Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Attitudes Among Surgeons Towards Live-Donor Nephrectomy: A European Update

Background The increasing number of living kidney donors in the last decade has led to the development of novel surgical techniques for live-donor nephrectomy. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the current status of the surgical approach in Europe. Methods A survey was sent to 119 transplant centers in 12 European countries. Questions included the number of donors, the technique used, and the acceptance of donors with comorbidities. Results Ninety-six centers (81%) replied. The number of living donors per center ranged from 0 to 124. Thirty-one institutions (32%) harvested kidneys using open techniques only. Six centers (6%) applied both endoscopic and open techniques; 59 centers (61%) performed endoscopic donor nephrectomy only. Lack of evidence that endoscopic techniques provide superior results was the main reason for still performing open donor nephrectomy. In seven centers, a lumbotomy is still performed. Seventy-two centers (75%) accept donors with a body mass index of more than 30 kg/m2, the median upper limit in these centers was 35 kg/m2 (range, 31–40). Donors with an American Society of Anesthesiologists classification higher than 1 were accepted in 55% of the centers. Conclusions Live kidney donation in general and minimally invasive donor nephrectomy in particular are more commonly applied in Northern and Western Europe. However, a classic lumbotomy is still performed in a minority of centers. Because minimally invasive techniques have been proven superior, more attention should be given to educational programs in this field to let many kidney donors benefit.
The correlation integral and the independence of stochastic processes

A generalization of the correlation integral of Grassberger and Procaccia is used to develop a statistic that has the property that it is asymptotically zero if and only if the underlying Gaussian process is independent. The same implication also holds for certain related processes. It is shown that the stastistic is asymptotically normal for weakly dependent stationary processes. An example is given of a zero autocovariance process. It also applies to ARCH (autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic) random variables.
ABCA1 agonist peptides for the treatment of disease

Purpose of review The review summarizes information pertaining to the preclinical development of new apolipoprotein (apo) E mimetic peptides that stimulate cellular cholesterol efflux. Recent findings Small &agr;-helical peptides based on the C-terminal domain of apoE have been developed for therapeutic applications. These peptides stimulate cellular cholesterol efflux via the ATP-binding cassette transporter A1 (ABCA1) with high potency, like native apolipoproteins on a molar basis. This potent activity has been related to the unique ability of these peptides to maintain &agr;-helix structure upon dilution. Recent structure-activity studies improving the safety features of these mimetic peptides have greatly improved their potential for clinical use. These studies have identified structural features of the class A &agr;-helix motif that induce muscle toxicity and hypertriglyceridemia, which may have implications for the design of other HDL mimetic peptides. Summary ABCA1 is an integral membrane protein that plays a central role in biology. Its principal function is to mediate the efflux of cholesterol and phospholipid from cells to extracellular apo, preventing a build-up of excess cholesterol in membranes. This process generates HDL particles that perform a variety of functions to protect against disease. A number of these functions can be viewed as directly or indirectly supporting ABCA1 activity, thus constituting a positive feedback system to optimize cellular lipid efflux responses and disease prevention. Consequently, therapeutic approaches that mimic the activities of apos may prove highly effective to combat disease. One such approach involves the use of peptides. The broad biological relevance of ABCA1 suggests these apo mimetic peptides may be useful for the treatment of a number of diseases, such as atherosclerosis, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease.
Symptoms and Physical Activity Among Adults With Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis

