorithm as a highly challenging compute-intense vision kernel. we propose a new vertical classification for selecting the grain of parallelism for MSOT algorithm across two mainstream architecture classes (GPUs and FPGAs). Our results show that both finegrained and coarse-grained parallelism can greatly benefit GPU execution (up to a 6X speed-up), while the FPGA can only benefit from fine-grained parallelism (up to a 4X speed-up). However, the FPGA can largely benefit from executing both the parallel and serial parts of the program on the device (up to a 21X speed-up).
Platelet Malonyldialdehyde Formation: An Indicator of Platelet Hyperfunction

Summary In 25 normal controls (Group I) and in 23 patients (Groups II and III) platelet malonyldialdehyde formation in the presence of N-ethyl maleimide (NEM) or thrombin was evaluated as an indicator of enhanced platelet function. 12 patients (Group III) with diabetes mellitus, nephrotic syndrome, or acute lymphatic leukemia in remission either exhibited spontaneous platelet aggregation (6/12), or enhanced platelet aggregation to minimal concentrations of ADP and Epinephrine (6/12). In these same Group III patients platelet malonyldialdehyde formation was markedly increased (p <0.0005) when compared to the values in the Group I normal controls. Studies in the 12 abnormal subjects later revealed normal aggregation patterns in 6/12 on follow-up evaluation. Concomitant estimation of platelet malonyldialdehyde at this time revealed a decrease into the normal range for platelet malonyldialdehyde values in the presence of thrombin in these 6 patients. Although significantly decreased from initial levels, (p <0.0005) malonyldialdehyde estimation in the presence of NEM was still slightly above the normal range. In 11 patients (Group II) both platelet aggregation tracings and malonyldialdehyde formation was normal and similar to values in the control population. Platelet malonyldialdehyde is a byproduct of the platelet endoperoxides which are intermediaries in the sequence of platelet prostaglandin synthesis. These results, therefore, suggest that part of the phenomenon of platelet hyperaggregability is intrinsic to the platelet and may involve platelet prostaglandin synthesis. The estimation of platelet malonyldialdehyde is a simple technique which appears to detect platelet hyperfunction.
Preservation of truncal genomic alterations in clear cell and papillary renal cell carcinomas with sarcomatoid features: An intra‐ and intertumoral, multifocal fluorescence in situ hybridization analysis reveals limited genetic heterogeneity

Understanding tumor genomic heterogeneity may offer vital information in an age of targeted therapy for renal cell carcinoma. We sought to investigate hallmark truncal chromosomal alterations between conventional, sarcomatoid, and matched metastatic tumor foci in clear cell and papillary renal cell carcinomas. A retrospective review identified 58 cases including clear cell (CCRCC) and papillary renal cell carcinomas (PRCC). All cases contained sarcomatoid transformation. Additionally, 10 of 58 patients had matched metastatic disease available for analysis. Three separate foci of conventional and sarcomatoid morphologies were analyzed in each tumor using dual color interphase fluorescence in situ hybridization. In the CCRCC cohort, hallmark chromosome 3p deletion was identified in 71% of cases (37/52). Complete concordance of chromosomal status between intratumoral foci in sarcomatoid and conventional foci was 89% and 86%, respectively. Overall chromosome 3p status between matched conventional and sarcomatoid morphologies was identified in 98% of cases (51/52). Hallmark 3p deletion was present in 91% of CCRCC metastatic samples (10/11) and was concordant with the matched primary CCRCC tumor in 91% (10/11). In the PRCC cohort, trisomy 7 and 17 was identified in all six cases (6/6). Complete concordance between intratumoral foci of trisomy 7 and 17 was 83% (5/6). Trisomy 7 and 17 were identified in all metastatic PRCC samples with 100% concordance with the matched primary tumor. These data show the relative preservation of truncal chromosomal abnormalities between conventional and sarcomatoid morphologic as well as matched metastatic settings.
Sources of Economic Growth in the Southern African Development Community: Its Likely Impact on Povery and Employment

Abstract As a means to combat poverty, many countries still pursue high and stable rates of economic growth. In order to attain sustained economic growth, it is crucial that countries do not only accumulate a certain stock of factors of production, but demonstrate the ability to combine such factors in an efficient manner. This study attempts to investigate the key sources of economic growth in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, using different panel data techniques, and make inference on poverty and employment. The findings reveal that factors affecting economic growth in the region are: inflation, government expenditures, openness to trade, human capital, level of financial development, and political stability. Furthermore, from the analysis it can be inferred that a higher growth rate has a positive impact on employment and, hence, may lead to poverty reduction.
Sexual Behaviors and Results of Bacterial Sexually Transmitted Infections Testing Among Frail HIV-Infected Individuals

Background: The impact of premature frailty in HIV-infected individuals on the prevalence of sexual behaviors and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) is unknown. Methods: We compared these factors among individuals aged ≥18 years, who had prior determination of a frailty phenotype at the Washington University HIV Clinic between June and December 2008. All P values were 2-tailed and considered significant at <. 05. Results: Of 445 individuals (71% male, 30% Caucasian, median age 43 years) assessed, the prevalence of frailty was 9%. Reports of recent sexual activity (44%) did not differ by frailty status. Consistent condom use (69% overall) was similar between sexually active frail and nonfrail individuals, and there was no significant difference in STI prevalence between groups (0 vs 32 [9%], P = .08). Conclusion: In this relatively young population, frailty did not affect reports of recent sexual activity or consistent condom use and no significant difference in STI prevalence was observed.
Hepatic phenylalanine metabolism measured by the [13C]phenylalanine breath test

Background The amino acid clearance test including phenylalanine is known to reflect liver functional reserve, which correlates with surgical outcome; however, the procedure is not clinically useful because of its laborious and time‐consuming nature. This study evaluates whether phenylalanine oxidation capacity measured by a breath test could reflect liver functional reserve.
The Use Of A Coarse BEM Mesh To Speed Up TheOptimisation Process In Inverse ElectricalImpedance Tomography

A reduced model technique based on a coarse boundary element method (BEM) mesh is developed in order to increase the rate of convergence of a genetic algorithm (GA) used for solving a non-destructive evaluation problem. The inverse problem investigated consists of identifying the geometry of discontinuities in a conductive material with isotropic conductivity from Cauchy data measurements taken on the boundary. In this study we use a coarse BEM to provide problem specific information for the GA operators in order to detect efficiently, from a computational time point of view, an isotropic inclusion, such as a circle. The genetic algorithms based method developed is found to be a robust, fast and efficient method for detecting the size and location of subsurface inclusions.