Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rapid Breakdown of Microvascular Barriers and Subsequent Hemorrhagic Transformation After Delayed Recombinant Tissue Plasminogen Activator Treatment in a Rat Embolic Stroke Model

Background and Purpose— Thrombolytic therapy with recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rtPA) after stroke increases risk of hemorrhagic transformation, particularly in areas with blood-brain barrier leakage. Our aim was to characterize acute effects of rtPA administration on the integrity of microvascular barriers. Methods— Stroke was induced in spontaneously hypertensive rats by unilateral embolic middle cerebral artery occlusion. Six hours after stroke, rtPA was intravenously administered (n=10). Controls received saline (n=4). Extravasation of the large-diameter contrast agent monocrystalline iron oxide nanocolloid (MION) was assessed with susceptibility contrast-enhanced MRI during rtPA injection. In addition, we performed perfusion MRI and diffusion-weighted MRI. After MRI, 2 hours after rtPA treatment, intracerebral hemorrhage was quantified with a spectrophotometric hemoglobin assay. Results— Late rtPA treatment resulted in increased hemorrhage volume (8.4±1.7 versus 2.9±0.9 &mgr;L in controls;P <0.05). In MION-injected animals, during rtPA administration, transverse relaxation rate change (&Dgr;R2*) increased from 12.4±6.0 to 31.6±19.2 s−1 (P <0.05) in areas with subsequent hemorrhage. Significant &Dgr;R2* changes were absent in nonhemorrhagic areas, in animals without injected MION, and in saline-treated animals. Thrombolytic therapy did not improve perfusion in regions with hemorrhagic transformation (cerebral blood flow index was 22.8±19.7% [of contralateral] at 0.5 hours before and 22.4±18.0% at 1 hour after rtPA administration). Conclusions— The &Dgr;R2* changes during rtPA delivery in MION-injected animals indicate extravasation of MION, which reflects increased permeability of the blood-brain barrier. This implies that late rtPA treatment rapidly aggravates early ischemia-induced damage to microvascular barriers, thereby enhancing hemorrhagic transformation.
Alternative Splicing of hTERT Pre-mRNA: A Potential Strategy for the Regulation of Telomerase Activity

The activation of telomerase is one of the key events in the malignant transition of cells, and the expression of human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) is indispensable in the process of activating telomerase. The pre-mRNA alternative splicing of hTERT at the post-transcriptional level is one of the mechanisms for the regulation of telomerase activity. Shifts in splicing patterns occur in the development, tumorigenesis, and response to diverse stimuli in a tissue-specific and cell type–specific manner. Despite the regulation of telomerase activity, the alternative splicing of hTERT pre-mRNA may play a role in other cellular functions. Modulating the mode of hTERT pre-mRNA splicing is providing a new precept of therapy for cancer and aging-related diseases. This review focuses on the patterns of hTERT pre-mRNA alternative splicing and their biological functions, describes the potential association between the alternative splicing of hTERT pre-mRNA and telomerase activity, and discusses the possible significance of the alternative splicing of the hTERT pre-mRNA in the diagnosis, therapy, and prognosis of cancer and aging-related diseases.
rCRF: Recursive Belief Estimation over CRFs in RGB-D Activity Videos

For assistive robots, anticipating the future actions of humans is an essential task. This requires modelling both the evolution of the activities over time and the rich relationships between humans and the objects. Since the future activities of humans are quite ambiguous, robots need to assess all the future possibilities in order to choose an appropriate action. Therefore, a successful anticipation algorithm needs to compute all plausible future activities and their corresponding probabilities. In this paper, we address the problem of efficiently computing beliefs over future human activities from RGB-D videos. We present a new recursive algorithm that we call Recursive Conditional Random Field (rCRF) which can compute an accurate belief over a temporal CRF model. We use the rich modelling power of CRFs and describe a computationally tractable inference algorithm based on Bayesian filtering and structured diversity. In our experiments, we show that incorporating belief, computed via our approach, significantly outperforms the stateof-the-art methods, in terms of accuracy and computation time.
Inter-Layer Coordination for Parallel TCP Streams on Long Fat Pipe Networks