This study examined overall and specific symptoms as cross-sectional correlates of physical activity in persons with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). We expected that overall symptoms would be inversely associated with physical activity, and that the association would be accounted for by fatigue, depression, and pain. The sample included 269 individuals with a definite diagnosis of RRMS who completed a battery of questionnaires and then wore an accelerometer for 7 days. Data were analyzed using covariance modeling in Mplus. The primary model (chi square = 13.89, df = 10, p = 0.18, SRMR = 0.03, comparative fit index = 0.99) demonstrated that the path between overall symptoms and physical activity was indirect by way of fatigue (indirect path coefficient = −0.15) and depression (indirect path coefficient = −0.10). Such findings provide support for an indirect association between overall symptoms and physical activity by way of fatigue and depression in RRMS.
Still At Risk: What Students Don't Know, Even Now: A Report from Common Core

new survey of 17-yearolds reveals that, to many, the paragraph above sounds only slightly strange. Almost 20 percent of 1,200 respondents to a national telephone survey do not know who our enemy was in World War II, and more than a quarter think Columbus sailed after 1750. Half do not know whom Sen. McCarthy investigated or what the Renaissance was. It is easy to make light of such ignorance. In reality, however, a deep lack of knowledge is neither humorous nor trivial. What we know helps to determine how successful we are likely to be in life, and how many career paths we can choose from. It also affects our contribution as democratic citizens. Unfortunately, too many young Americans do not possess the kind of basic knowledge they need. When asked fundamental questions about U.S. history and culture, they score a D and exhibit stunning knowledge gaps:
Melatonin: hormone of the night

Melatonin is phylogenetically an ancient biological signalling system and has been identified as present in all major organisms, including bacteria, plants, invertebrate and vertebrate species (1). It appears to be a molecule with a multitude of biological functions, signalling not only the time of day and of the year but, perhaps, possessing immunomodulatory and cytoprotective effects (2). It is certainly among the first biological signals to appear on earth (3). Melatonin is nocturnally derived by synthesis from tryptophan via serotonin, principally in the pineal gland, but extra-pineal sources of melatonin are also recognised, e.g. in the retina and gastrointestinal (GI) tract (2). The physiological and pharmacological mechanisms controlling the secretion of the hormone, at least in mammals, have been recognised for several decades (4). Regulation of synthesis is mediated by the retinohypothalamic tract, which projects from the retina to the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), the major circadian oscillator in the body. Fibres pass from the SCN to the paraventricular nucleus, medial forebrain and reticular formation to influence the interomedial dorsal horn cells of the spinal cord where preganglionic sympathetic neurons innervate the superior cervical ganglion (SCG). The fibres of the SCG terminate on pinealocytes and regulate melatonin synthesis by releasing noradrenaline on to β-receptors (4). The absence of light decreases activity in the SCN, while pinealocyte activity is increased, particularly the production of the synthesis limiting enzyme N-acetyl transferase (4). Melatonin concentrations in plasma rise with the onset of darkness and begin to decline again in the early morning. This circadian rhythm persists in vertebrates irrespective of whether the animal is active at night or during daylight. Actions of melatonin are most likely mediated through a set of membrane receptors, MT1 and MT2 (5). These belong to the G-protein coupled seven trans-membrane spanning domain class of receptors. Each of the receptors may have particular functions such as induction of phase shifts (MT2) or suppression of neuronal firing (MT1). In addition to central effects some peripheral actions, e.g. vasoconstriction (MT1) and vasodilation (MT2), may also be mediated by melatonin receptors (5). Thus, several physiological functions have been proposed for melatonin. Melatonin has been used as a marker of circadian phase, and plays an important role in the setting of circadian rhythms (6). Perhaps one of the better known uses of melatonin is its purported efficacy as a reliever of the symptoms of ‘jet lag’ (7). Antioxidant properties of melatonin have attracted attention, and its role as an oncostatic agent has also been examined (2,8). In psychiatric research, melatonin is of some interest, principally because of apparent circadian rhythm disturbances in major depressive disorder (9). The role of melatonin in sleep, as a probable signal for sleep onset, has clear implications for the treatment of psychiatric patients.
Hepatic transforming growth factor beta gives rise to tumor‐initiating cells and promotes liver cancer development

