Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Repeated Transsphenoidal Surgery or Gamma Knife Radiosurgery in Recurrent Cushing Disease After Transsphenoidal Surgery

Abstract Background This study compared Gamma knife radiosurgery (GKRS) and repeated transsphenoidal adenomectomy (TSA) to find the best approach for recurrence of Cushing disease (CD) after unsuccessful first TSA. Material and Methods Fifty-two patients with relapse of CD after TSA were enrolled and randomly underwent a second surgery or GKRS as the next therapeutic approach. They were followed for a mean period of 3.05 ± 0.8 years by physical examination and hormone measurement as well as magnetic resonance imaging. Results No significant difference was observed in sex ratio, mean age, adenoma type, follow-up duration, and initial hormone level between the two groups. No significant relationship was found between preoperative 24-hour free urine cortisol and disease-free months or tumor volume among both groups. Our statistical analysis showed higher recurrence-free interval in the GKRS group compared with TSA group. Conclusion With longer recurrence-free interval, GKRS could be considered a good treatment alternative to repeated TSA in recurrent CD.
Participation financière et climat social: une analyse des perceptions comparées dirigeants/salariés

L’article s’interroge, dans la perspective de l’institutionnalisme economique de Commons, sur la relation unissant les dispositifs de participation financiere au climat social, apprehende par le biais de la perception qu’en ont les dirigeants et les salaries, d’une part, et par des indicateurs de dysfonctionnements sociaux, tels que l’absenteisme et les conflits sociaux, d’autre part. La question des caracteristiques de ces pratiques (modalites de negociation presidant a leur mise en oeuvre, types de dispositifs, mode de calcul) est egalement posee. L’etude empirique est fondee sur l’exploitation de l’enquete REPONSE qui represente un echantillon de 3 000 etablissements francais et de 8 000 salaries. Au-dela des differences de perception entre dirigeants et salaries, les resultats, obtenus a l’aide de modeles de regressions logistiques, mettent tout d’abord en evidence que plus que le montant verse, c’est l’existence meme d’un dispositif de participation financiere qui influence le climat social. Par ailleurs plus les dispositifs apparaissent comme desinteresses de la part de l’entreprise et meilleur est le climat social du point de vue des salaries. Les modalites de conclusion de l’accord de participation financiere, notamment l’intervention des syndicats, ont egalement une influence sur le climat social. Compte tenu des differences de resultats pouvant exister selon que l’on s’interesse a la perception des dirigeants, a celle des salaries ou aux indicateurs de dysfonctionnements sociaux, l’article met egalement en lumiere l’importance pour les recherches sur le climat social de prendre en compte a la fois les dimensions objectives du climat social et la perception qu’en ont les acteurs.
Realist Reflections in Institutional Economics

Although economics is a social science, it exhibits a heterogeneous character, and thus, it almost deserves a privilege of being classified under the title of both natural and social sciences. Because, among other social sciences, economics is the closest one to natural sciences, and perhaps even a proposition that ‘it stands somewhere in between social and natural sciences’ can find supporters in the academic environments as well. This characteristic of economics can be attributed to the engagement to methodology of natural sciences in order to explain economic reality; and economics probably owes its reputation, as a science, to the success of these sciences. For example, it formulates the economic life as a set of sequential equilibria, a concept apparently borrowed from physics, which is driven by underlying philosophy. Interestingly, one can find exact similarity in the traits of economics, and that of philosophy of the 17 and 18 century whose methodology based on mathematical physics. The developments in intellectual thought starting with Renaissance and reaching to its peak by the 18 century, as a reaction to the scholastic idea of Medieval era, symbolise a departure from a thought, rooted in another unknown world. As a product of this reaction period, positivism and empiricism has appeared as an alternative to the scholastic thought. Even though positivism was also criticised in the academic circles of economics, some of these critiques were not independent of positivist traces either, and did not exert a devastating influence on economic methodology. But we can distinguish a philosophical stream as an alternative to the underlying philosophy of standard economics. Critical Realism, has some reflections in the works of many, if not most, economists. Tony Lawson is one of the leading realists in economics. Bruce Caldwell (1993: 52) states that the application of realism in social theory is a difficult task that was initiated by Uskali Maki through introduction of some realist categories into economics. Nonetheless, we propose that realism covers a much broader room in economics, and dates back much earlier than Caldwell claimed. But, our proposition is limited to Institutional Economics, or to the works of
MYBL2 is a new regulator of flavonoid biosynthesis in Arabidopsis thaliana.