As the network speed grows, inter-layer coordination becomes more important. This paper shows 3 inter-layer coordination methods; (1) "Comet-TCP"; cooperation of data-link layer and transport layer using hardware, (2) "Transmission Rate Controlled TCP (TRC-TCP)"; cooperation of data-link layer and transport layer using software, and (3) "Dulling Edges of Cooperative Parallel streams (DECP)"; cooperation of transport layer and application layer. We show the experimental results of file transfer at Bandwidth Challenge in SC2003; one and a half round trip from Japan to U.S., 15,000 miles, which has 350 ms RTT and 8.2 Gbps bandwidth. Comet-TCP hardware solution attained max 7.56 Gbps using a pair of 16 IA servers, which is 92% of available bandwidth and DECP software attained max 7.01 Gbps using a pair of 32 IA servers.
Association of complement factor H Y402H polymorphism with phenotype of neovascular age related macular degeneration in Israel

Purpose The Tyr402His variant of complement factor H (CFH) is associated with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in several populations. Our aim was to evaluate if this single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) is associated with AMD in the Israeli population and see if it underlies heterogeneity in clinical manifestation and responses to photodynamic therapy (PDT), which characterize neovascular AMD (NVAMD). Methods Genotyping for the Tyr402His variant was performed in 240 NVAMD patients (78.1±7 age range) and 118 controls (70.8±8.2 age range). Genotyping was correlated with clinical characteristics and treatment parameters in sequential 131 NVAMD patients who underwent PDT. Results TheTyr402His coding allele was associated with NVAMD in the Israeli population: odds ratio (OR)=1.9; 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.3–2.6; p=0.0002. Homozygosity for this variant was associated with an OR of 3.4 (95% CI: 1.7–6.8) for having AMD. There was no association among this SNP and age of onset of NVAMD, gender, neovascular lesion size, initial or final visual acuity, and number of PDT sessions required. Conclusions In accordance with findings from the majority of previous study populations, the Tyr402His variant of CFH is associated with NVAMD in Israel. However, heterogeneity in clinical manifestations of NVAMD and in its response to PDT is not underlined by this CFH variant and may be accounted for by other genetic and environmental factors.
Ranking news events by influence decay and information fusion for media and users

In many cases, people would like to read the news with great importance on the Internet. However, what users can grasp covers a very small part compared with the huge amount of news which never stops increasing. In this paper, we try to find what users are most likely to be interested in. We notice that media focus plays an essential role in distinguishing news topics and user attention is also an important factor. Therefore, we first propose five strategies which only exploit media focus to decide news influence impact. Then we provide three strategies to combine user attention with media focus. Meanwhile, we also take four types of interaction between user attention and media focus into consideration. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to establish different models for computing influence decay of news topics. Experiments show that better influence scores will be achieved by a decay algorithm based on Ebbinghaus forgetting curve and information fusion by considering interactions between user attention and media focus.
Re: Trends in the treatment of ductal carcinoma in situ of the breast.