Liver cirrhosis is a predominant risk factor for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, the mechanism underlying the progression from cirrhosis to HCC remains unclear. Herein we report the concurrent increase of liver progenitor cells (LPCs) and transforming growth factor‐β (TGF‐β) in diethylnitrosamine (DEN)‐induced rat hepatocarcinogenesis and cirrhotic livers of HCC patients. Using several experimental approaches, including 2‐acetylaminofluorene/partial hepatectomy (2‐AAF/PHx) and 3,5‐diethoxycarbonyl‐1,4‐dihydrocollidine (DDC)‐elicited murine liver regeneration, we found that activation of LPCs in the absence of TGF‐β induction was insufficient to trigger hepatocarcinogenesis. Moreover, a small fraction of LPCs was detected to coexpress tumor initiating cell (T‐IC) markers during rat hepatocarcinogenesis and in human HCCs, and TGF‐β levels were positively correlated with T‐IC marker expression, which indicates a role of TGF‐β in T‐IC generation. Rat pluripotent LPC‐like WB‐F344 cells were exposed to low doses of TGF‐β for 18 weeks imitating the enhanced TGF‐β expression in cirrhotic liver. Interestingly, long‐term treatment of TGF‐β on WB‐F344 cells impaired their LPC potential but granted them T‐IC properties including expression of T‐IC markers, increased self‐renewal capacity, stronger chemoresistance, and tumorigenicity in NOD‐SCID mice. Hyperactivation of Akt but not Notch, signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3), or mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) was detected in TGF‐β‐treated WB‐F344 cells. Introduction of the dominant‐negative mutant of Akt significantly attenuated T‐IC properties of those transformed WB‐F344 cells, indicating Akt was required in TGF‐β‐mediated‐generation of hepatic T‐ICs. We further demonstrate that TGF‐β‐induced Akt activation and LPC transformation was mediated by microRNA‐216a‐modulated phosphatase and tensin homolog deleted on chromosome 10 (PTEN) suppression. Conclusion: Hepatoma‐initiating cells may derive from hepatic progenitor cells exposed to chronic and constant TGF‐β stimulation in cirrhotic liver, and pharmaceutical inhibition of microRNA‐216a/PTEN/Akt signaling could be a novel strategy for HCC prevention and therapy targeting hepatic T‐ICs. (HEPATOLOGY 2012;56:2255–2267)
Cat cerebral arterial smooth muscle cells express cytochrome P450 4A2 enzyme and produce the vasoconstrictor 20‐HETE which enhances L‐type Ca2+ current

1 Cerebral arteries express cytochrome P450 4A enzymes (P450 4A) and produce 20‐ hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid (20‐HETE), a potent constrictor of pial arterioles. It is not known which cell type in the vessel wall is responsible for the formation of 20‐HETE. We examined whether freshly isolated cerebral arterial muscle cells (VSMCs) express P450 4A and produce 20‐HETE. We also studied the effect of 20‐HETE on pressurized cerebral arteries and on whole‐cell L‐type Ca2+current (ICa) recorded in cat cerebral VSMCs. 2 Cat cerebral VSMCs incubated with [14C]arachidonic acid ([14C]AA) produced 20‐HETE (3.9 ± 1.1 pmol min−1 (mg protein)−1). 3 Reverse transcription‐polymerase chain reaction studies revealed that cat cerebral VSMCs express mRNA for P450 4A which metabolizes AA to 20‐HETE. Cloning and sequencing of the cDNA amplified from mRNA isolated from VSMCs showed > 96 % amino acid homology to the rat and human P450 4A2 and 4A3. 4 20‐HETE (1–300 nM) induced a concentration‐dependent constriction of cat cerebral arteries, which was inhibited by nifedipine. 5 Addition of 10 and 100 nM 20‐HETE to the bath increased peak ICa by 50 ± 3 and 100 ± 10 %, respectively. This effect was not influenced by altering the frequency of depolarization. 20‐HETE (100 nM) failed to increase ICa in the presence of nifedipine. 6 These results demonstrate that cat cerebral VSMCs express P450 4A enzyme, and produce 20‐HETE which activates L‐type Ca2+ channel current to promote cerebral vasoconstriction.
A New Language Model Combining Single and Compound Terms