SUMMARY In Arabidopsis thaliana, several MYB and basic helix-loop-helix (BHLH) proteins form ternary complexes with TTG1 (WD-Repeats) and regulate the transcription of genes involved in anthocyanin and proanthocyanidin (PA) biosynthesis. Similar MYB-BHLH-WDR (MBW) complexes control epidermal patterning and cell fates. A family of small MYB proteins (R3-MYB) has been shown to play an important role in the regulation of epidermal cell fates, acting as inhibitors of the MBW complexes. However, so far none of these small MYB proteins have been demonstrated to regulate flavonoid biosynthesis. The genetic and molecular analyses presented here demonstrated that Arabidopsis MYBL2, which encodes a R3-MYB-related protein, is involved in the regulation of flavonoid biosynthesis. The loss of MYBL2 activity in the seedlings of two independent T-DNA insertion mutants led to a dramatic increase in the accumulation of anthocyanin. In addition, overexpression of MYBL2 in seeds inhibited the biosynthesis of PAs. These changes in flavonoid content correlate well with the increased level of mRNA of several structural and regulatory anthocyanin biosynthesis genes. Interestingly, transient expression analyses in A. thaliana cells suggested that MYBL2 interacts with MBW complexes in planta and directly modulates the expression of flavonoid target genes. These results are fully consistent with the molecular interaction of MYBL2 with BHLH proteins observed in yeast. Finally, MYBL2 expression studies, including its inhibition by light-induced stress, allowed us to hypothesise a physiological role for MYBL2. Taken together, these results bring new insights into the transcriptional regulation of flavonoid biosynthesis and provide new clues and tools for further investigation of its developmental and environmental regulation.
Conflict in Congo Threatens Bonobos and Rare Gorillas

The war that has gripped the Democratic Republic of Congo for the past 18 months is taking a devastating toll on great apes. The front lines cut through the heart of the range of bonobos, the so-called pygmy chimpanzees famous for their language-learning ability in captivity and their complex social behavior in the wild. Data are scarce and largely anecdotal because most researchers have left the country, but local conservationists have been warning over the past few weeks that both bonobos and gorillas are severely threatened in parts of the country.
Triplex targeted genomic crosslinks enter separable deletion and base substitution pathways

We have synthesized triple helix forming oligonucleotides (TFOs) that target a psoralen (pso) interstrand crosslink to a specific chromosomal site in mammalian cells. Mutagenesis of the targeted crosslinks results in base substitutions and deletions. Identification of the gene products involved in mutation formation is important for developing practical applications of pso-TFOs, and may be informative about the metabolism of other interstrand crosslinks. We have studied mutagenesis of a pso-TFO genomic crosslink in repair proficient and deficient cells. Deficiencies in non homologous end joining and mismatch repair do not influence mutation patterns. In contrast, the frequency of base substitutions is dependent on the activity of ERCC1/XPF and polymerase ζ, but independent of other nucleotide excision repair (NER) or transcription coupled repair (TCR) genes. In NER/TCR deficient cells the frequency of deletions rises, indicating that in wild-type cells NER/TCR functions divert pso-TFO crosslinks from processes that result in deletions. We conclude that targeted pso-TFO crosslinks can enter genetically distinct mutational routes that resolve to base substitutions or deletions.
The USP21 Short Variant (USP21SV) Lacking NES, Located Mostly in the Nucleus In Vivo, Activates Transcription by Deubiquitylating ubH2A In Vitro