Baxter et al. (1) report that about half the women undergoing lumpectomy for ductal carcinoma in situ do not get radiotherapy. The authors consider this to be undertreatment, because several studies have shown that radiotherapy reduces the risk of local recurrence and of invasive cancer. But the effect on mortality is not encouraging (2), and I believe the 50–50 split reflects the considerable uncertainty about what to do with carcinoma in situ. What the authors found most likely represents overtreatment. More than anything else, people with cancer want to increase their chance of survival. Radiotherapy causes adverse cardiovascular effects, and in a large meta-analysis, it was predicted that radiotherapy treatment of women at low risk, such as those who have their cancers identified at screening, will increase overall mortality (2). Women with carcinoma in situ are at exceptionally low risk of dying from breast cancer, and it is therefore very likely that radiotherapy will increase overall mortality by even more than predicted in the meta-analysis. Tumor recurrence is sometimes used as a surrogate marker for mortality in cancer trials, but it is obviously a very misleading marker in this case. The studies on tumor recurrence that Baxter et al. cite do not have sufficient power to address overall mortality because very few women died. The best evidence we have is, therefore, the meta-analysis, which makes me seriously question the wisdom of treating women with carcinoma in situ with radiotherapy rather than using a wait-and-see approach. There is also substantial surgical overtreatment because practically all patients were treated surgically; in 1999, 28% of women got a mastectomy (1), despite the fact that less than half of these cell changes ever develop into cancer. Not only the treatment but also the diagnosis of carcinoma in situ seems out of control. It is detected by mammography, but although breast cancer is very rare among women 18–39 years of age and mammography screening is not recommended, 4.8% of the cases of carcinoma in situ were found in this age group (1). Furthermore, 18.0% of the cases were found in women aged 70 –79 years, and 5.7% of the cases were found in women aged 80 years and older. These age groups are generally not screened in Europe because we doubt whether the possible benefits outweigh the harms. In fact, because screening leads to about 30% overdiagnosis and overtreatment, even for invasive cancers (3), this doubt can be raised for any age group. For example, the group that did a meta-analysis for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force expressed concern whether, across all age groups, the magnitude of benefit is sufficient to outweigh the harms (4). It seems to me that the harms of screening for cancer need to be much better understood, acknowledged, and honestly communicated, both in scientific papers and in the information materials directed to women, which currently are very misleading (5–7).
A Metatheory of Management: Omniscience or Obfuscation? A Comment1

‘It's not a matter of emancipating truth from every system of power (which would be a chimera, for truth is already power), but of detaching the power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social, economic and cultural, within which it operates at the present time. ’ (Foucault, 1984, pp. 74–75)
The Association Between IGF-I and Insulin Resistance

OBJECTIVE IGF-I has an almost 50% amino acid sequence homology with insulin and elicits nearly the same hypoglycemic response. Studies showed that low and high IGF-I levels are related to impaired glucose tolerance and to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the association between IGF-I level and insulin resistance in a Danish general population. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Included were 3,354 adults, aged 19–72 years, from the cross-sectional Health2006 study. The homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) was used as the index to estimate insulin resistance. Serum IGF-I levels were determined by an immunoassay and grouped into quintiles (Q1–Q5). Linear or multinomial logistic regression analyses were performed. RESULTS In the study population, 520 subjects (15.5%) had increased HOMA-IR values above 2.5. After adjustment for age, sex, physical activity, and waist-to-height ratio, a U-shaped association between IGF-I and HOMA-IR was found. Low IGF-I (Q1: odds ratio [OR] 1.65 [95% CI 1.16–2.34], P < 0.01) as well as high IGF-I (Q5: 1.96 [1.38–2.79], P < 0.01) levels were related to a higher odds of increased HOMA-IR values compared with subjects with intermediate (Q3) IGF-I levels. These associations remained statistically significant after the exclusion of subjects with type 2 diabetes and by using the updated computer HOMA2-IR model. CONCLUSIONS Low- and high-normal IGF-I levels are both related to insulin resistance. The biological mechanism of this complex phenomenon has to be elucidated in more detail for future risk stratification.
Basal Forebrain Afferent Projections Modulating Cortical Acetylcholine, Attention, and Implications for Neuropsychiatric Disorders

ABSTRACT: Cortical acetylcholine (ACh) mediates the detection, selection, and processing of stimuli and associations, and the allocation of processing resources for these attentional functions. For example, loss of cortical cholinergic inputs impairs the performance of rats in tasks designed to assess sustained or divided attention. Intrabasalis infusions of benzodiazepine receptor (BZR) agonists block increases in cortical ACh efflux and impair attentional abilities. Studies on the regulation of cortical ACh efflux by nucleus accumbens (NAC) dopamine (DA) demonstrate that increases in cortical ACh efflux are attenuated by intra‐accumbens administration of D1 and, more potently, D2 receptor antagonists. These and other data support the hypothesis that NAC DA, via GABAergic projections to the basal forebrain, controls the excitability of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons. As increases in NAC DA have been hypothesized to represent a major neuronal mediator of schizophrenia and the compulsive use of addictive drugs, the data predict that the abnormal regulation of cortical ACh release represents a crucial neuronal mechanism mediating the cognitive components of these psychopathological disorders.
A novel mechanism for the Ca(2+)-sensitizing effect of protein kinase C on vascular smooth muscle: inhibition of myosin light chain phosphatase

