Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antistaphylococcal activities of teicoplanin and vancomycin in vitro and in an experimental infection

The efficacies of vancomycin and teicoplanin in an experimental Staphylococcus aureus infection in granulocytopenic mice were related to their activities in vitro and their pharmacokinetic profiles. In vitro teicoplanin had a higher intrinsic activity than vancomycin did; and it also had a more favorable pharmacokinetic profile, resulting in higher peak concentrations in plasma, a longer elimination half-life, and a larger area under the concentration-time curve than those of vancomycin. To predict the antibacterial efficacies of the drugs in vivo on the basis of their activities in vitro and pharmacokinetics, a mathematical model was applied. In the model the in vitro effect was expressed as the difference in growth rate between control cultures and those in the presence of the antibiotic (ER), and the in vivo effect was expressed as the difference between numbers of CFU in control and antibiotic-treated animals (EN). The integral of ER against time, ERt, was calculated by using the concentrations found in vivo. A significant linear relationship was found between EN and ERt for different dosages at the same times (4 h) after drug administration as well as for the same doses at consecutive times, although at the lowest doses of teicoplanin the observed effect was less than the predicted effect.
Does maternal docosahexaenoic acid supplementation during pregnancy and lactation lower BMI in late infancy?

Abstract We compared growth of infants whose mothers either did or did not receive docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) supplements during pregnancy and lactation. At 21 weeks' gestation, 144 women were enrolled into a randomized, double-blind clinical trial receiving: (1) a basic supplement consisting of vitamins and minerals (BS), or (2) BS plus 4.5 g fructooligosaccharide (BSF), or (3) BSF plus fish oil DHA (200 mg) until the end of the third month of lactation. Infants' length, weight and head circumference were measured at birth and at 1, 3 and 21 months. A total of 51 mothers/infants were lost to follow-up by the third month and 24 at 21 months. The two groups not receiving DHA were combined into a control group. Analysis with mixed models adjusted for confounding factors showed a significant time dependent effect for the DHA group on the development of the body mass index (BMI) (P=0.037), and of weight (P=0.046), but no effect on the development of length (P=0.537), or of head circumference (P=0.267). At 21 months, weight of the DHA group was lower by −601 g (95% CI −171; −1030 g) and BMI was lower by −0.76 kg/m2 (95% CI −0.07; −1.46) compared to controls. The results indicate that DHA taken by pregnant and lactating mothers may reduce BMI in late infancy.
Outcome and Prognostic Factors of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in Children at the National Cancer Institute, Egypt

Objective: To improve survival of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in the authors’ institute and to define significant prognostic factors. Methods: This study included 154 children with newly diagnosed ALL below the age of 18 years during the period August 1, 1998, to December 31, 2000. All patients were treated according to the NCI, Cairo, Egypt, treatment protocol modified from study XIII for high-risk ALL of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Results: B-cell precursor phenotype was encountered in 73.4% of patients, T-cell in 26.6%. According to NCI/Rome criteria for risk classification, 58.4% of patients were in the high-risk group (90% of T-lineage compared with 47% of B-lineage ALL, P < 0.001). Nine patients (5.8%) died during induction and 10 patients (6.5%) failed to achieve remission. With a median follow-up of 43 months, the 3-year disease-free survival and its probability at 5 years were 80 ± 3.6% and 75.3 ± 4%, respectively; the 3-year event-free survival and its probability at 5 years were 69 ± 3.8% and 65.2 ± 4%, respectively. B-cell precursor ALL had 5-year probabilities of disease-free survival and event-free survival of 80.5 ± 4% and 71.8 ± 4.5% compared with 60.2 ± 8.6% and 46.7 ± 8% for T-cell, respectively (P < 0.01, log-rank test). Prognostic factors that had a statistically significant unfavorable impact on survival by univariate analysis were age 10 years or more, central nervous system involvement, T-lineage phenotype, high-risk group, DNA index less than 1.16, and slow early response to treatment. By multivariate analysis, central nervous system involvement, high-risk group, and slow early response to treatment still had prognostic significance. Risk classification demonstrated prognostic significance for B-lineage but not T-lineage ALL. Conclusions: This treatment protocol was effective in improving ALL survival among patients at the authors’ institute compared with previous trials, although the outcome remains lower than that in more industrialized countries. Prognostic factors defined in this study were similar to those identified by other cooperative groups.
Strategy of experimental design for intensification of solvent extraction of natural antioxidant flavonoids and phenols from buckthorn textured leaves