USP21 is a deubiquitylase that catalyzes isopeptide bond hydrolysis between ubiquitin and histone H2A. Since ubiqutylated H2A (ubH2A) represses transcription, USP21 plays a role in transcriptional activation. On the other hand, the localization of USP21 suggests it has an additional function in the cytoplasm. Here, we identified a USP21 short variant (USP21SV) lacking a nuclear export signal (NES). Differential localization of USP21SV, more in the nucleus than the USP21 long variant (USP21LV), suggests they have redundant roles in the cell. Ectopic expression of both USP21 variants decreased ubH2A in the nucleus. Furthermore, both recombinant USP21 variants activate transcription by deubiquitylating ubH2A in vitro. These data suggest multiple roles for USP21 in the ubiquitylation-deubiquitylation network in the cell.
Dynamics of Salmonella infection of macrophages at the single cell level

Salmonella enterica causes a range of diseases. Salmonellae are intracellular parasites of macrophages, and the control of bacteria within these cells is critical to surviving an infection. The dynamics of the bacteria invading, surviving, proliferating in and killing macrophages are central to disease pathogenesis. Fundamentally important parameters, however, such as the cellular infection rate, have not previously been calculated. We used two independent approaches to calculate the macrophage infection rate: mathematical modelling of Salmonella infection experiments, and analysis of real-time video microscopy of infection events. Cells repeatedly encounter salmonellae, with the bacteria often remain associated with the macrophage for more than ten seconds. Once Salmonella encounters a macrophage, the probability of that bacterium infecting the cell is remarkably low: less than 5%. The macrophage population is heterogeneous in terms of its susceptibility to the first infection event. Once infected, a macrophage can undergo further infection events, but these reinfection events occur at a lower rate than that of the primary infection.
Sex differences in reporting osteoarthritic symptoms: a sociomedical approach.

Sex differences in reports of chronic joint symptoms are examinedfor 6,913 persons aged 25-74 in the detailed component of the U.S. Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1971-75). Support is not found for the hypotheses that women are more willing to report chronic joint symptoms or that men are more likely to underreport symptoms. Symptom reporting for both men and women is significantly related to radiographic evidence of osteoarthrosis and two measures of treatment behavior. Men with osteoarthrosis, however, are more likely to report pain than osteoarthritic women, independent of severity of disease and treatment behavior. The sex differentials in symptom reporting for persons with normal x-rays (96% of the sample) are not significant. In general, men and women are found to be more alike than different in reporting chronic joint symptoms. The data indicate that treatment behavior and disease are important intervening factors to consider in a model examining sex differentials in symptom reporting.
Platelet‐activating factor stimulates ovine foetal pulmonary vascular smooth muscle cell proliferation: role of nuclear factor‐kappa B and cyclin‐dependent kinases

Abstract. Objective: Platelet‐activating factor (PAF) is implicated in pathogenesis of persistent pulmonary hypertension of the neonate (PPHN); PAF is a mitogen for lung fibroblasts. PAF's role in pulmonary vascular smooth muscle cell (PVSMC) proliferation and in hypoxia‐induced pulmonary vein (PV) remodelling has not been established and mechanisms for PAF's cell‐proliferative effects are not well understood. We investigated involvement of PAF and PAF receptors in PVSMC proliferation. Materials and methods: Cells from pulmonary arteries (SMC‐PA) and veins (SMC‐PV) were serum starved for 72 h in 5% CO2 in air (normoxia). They were cultured for 24 h more in normoxia or 2% O2 (hypoxia) in 0.1% or 10% foetal bovine serum with 5 µCi/well of [3H]‐thymidine, with and without 10 nm PAF. Nuclear factor‐kappa B (NF‐κB), CDK2 and CDK4 protein expression, and their roles in cell proliferation control were studied. Results: PAF and hypoxia increased SMC‐PA and SMC‐PV proliferation. WEB2170 inhibited PAF‐induced cell proliferation while lyso‐PAF had no effect. SMC‐PV proliferated more than SMC‐PA and PAF plus hypoxia augmented NF‐κB protein expression. NF‐κB inhibitory peptide attenuated PAF‐induced cell proliferation by 50% and PAF increased CDK2 and CDK4 protein expression. The data show that hypoxia and PAF up‐regulate PVSMC proliferation via PAF receptor‐specific pathway involving NF‐κB, CDK2 and CDK4 activations. Conclusion: They suggest that in vivo, in foetal lung low‐oxygen environment, where PAF level is high, proliferation of PVSMC will occur readily to modulate PV development and that failure of down‐regulation of PAF effects postnatally may result in PPHN.
Regularization over-complete dictionary learning with application to image denoising