Mechanisms of Ca2+ sensitization of both myosin light chain (MLC) phosphorylation and force development by protein kinase C (PKC) were studied in permeabilized tonic smooth muscle obtained from the rabbit femoral artery. For comparison, the Ca2+ sensitizing effect of guanosine 5'-O-(gamma-thiotriphosphate) (GTP gamma S) was examined, which had been previously shown to inhibit MLC phosphatase in phasic vascular smooth muscle. We now report that PKC activators (phorbol esters, short chain synthetic diacylglycerols and a diacylglycerol kinase inhibitor) and GTP gamma S significantly increase both MLC phosphorylation and force development at constant [Ca2+]. Major phosphorylation site occurring in the presence of phorbol-12,13- dibutyrate (PDBu) or GTP gamma S at constant [Ca2+] is the same serine residue (Ser-19) as that phosphorylated by MLC kinase in response to increased Ca2+ concentrations. In an ATP- and Ca(2+)-free solution containing 1-(5-chloronaphthalene-1-sulfonyl)-1H-hexahydro-1,4- diazepine (ML-9), to avoid the kinase activity, both PDBu and GTP gamma S significantly decreased the rate of MLC dephosphorylation to half its control value. However, PDBu inhibited the relaxation rate more than did GTP gamma S. In the presence of microcystin-LR to inhibit the phosphatase activity, neither PDBu nor GTP gamma S affected MLC phosphorylation and force development. These results indicate that PKC, like activation of GTP binding protein, increases Ca2+ sensitivity of both MLC phosphorylation and force production through inhibition of MLC phosphatase.
Analysis of Affine Projection Normalized Correlation Algorithm

This paper proposes and develops a statistical analysis of Affine Projection Normalized Correlation Algorithm (AP-NCA) which is a combination of the Affine Projection Algorithm (APA) and Normalized Correlation Algorithm (NCA) for use in complex-domain adaptive filters. For impulse noise, two types are considered: one is found in observation noise and another at filter input. Through experiments with simulations and theoretical calculations of filter convergence, we demonstrate that the proposed AP-NCA is effective in making adaptive filters converge faster when the filter inputs are correlated, and robust in impulsive noise environments. It is observed that the theoretical convergence curves generally exhibit good agreement with the simulation results which shows that the analysis is valid for practical use.
Low-delay random view access in multi-view coding using a bit-rate adaptive downsampling approach

In this paper, a new multi-view coding (MVC) scheme is proposed and evaluated. The scheme offers improved low-delay view random access capability and at the same time comparable compression performance with respect to the reference multi-view coding scheme currently used. The proposed scheme uses the concept of multiple-resolution view coding, exploiting the trade-off between quantization distortion and downsampling distortion at changing bit-rates, which in turn provides improved coding efficiency. Bi-predictive (B) coded views, used in the conventional MVC method, are replaced with predictive coded downscaled views, reducing the view dependency in a multi-view set and hence reducing the random view access delay, but preserving the compression performance at the same time. Results show that the proposed method reduces the view random access delay in a MVC system significantly, but has a similar objective and subjective performance with the conventional MVC method.
Assessment of oculomotor control and balance post-concussion: A preliminary study for a novel approach to concussion management