Abstract Prior to solvent extraction of plant-based active molecules, adequate texturing by Détente Instantanée Contrôlée (DIC; French for “Instant controlled pressure drop”) results in overcoming the slow diffusion of the solvent/solute through the solid matrix. This work aimed at determining the impact of DIC pretreatments on buckthorn (Rhamnus alaternus L.) morphology. DIC-operating parameters were selected as the saturated steam pressure, the thermal treatment time, and the number of cycles. A three-parameter five-level response surface method was used to optimize DIC processing parameters. Response factors were the overall and individual yields of flavonol aglycone extraction, and antioxidant activity of both expanded dried material (swell dried leaves) and extracts. The yield of flavonol aglycones was 18.23 mg Kaemp eq/g dry basis (mg Kaemp eq/g db) in 3 min for DIC-treated buckthorn, against 12.24 mg Kaemp eq/g db in 150 min for untreated natural buckthorn raw material. Furthermore, the antioxidant activity of DIC-treated material was exceptionally higher and the effectiveness of reducing power of DPPH radical was 68 times more than the untreated plant material.
SUMO-1 Modification of PIASy, an E3 Ligase, Is Necessary for PIASy-Dependent Activation of Tcf-4

ABSTRACT We have previously shown that modification of Tcf-4, a transcription factor in the Wnt pathway, with SUMO by PIASy, a SUMO E3 ligase, enhances its transcriptional activity. Since PIASy itself was also modified with SUMO-1, we studied the role of sumoylation of PIASy in the regulation of Tcf-4. Lys35 was found to be a sumoylation site of PIASy. PIASyK35R, in which Lys35 was mutated to Arg, did not enhance sumoylation of Tcf-4, although this PIASy mutant did not lose the ligase activity of sumoylation for other proteins. Wild-type PIASy and PIASyK35R showed a distinct distribution in the nucleus, although both were colocalized with Tcf-4. Promyelocytic leukemia protein, which is involved in transcriptional regulation, was associated with PIASyK35R more frequently than wild-type PIASy in the nucleus. PIASyK35R could not stimulate the transcriptional activity of Tcf-4 under the conditions in which wild-type PIASy enhanced it. Conjugation of SUMO-1 to the amino terminus of PIASyK35R neither enhanced sumoylation of Tcf-4 nor stimulated the transcriptional activity of Tcf-4. These results suggest that sumoylation of Lys35 in PIASy determines the nuclear localization of PIASy and that it is necessary for PIASy-dependent sumoylation and transcriptional activation of Tcf-4.
Linear Transceive Filters for Relay Stations with Multiple Antennas in the Two-Way Relay Channel

This paper considers the two-hop relaying case where two nodes S1 and S2 in a wireless network can communicate with each other via an intermediate relay station (RS) which is equipped with multiple antennas and cannot transmit and receive simultaneously on the same channel resources. In oneway relaying, four orthogonal channel resources are required for the transmissions from S1 to S2 and from S2 to S1. MIMO two-way relaying has been introduced as an approach which requires only half the channel resources compared to one-way relaying due to the simultaneous transmission from S1 to S2 and vice versa. For MIMO two-way relaying, a spatial filter matrix is required at the RS which applies both, transmit and receive processing. The design of linear spatial filter matrices, termed transceive filter matrices, is given in this paper. In particular, linear transceive filters are derived which fulfill the zero forcing (ZF) and minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion, respectively. It is shown that the linear MMSE transceive filter outperforms the linear ZF transceive filter in terms of overall bit error rate (BER). However, for different channel qualities on the two channels to the RS, the choice of the transceive filter influences which direction of communication has a better BER performance.
The Relation of Overweight to Cardiovascular Risk Factors Among Children and Adolescents: The Bogalusa Heart Study