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the study of sparse representation of image signals. The sparse representation may represent efficiently the geometrical characteristics of the images with the redundancy of over-complete dictionary. The paper proposes a dictionary-learning method that can optimize it with regularized technique. Firstly the method uses the orthogonal-matching pursuit algorithm to obtain the sparse representation solutions of image patches. Secondly the solutions are used to train the dictionary with regularized optimization. Then the alternating minimizations are kept between above two steps until the difference between the sparse representations and the image satisfied a convergence criterion. The maximum posteriori probability is used to realize global optimization for image de-noising through the prior of sparse representation base the learned dictionary. Experiments results show the effect of the method.
Autism as an executive disorder

Chapter 1. Introduction The Neurobiology of Autism Chapter 2. Integrating the neurobiological and neurophysical dimensions of autism Impairments in generating behaviour Chapter 3. Towards an executive dysfunction account of repetitive behaviour in autism Chapter 4. Pretend play in autism: Executive explanations The nature and the uniqueness of the executive deficits in autism Chapter 5. Validity tests of the executive dysfunction hypothesis of autism Chapter 6. Components of executive function in autism and other disorders Agency, self-awareness, and autism Chapter 7. Motor-images, self-consciousness, and autism Chapter 8. How executive disorders can bring about an inadequate "theory of mind"
Improving the usability of hypertext courseware through adaptive linking

Hypertext is being used more and more for on-line course texts. But the navigational freedom offered by a rich link structure is a burden on students who need guidance throughout the learning process. This paper presents a framework for adaptive link structures. By enabling links when a student is ready to read the pages these links lead to, and disabling links to pages that are no longer needed the student can rest assured that links always lead to interesting new information she is ready to read. This framework is illustrated by means of courseware for an on-line course on "Hypermedia structures and systems", developed at the Eindhoven University of Technology, and currently offered at six different universities in the Netherlands and Belgium.
The influence of gliomas and nonglial space-occupying lesions on blood-oxygen-level-dependent contrast enhancement.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Functional MR (fMR) imaging with blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) contrast enhancement is increasingly used as a noninvasive tool for presurgical mapping in patients with intracranial tumors. Most physiologic studies of task-related BOLD contrast enhancement have involved healthy volunteers. Therefore, it is not known whether BOLD contrast is evoked in the same way in or adjacent to tumor tissue. The purpose of this study was to study the influence of different intracranial tumors on BOLD contrast enhancement. METHODS fMR mapping of the sensorimotor cortex was successfully performed in 15 of 21 patients with intracranial space-occupying lesions by using a bimanual motor task. Tumors were located either within the sensorimotor area itself or in adjacent brain areas, inducing changes of signal intensity on T2-weighted images along the pre- or postcentral gyrus. Space-occupying lesions were divided into a group comprising gliomas (seven cases) and a group comprising nonglial space-occupying lesions (three metastases, two cavernomas, one abscess, one arteriovenous malformation, one meningioma). A hemispheric activation index was calculated using the volume of activation on the affected and on the contralateral hemisphere. Hemispheric activation indices of gliomas and nonglial lesions were compared statistically. RESULTS The activated volume in the hemispheres ipsilateral to the nonglial lesions was 14% larger than in the contralateral hemisphere, whereas in the hemispheres ipsilateral to gliomas, the activated volume decreased by 36% in comparison with the contralateral hemisphere. The difference between nonglial lesions and gliomas was significant (P < .05). CONCLUSION The generation of BOLD contrast enhancement is reduced near gliomas but is not affected by nonglial tumors.
PD-RED: to improve the performance of RED

We propose a new active queue management (AQM) scheme to improve the performance of the well-known random early detection (RED) AQM. The new AQM is based on the proportional derivative (PD) control principle, and we call it PD-RED. In PD-RED we introduce minimal changes to RED. We demonstrate the improvement in performance of PD-RED over adaptive RED AQM by simulations.
Predictive cardiac motion modeling and correction with partial least squares regression