Most traditional information retrieval systems are based on single terms indexing. However, it is admitted that semantic content of a document (or a query) cannot be accurately captured by a simple set of independent keywords. Although, several works have incorporated phrases or other syntactic information in IR, such attempts have shown slight benefit, at best. Particularly in language modeling approaches this is achieved through the use of the big ram or n-gram models. However, in these models all big rams/n-grams are considered and weighted uniformly. In this paper we introduce a new approach to weight and consider only certain types of N-grams "compound terms". Experimental results on three test collections showed an improvement.
Fixed-size Pegasos for hinge and pinball loss SVM

Pegasos has become a widely acknowledged algorithm for learning linear Support Vector Machines. It utilizes properties of hinge loss and theory of strongly convex optimization problems for fast convergence rates and lower computational and memory costs. In this paper we adopt the recently proposed pinball loss for the Pegasos algorithm and show some advantages of using it in a variety of classification problems. First we present the newly derived Pegasos optimization objective with respect to pinball loss and analyze its properties and convergence rates. Additionally we present extensions of the Pegasos algorithm applied to the kernel-induced and Nyström approximated feature maps which introduce non-linearity in the input space. This is done using a Fixed-Size kernel method approach. Second we give experimental results for publicly available UCI datasets to justify the advantages and the importance of pinball loss for achieving a better classification accuracy and greater numerical stability in the partially or fully stochastic setting. Finally we conclude our paper with a brief discussion of the applicability of pinball loss to real-life problems.
Energy Density and its Role in the Control of Food Intake: Evidence from Metabolic and Community Studies

This review discusses the role that dietary composition and energy density play in the control of eating behaviour. The effect of dietary manipulations of fat and carbohydrate on energy intake remains controversial. We suggest this to be largely a consequence of different study designs. When low-fat foods are included in the diet and thus only some items manipulated subsequent food choice commonly ensures compensation and energy intake remains constant. However, when all items are manipulated and macronutrient composition fixed, an alteration in the energy density results in a parallel change in energy intake and there is no energy compensation. In addition, we hypothesise that hyperphagia on high-fat diets is a consequence of a high energy density rather than fat content per se. Independent of fat content, low energy dense diets generate greater satiety than high energy dense diets, suggesting that an important regulatory signal may be the weight or volume of food consumed. Epidemiological studies confirm that energy intake increases with energy density and thus weight loss may be best achieved on a low energy dense diet. Although the use of low-fat items may not reduce intake during covert manipulation, it may be successful during periods of deliberate dieting, providing that food-substitutions are not counter-balanced by other high density items.
Estimation of Traffic Incident Delay and its Impact Analysis Based on cell transmission model

Effective incident management and traffic control measurements require a full understanding of the characteristics of incidents to accurately estimate incident durations and to help make more efficient decisions to reduce the impacts of non recurring congestion due to these accidents. The Incident duration consist of four elements: detection time, response time, clearance time and recovery time. This paper develops a recovery model and incident delay model based on CTM, which has analytical simplicity and the ability to reproduce the traffic behavioral. Impact analysis of recovery time and incident delay have been done in quantity to demonstrate recovery time and delay during recovery time can not be neglected because it often accounts for larger proportion of the duration time and total delay especially in the city freeways. Accurate estimation of traffic incident delay is helpful to effective incident management and traffic control.
Climate change, markets and standards: the case of financial accounting

Abstract The paper examines unresolved attempts since 2005 to develop financial accounting standards for greenhouse gas emission allowances. It is a detailed empirical case study into how the large-scale experiment of carbon markets has manifested in a particular area of professional expertise – financial accounting. Theories about the role of standards usefully draw attention to the hidden work of standards in society and help explain why some things are difficult to standardise. However, there are notable gaps in conceptualising how standards are integral to wider processes of policy and technology change. Ideas from governmentality and hybrid markets (agencements) are therefore used to explore further the role of standards within markets, and provide a welcome avenue for thinking afresh about the relationship between climate change and standards.
Application of the copolymers containing sulfobetaine methacrylate in protein separation by capillary electrophoresis