Background. Although overweight and obesity in childhood are related to dyslipidemia, hyperinsulinemia, and hypertension, most studies have examined levels of these risk factors individually or have used internal cutpoints (eg, quintiles) to classify overweight and risk factors. Objective. We used cutpoints derived from several national studies to examine the relation of overweight (Quetelet index, >95th percentile) to adverse risk factor levels and risk factor clustering. Design. The sample consisted of 9167 5- to 17-year-olds examined in seven cross-sectional studies conducted by the Bogalusa Heart Study between 1973 and 1994. Results. About 11% of examined schoolchildren were considered overweight. Although adverse lipid, insulin, and blood pressure levels did not vary substantially with the Quetelet index at levels <85th percentile, risk factor prevalences increased greatly at higher levels of the Quetelet index. Overweight schoolchildren were 2.4 times as likely as children with a Quetelet index <85th percentile to have an elevated level of total cholesterol. Odds ratios for other associations were 2.4 (diastolic blood pressure), 3.0 (low-density lipoprotein cholesterol), 3.4 (high-density lipoprotein cholesterol), 4.5 (systolic blood pressure), 7.1 (triglycerides), and 12.6 (fasting insulin). Several of these associations differed between whites and blacks, and by age. Of the 813 overweight schoolchildren, 475 (58%) were found to have at least one risk factor. Furthermore, the use of overweight as a screening tool could identify 50% of schoolchildren who had two or more risk factors. Conclusions. Because overweight is associated with various risk factors even among young children, it is possible that the successful prevention and treatment of obesity in childhood could reduce the adult incidence of cardiovascular disease.overweight, lipids, blood pressure, insulin, children, adolescents.
Big Data - Analytics Engine for Digital Transformation: Where is IS?

It is estimated that 90% of today’s existing data in the world has been created in the last two years (IBM 2015). Four Zettabytes (4 trillion GB) of data are created every year. Data come from sensors, scientific instruments, medical devices, smart phones; digital media including text, video, audio, email, blogs, postings, twitter feeds, click streams, financial and other transactions. The big promise here is that together with traditional data sources, big data offers unprecedented opportunities to study the “pulse of humanity” at granularity levels that were never available before.
Data Cache with Distributed Cache: A Design Approach

Caching techniques has helped developers to deliver applications that are capable of fast turnaround time which otherwise could have been much slower and under-performed software solutions, less worthy of user’s appreciation. Caching can typically be used at both hardware and software levels with the same ultimate goal of either achieving higher throughput or higher latency or both together. Limiting the subject to software level cache, the caching techniques could further be introduced in one of the two categories namely web cache and data cache. While web cache is often defined in the context of a browser which is a clientside application, the data cache is defined in the context of caching needs of a data extensive application. In terms of a database management system, it means a cache provisioned at the database services itself whereas, in the context of the application, it means the cache that spans through layers of the application, more precisely termed as tiers in a multi-tier application that is designed to cache an already queried data. The requirement of frequent data access in high volumes, in distributed applications, drives the need for more capable infrastructure towards building a caching framework. In this paper, we focus our discussion on data cache requirements of a distributed application and the key design factors that distinguish a distributed cache as an elegant cache service provider plugin to such distributed applications. We also propose a simplistic design that could be used to implement the core of a custom distributed cache.
[The influence of the arterial pressure in the study of cerebrovascular reactivity in carotid obstructions].