Respiratory-induced cardiac deformation is a major problem for high-resolution cardiac imaging. This paper presents a new technique for predictive cardiac motion modeling and correction, which uses partial least squares regression to extract intrinsic relationships between three-dimensional (3-D) cardiac deformation due to respiration and multiple one-dimensional real-time measurable surface intensity traces at chest or abdomen. Despite the fact that these surface intensity traces can be strongly coupled with each other but poorly correlated with respiratory-induced cardiac deformation, we demonstrate how they can be used to accurately predict cardiac motion through the extraction of latent variables of both the input and output of the model. The proposed method allows cross-modality reconstruction of patient specific models for dense motion field prediction, which after initial modeling can be used for real-time prospective motion tracking or correction. Detailed numerical issues related to the technique are discussed and the effectiveness of the motion and deformation modeling is validated with 3-D magnetic resonance data sets acquired from ten asymptomatic subjects covering the entire respiratory range.
Passive immunity modulates genetic reassortment between rotaviruses in mixedly infected mice

Genetic reassortment between simian rotavirus SA11 and rhesus rotavirus (RRV) occurs with high frequency following mixed infection of nonimmune suckling mice (J. L. Gombold and R. F. Ramig, J. Virol. 57:110-116, 1986). We examined the effects of passively acquired homotypic or heterotypic immunity on reassortment in vivo. Passively immune suckling mice obtained from dams immune to either serotype 3 simian rotavirus (SA11) or serotype 6 bovine rotavirus (NCDV) were infected orally with either SA11 or RRV or a mixture of SA11 and RRV (both serotype 3 viruses). At various times postinfection, signs of disease were noted and the intestines of individual mice were removed and homogenized for titration of infectious virus and isolation of progeny plaques. Electrophoresis of genomic RNA was used to identify reassortants among the viral progeny isolated from infected animals. No reassortants (less than 0.45%) were detected among 224 clones examined from mixedly infected, homotypically immune mice. Twenty-nine reassortants (10.66%) were identified among 272 progeny clones from mixedly infected, heterotypically immune mice. Thus, reassortment was reduced more than 50-fold by homotypic immunity and approximately threefold by heterotypic immunity compared with prior data obtained from mixed infections of nonimmune mice. In addition, reassortment between SA11 and RRV in nonimmune mice was shown to be dependent on the virus dose. Taken together, these results suggest that immune responses may modulate the frequency of reassortment by reducing the effective multiplicity of infection (by neutralization or other immune mechanisms), thereby preventing efficient mixed infection of enterocytes.
SEMA3A, a Gene Involved in Axonal Pathfinding, Is Mutated in Patients with Kallmann Syndrome

Kallmann syndrome (KS) associates congenital hypogonadism due to gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) deficiency and anosmia. The genetics of KS involves various modes of transmission, including oligogenic inheritance. Here, we report that Nrp1 sema/sema mutant mice that lack a functional semaphorin-binding domain in neuropilin-1, an obligatory coreceptor of semaphorin-3A, have a KS–like phenotype. Pathohistological analysis of these mice indeed showed abnormal development of the peripheral olfactory system and defective embryonic migration of the neuroendocrine GnRH cells to the basal forebrain, which results in increased mortality of newborn mice and reduced fertility in adults. We thus screened 386 KS patients for the presence of mutations in SEMA3A (by Sanger sequencing of all 17 coding exons and flanking splice sites) and identified nonsynonymous mutations in 24 patients, specifically, a frameshifting small deletion (D538fsX31) and seven different missense mutations (R66W, N153S, I400V, V435I, T688A, R730Q, R733H). All the mutations were found in heterozygous state. Seven mutations resulted in impaired secretion of semaphorin-3A by transfected COS-7 cells (D538fsX31, R66W, V435I) or reduced signaling activity of the secreted protein in the GN11 cell line derived from embryonic GnRH cells (N153S, I400V, T688A, R733H), which strongly suggests that these mutations have a pathogenic effect. Notably, mutations in other KS genes had already been identified, in heterozygous state, in five of these patients. Our findings indicate that semaphorin-3A signaling insufficiency contributes to the pathogenesis of KS and further substantiate the oligogenic pattern of inheritance in this developmental disorder.