This study describes the formation of highly efficient antiprotein adsorption random copolymer coating of poly(N,N-dimethylacrylamide-co-sulfobetaine methacrylate) (poly(DMA-co-SBMA)) on the fused-silica capillary inner wall. Firstly, the poly(DMA-co-SBMA)s with different feed ratio (SBMA/DMA) were synthesized via the reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer polymerization. And then, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and water contact angle (CA) were used to investigate the composition and hydrophilicity of poly(DMA-co-SBMA) coating formed on the glass slide surfaces. CA measurements revealed that the poly(DMA-co-SBMA) coating became more hydrophilic with the increment of feed ratio (SBMA/DMA), and at the same time, the XPS results showed that the coating ability was also increased with the increment of feed ratio. Followed, the copolymer was applied to coat the fused-silica capillary inner wall, and the coated capillary was used to separate the mixture of proteins (lysozyme, cytochrome c, ribonuclease A, and α-chymotrypsinogen A) in a pH range from 3.0 to 5.0. Under the optimum conditions, an excellent separation of basic proteins with peak efficiencies ranging from 551,000 to 1509,000 N/m had been accomplished within 10 min. Furthermore, the effect of coating composition on protein separation was also investigated through the comparison of separation efficiency achieved by using bare, PSBMA- and poly(DMA-co-SBMA)-coated capillary, respectively.
Active megadetachment beneath the western United States

Geodetic data, interpreted in light of seismic imaging, seismicity, xenolith studies, and the late Quaternary geologic history of the northern Great Basin, suggest that a subcontinental-scale extensional detachment is localized near the Moho. To first order, seismic yielding in the upper crust at any given latitude in this region occurs via an M7 earthquake every 100 years. Here we develop the hypothesis that since 1996, the region has undergone a cycle of strain accumulation and release similar to “slow slip events” observed on subduction megathrusts, but yielding occurred on a subhorizontal surface 5–10 times larger in the slip direction, and at temperatures >800°C. Net slip was variable, ranging from 5 to 10 mm over most of the region. Strain energy with moment magnitude equivalent to an M7 earthquake was released along this “megadetachment,” primarily between 2000.0 and 2005.5. Slip initiated in late 1998 to mid-1999 in northeastern Nevada and is best expressed in late 2003 during a magma injection event at Moho depth beneath the Sierra Nevada, accompanied by more rapid eastward relative displacement across the entire region. The event ended in the east at 2004.0 and in the remainder of the network at about 2005.5. Strain energy thus appears to have been transmitted from the Cordilleran interior toward the plate boundary, from high gravitational potential to low, via yielding on the megadetachment. The size and kinematic function of the proposed structure, in light of various proxies for lithospheric thickness, imply that the subcrustal lithosphere beneath Nevada is a strong, thin plate, even though it resides in a high heat flow tectonic regime. A strong lowermost crust and upper mantle is consistent with patterns of postseismic relaxation in the southern Great Basin, deformation microstructures and low water content in dunite xenoliths in young lavas in central Nevada, and high-temperature microstructures in analog surface exposures of deformed lower crust. Large-scale decoupling between crust and upper mantle is consistent with the broad distribution of strain in the upper crust versus the more localized distribution in the subcrustal lithosphere, as inferred by such proxies as low P wave velocity and mafic magmatism.
Improved membrane filtration media for enumeration of total coliforms and Escherichia coli from sewage and surface waters

Two media were developed that allowed both a total coliform count and an Escherichia coli count to be determined on the same medium after 24 h of incubation at 35 degrees C. The new media were tested along with two standard media on 10 surface water and 7 sewage samples. The experimental media yielded equivalent or higher counts relative to the standard media and recovered more specifically the desired indicator groups as determined by colony identification.