INTRODUCTION Cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) is the capacity of the cerebral microcirculation to increase cerebral blood flow on vasodilator stimulation. This is reduced in patients with carotid obstruction. The changes in arterial pressure produced whilst carrying out different tests for estimation of the CVR may affect its measurement by transcranial Doppler. OBJECTIVES To evaluate the concordance between the different methods for estimation of the CVR by transcranial Doppler in patients with carotid obstruction and to evaluate the importance of monitoring the arterial pressure during CVR tests. PATIENTS AND METHODS We evaluated 17 patients with internal carotid artery obstruction confirmed on arteriography. The CVR was determined by three different methods: apnea test. Breath-Holding Index (BHI) and intravenous acetazolamide test. RESULTS During the tests of RCV the arterial pressure was monitored. We found that there was a reduction in the average basal rate of flow and of the pulsatile index on the obstructed side, with a statistically significant association in relation to the contralateral side (p < 0.001). There was good concordance between the different tests of CVR, with reduced CVR seen on the obstructed side as compared to the contralateral side (p < 0.001) for the different tests. However, this correlation was not seen in stenosis < 70%. During the apnea test changes in blood pressure occurred, with a tendency to increase in the systolic pressure. However, there were no significant changes in blood pressure during the acetazolamide test. CONCLUSIONS There is good concordance in the CVR between the apnea, BHI and acetazolamide tests in carotid obstruction. Changes in arterial pressure occurred during the apnea and BHI tests. However, the acetazolamide test caused no change in arterial pressure.
Fascin expression is related to poor survival in gastric cancer

Fascin is an actin‐binding protein that provides mechanical support and cell motility, and involves cancer cell metastasis. We investigated fascin protein expression in gastric cancer and assessed their relationship with clinicopathologic parameters and survival rates. In addition, we researched galectin‐3 protein expression to study fascin action mechanisms. We performed immunohistochemisty with fascin and galectin‐3 antibodies in 471 gastric carcinomas, using tissue microarrays. Fascin was positive in 14.9% (70/471) of the samples, and fascin expression was related to worse survival rates (P < 0.001), high clinical stage (P < 0.001), high T stage (P < 0.001), nodal metastasis (P < 0.001), lymphovascular invasion (P= 0.001) and the intestinal type of Lauren classification (P= 0.015). Galectin‐3 protein expression was positive in 83.9% (395/471) of the samples and was reversely correlated with fascin protein expression (P= 0.020). Galectin‐3 expression was related to low clinical stage (P < 0.001), but not to survival rates in multivariate analysis. In multivariate analysis, fascin expression was related to worse survival rates (HR = 1.56, P= 0.036), and can be an independent poor prognostic factor in gastric cancer.
A Brief Note on the Validity and Reliability of the Rating of Perceived Exertion Scale in Monitoring Exercise Intensity among Chinese Older Adults in Hong Kong

This study examined the validity and reliability of the Cantonese Borg 6–20 Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale in monitoring exercise intensity among Chinese older adults. A total of 40 apparently healthy older adults (16 men, 24 women; M age = 69.8yr., SD = 4.56) performed two trials of three intermittent exercise tests administered in random order using the cycle ergometer. Results revealed significant differences of RPE, HR, and VO2 between different workloads, and there were moderate to high correlations between RPE and HR and VO2, respectively. Results also found moderate consistency of RPE between Trial 1 and Trial 2. These indicated that the Cantonese 6–20 RPE scale can be used as a valid and reliable tool for monitoring exercise intensity among the Chinese older adults.
Estimating physiological skin parameters from hyperspectral signatures

Abstract. We describe an approach for estimating human skin parameters, such as melanosome concentration, collagen concentration, oxygen saturation, and blood volume, using hyperspectral radiometric measurements (signatures) obtained from in vivo skin. We use a computational model based on Kubelka-Munk theory and the Fresnel equations. This model forward maps the skin parameters to a corresponding multiband reflectance spectra. Machine-learning-based regression is used to generate the inverse map, and hence estimate skin parameters from hyperspectral signatures. We test our methods using synthetic and in vivo skin signatures obtained in the visible through the short wave infrared domains from 24 patients of both genders and Caucasian, Asian, and African American ethnicities. Performance validation shows promising results: good agreement with the ground truth and well-established physiological precepts. These methods have potential use in the characterization of skin abnormalities and in minimally-invasive prescreening of malignant skin cancers.
A New Architecture for Real Time Data Stream Processing