Abstract Primary objective: Balance disturbances occur in ∼30% of concussion injuries, with vestibular dysfunction reported as the main contributor. However, few have studied oculomotor control post-concussion to assess vestibular dysfunction. Research design: The current research measured the differences in oculomotor control between athletes post-concussion (PC) and athletes without concussion (NC) during an active balance control task. Methods: Nine PC and nine NC athletes wore a monocular eye tracking device, while balance tests were performed using the Nintendo WiiFit® soccer heading game. Average game scores, eye deviations from centre (Gaze Deviations) and gaze fixation (Percentage Time on Centre) were measured. Results: PC made significantly greater Gaze Deviations from centre compared to NC (p < 0.001), however Percentage Time on Centre and game scores were not significantly different between groups. Correlations between gaze and balance within groups revealed a significant positive correlation in NC, while a significant negative correlation in PC. Conclusions: Results from this exploratory examination of oculomotor behaviour post-concussion revealed significant differences in gaze stability between athletes with a concussion and those without, suggesting vestibular involvement post-concussion. Assessment of oculomotor control during balance activities may provide further insight into dysfunction of the vestibular system following a concussion injury.
The Evaluation of Two CDU Concepts and Their Effects on FMS Training

One of the biggest challenges for a pilot in the transition to a "glass" cockpit is understanding the Flight Management System (FMS). This is due to both the complex nature of the FMS and to the pilot-FMS interface. For these reasons, a large portion of transition training is devoted to the FMS. The intent of the current study was to examine the impact of the primary pilot-FMS interface, the Control Display Unit (CDU), on FMS training. The hypothesis of this study was that the interface design could have a significant impact on training. An FMS simulation was developed with two separate interfaces. One interface was similar to a current-generation design and the other was a multi-windows CDU based on graphical user interface techniques. For both application and evaluation reasons, constraints were applied to the graphical CDU design to maintain as much similarity as possible with the conventional CDU.
The BLLAST field experiment: Boundary-Layer late afternoon and sunset turbulence

Due to the major role of the sun in heating the earth's surface, the atmospheric planetary boundary layer over land is inherently marked by a diurnal cycle. The afternoon transition, the period of the day that connects the daytime dry convective boundary layer to the night-time stable boundary layer, still has a number of unanswered scientific questions. This phase of the diurnal cycle is challenging from both modelling and observational perspectives: it is transitory, most of the forcings are small or null and the turbulence regime changes from fully convective, close to homogeneous and isotropic, toward a more heterogeneous and intermittent state. These issues motivated the BLLAST (Boundary-Layer Late Afternoon and Sunset Turbulence) field campaign that was conducted from 14 June to 8 July 2011 in southern France, in an area of complex and heterogeneous terrain. A wide range of instrumented platforms including full-size aircraft, remotely piloted aircraft systems, remote-sensing instruments, radiosoundings, tethered balloons, surface flux stations and various meteorological towers were deployed over different surface types. The boundary layer, from the earth's surface to the free troposphere, was probed during the entire day, with a focus and intense observation periods that were conducted from midday until sunset. The BLLAST field campaign also provided an opportunity to test innovative measurement systems, such as new miniaturized sensors, and a new technique for frequent radiosoundings of the low troposphere. Twelve fair weather days displaying various meteorological conditions were extensively documented during the field experiment. The boundary-layer growth varied from one day to another depending on many contributions including stability, advection, subsidence, the state of the previous day's residual layer, as well as local, meso- or synoptic scale conditions. Ground-based measurements combined with tethered-balloon and airborne observations captured the turbulence decay from the surface throughout the whole boundary layer and documented the evolution of the turbulence characteristic length scales during the transition period. Closely integrated with the field experiment, numerical studies are now underway with a complete hierarchy of models to support the data interpretation and improve the model representations.
Eradication of Biofilm-Forming Staphylococcus epidermidis (RP62A) by a Combination of Sodium Salicylate and Vancomycin

ABSTRACT Staphylococcus epidermidis is a major cause of infections associated with indwelling medical devices. Biofilm production is an important virulence attribute in the pathogenesis of device-related infections. Therefore, elimination of these biofilms is an ideal treatment. Salicylate (5 mM) combined with 1 μg of vancomycin per ml inhibited biofilm formation by S. epidermidis (RP62A) by ≥99.9%. When biofilm-coated polystyrene beads were exposed to 5 mM sodium salicylate and 4 μg of vancomycin per ml (one-half the minimum biofilm eradication concentration), there was a >99.9% reduction in viable count.