Processing a data stream in real time is a crucial issue for several applications, however processing a large amount of data from different sources, such as sensor networks, web traffic, social media, video streams and other sources, represents a huge challenge. The main problem is that the big data system is based on Hadoop technology, especially MapReduce for processing. This latter is a high scalability and fault tolerant framework. It also processes a large amount of data in batches and provides perception blast insight of older data, but it can only process a limited set of data. MapReduce is not appropriate for real time stream processing, and is very important to process data the moment they arrive at a fast response and a good decision making. Ergo the need for a new architecture that allows real-time data processing with high speed along with low latency. The major aim of the paper at hand is to give a clear survey of the different open sources technologies that exist for real-time data stream processing including their system architectures. We shall also provide a brand new architecture which is mainly based on previous comparisons of real-time processing powered with machine learning and storm technology.
Expression and localization of Drosophila melanogaster hsp70 cognate proteins

Monoclonal antibodies have been used to identify three proteins in Drosophila melanogaster that share antigenic determinants with the major heat shock proteins hsp70 and hsp68. While two of the proteins are major proteins at all developmental stages, one heat shock cognate protein, hsc70, is especially enriched in embryos. hsc70 is shown to be the product of a previously identified gene, Hsc4. We have examined the levels of hsp70-related proteins in adult flies and larvae during heat shock and recovery. At maximal induction in vivo, hsp70 and hsp68 never reach the basal levels of the major heat shock cognate proteins. Monoclonal antibodies to hsc70 have been used to localize it to a meshwork of cytoplasmic fibers that are heavily concentrated around the nucleus.
Kinematics of a metamorphic robotic system

A metamorphic robotic system is a collection of mechatronic modules, each of which has the ability to connect, disconnect, and climb over adjacent modules. A change in the macroscopic morphology results from the locomotion of each module over its neighbors. That is, a metamorphic system can dynamically self-reconfigure. Metamorphic systems can therefore be viewed as a large swarm of physically connected robotic modules which collectively act as a single entity. What separates metamorphic systems from other reconfigurable robots is that they possess all of the following properties: (1) self-reconfigurability without outside help; (2) a large number of homogeneous modules; and (3) physical constraints ensure contact between modules. In this paper, the kinematic constraints governing a particular metamorphic robot are addressed. <<ETX>>
Efficacy of Alternate-Day Dosing Versus Daily Dosing of Atorvastatin

Background: Atorvastatin is a synthetic inhibitor of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase. In placebo-controlled trials, it has been shown to achieve significant dose-dependent reductions in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, total cholesterol, and triglycerides. This trial compared the efficacy of daily atorvastatin administration with that of alternate-day dosing.Methods: This was a randomized, prospective, nonblinded, controlled clinical trial. Fiftyfour patients with low-density lipoprotein cholesterol of 100 to 200 mg/dL were enrolled. Baseline fasting lipid profile (total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and triglycerides), liver function tests (aspartate transaminase and alanine aminotransferase), and creatine kinase were drawn. Patients were randomized to three atorvastatin dose groups. Group I received 10 mg of atorvastatin every day, Group II received 10 mg every other day, and Group III received 20 mg every other day. After 6 weeks of treatment with atorvastatin, fasting lipid profiles, liver function tests, and creatine kinase concentrations were redrawn. Compliance to treatment was assessed at each visit.Results: Of the 54 patients enrolled, 46 completed the study. All three regimens significantly reduced total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol compared to baseline. No statistically significant differences existed between the three groups in regards to total, or a percentage, decrease in total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol at 6 weeks compared to baseline. All regimens were well tolerated and none of the patients had a significant elevation of liver enzymes or creatine kinase during the course of the study.Conclusion: Alternate-day dosing of atorvastatin is an efficacious and safe alternative to daily dosing.