Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Transconjunctival Lower Blepharoplasty: A 2-Sided Assessment of Results and Subjects’ Satisfaction

Purpose:To assess the results and satisfaction after transconjunctival lower blepharoplasty, evaluate the effect of associated aesthetic procedures on the satisfaction, and compare surgeon versus subjects’ perspective on the results. Methods:In a retrospective cross-sectional study, a chart review was performed on transconjunctival lower blepharoplasty procedures performed by 1 eye plastic surgeon from April 2003 to April 2009. Subjects with less than 6 months follow-up time or reoperation were excluded. Demographic data, associated surgical procedures, intra and postoperative complications, subjects and surgeon’s perspectives on postoperative results, photographs (before and after the operation), and satisfaction score (Visual analogue scale score) at last follow-up time were recorded. Results:There were 164 subjects (133 women, 81.1%) with mean age of 50.7 years (standard deviation = 11.6, range: 23–80). Mean follow-up time was 22.8 months (standard deviation = 11.5, range = 6–60 months). Complications, observed by the surgeon and subjects, were undercorrected fat excision (4.9% vs. 3.7%), eyelid retraction (1.2% vs. 1.2%), and tear trough deformity (9.7% vs. 0.6%). Subjects reported less complication rate (5.4%) than surgeon (15.8%). Mean visual analogue scale score was 92.8 (standard deviation = 0.36), which was significantly higher in subjects who had simultaneous upper blepharoplasty and lower in subjects with postoperative eyelid retraction. Conclusions:Transconjunctival lower blepharoplasty is associated with a high satisfaction. Subjects reported less complication rate than surgeon especially for tear trough deformity. Postoperative eyelid retraction significantly decreased and simultaneous upper blepharoplasty procedure significantly increased the satisfaction.
Risk of Glaucoma Among Patients With Benign Essential Blepharospasm

Purpose: Debate exists whether intraocular pressure fluctuation is a risk factor for glaucoma. Patients with benign essential blepharospasm (BEB) experience intermittent, ultra-short-term intraocular pressure elevations from frequent blinking and spastic eyelid closure. This article explores the development of incident glaucoma after BEB diagnosis. Methods: Medicare claims files were used to identify patients with a diagnosis of BEB from 1994 to 2000. An equal-sized control group consisting of patients without BEB was created using one-to-one propensity score matching. The patients with BEB and those in the control group were followed for the development of one of the following main outcome measures: primary open angle glaucoma (POAG), closed angle glaucoma (CAG), or other glaucoma (besides POAG and CAG) over the following 2,190 days. Results: There were 1,350 persons in each group, consisting of 29% men, 94% of whom were white, with a mean age of 76 years. In the unadjusted model, BEB patients did not develop POAG (hazard ratio [HR], 1.159; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.876-1.534), CAG (HR, 1.477; 95% CI, 0.711-3.066), or other glaucoma (HR, 1.306; 95% CI, 0.904-1.886) more often than controls. Adjusting for age, gender, race, number of visits to the ophthalmologist, and other eye disease, a diagnosis of BEB did not affect the risk of POAG (HR, 1.152; 95% CI, 0.870-1.525), CAG (HR, 1.448; 95% CI, 0.696-3.015), or other glaucoma (HR, 1.296; 95% CI, 0.896-1.873). Conclusions: BEB is not a risk indicator for POAG, CAG, or other forms of glaucoma.
A Predictive, Quantitative Model of Spiking Activity and Stimulus-Secretion Coupling in Oxytocin Neurons

Abstract Oxytocin neurons of the rat hypothalamus project to the posterior pituitary, where they secrete their products into the bloodstream. The pattern and quantity of that release depends on the afferent inputs to the neurons, on their intrinsic membrane properties, and on nonlinear interactions between spiking activity and exocytosis: A given number of spikes will trigger more secretion when they arrive close together. Here we present a quantitative computational model of oxytocin neurons that can replicate the results of a wide variety of published experiments. The spiking model mimics electrophysiological data of oxytocin cells responding to cholecystokinin (CCK), a peptide produced in the gut after food intake. The secretion model matches results from in vitro experiments on stimulus-secretion coupling in the posterior pituitary. We mimic the plasma clearance of oxytocin with a two-compartment model, replicating the dynamics observed experimentally after infusion and injection of oxytocin. Combining these models allows us to infer, from measurements of oxytocin in plasma, the spiking activity of the oxytocin neurons that produced that secretion. We have tested these inferences with experimental data on oxytocin secretion and spiking activity in response to intravenous injections of CCK. We show how intrinsic mechanisms of the oxytocin neurons determine this relationship: In particular, we show that the presence of an afterhyperpolarization (AHP) in oxytocin neurons dramatically reduces the variability of their spiking activity and even more markedly reduces the variability of oxytocin secretion. The AHP thus acts as a filter, protecting the final product of oxytocin cells from noisy fluctuations.
The Complementary Effect of Cholesterol and Vitamin E Preloaded in Cyclodextrins on Frozen Bovine Semen: Motility Parameters, Membrane Integrity and Lipid Peroxidation.

BACKGROUND During cryopreservation sperm cells suffer from two major deleterious impacts: oxidative stress and cold shock. OBJECTIVE To investigate in bovine species the benefit of cholesterol and vitamin E, both loaded in cyclodextrins, as a double protection against oxidative stress and cold shock. MATERIALS AND METHODS Semen was collected from nine mature bulls using an artificial vagina and each ejaculate was split into four equal aliquots. The control aliquot was diluted with Fraction A (Tris+citric acid+fructose+penicillin) without further supplementation; the treated samples were diluted in Fraction A supplemented with cholesterol-loaded cyclodextrins (CD-CHL), vitamin E-loaded cyclodextrins (CD-Vit E) or CD-CHL in association with CD-Vit E (CD-CHL-VitE). After incubation at 22°C for 15 min and addition of Fraction B (Fraction A+egg yolk+glycerol), all aliquots were frozen in 0.25 ml straws. Straws were then thawed individually at 37C for 30 seconds in a water bath and immediately analyzed for motility, using Computer Aided Semen Analysis (CASA), membrane integrity and oxidative stress status. RESULTS The results showed that samples treated with CD-CHL and CD-Vit E were protected against the deleterious impact of freezing thawing process. However, the optimal protection was observed when the two complexes CD-CHL and CD-Vit E were simultaneously used. All analysed semen parameters including motility, membrane integrity and oxidative stress status were significantly improved in CD-CHL-Vit E compared to all other treatments. CONCLUSION Cholesterol and vitamin E, both preloaded in cyclodextrins to increase their solubility, appeared as a powerful protection in cryopreserved bovine semen to fight simultaneously cold shock and oxidative stress.
Assessing climate change risks to the natural environment to facilitate cross-sectoral adaptation policy

Climate change policy requires prioritization of adaptation actions across many diverse issues. The policy agenda for the natural environment includes not only biodiversity, soils and water, but also associated human benefits through agriculture, forestry, water resources, hazard alleviation, climate regulation and amenity value. To address this broad agenda, the use of comparative risk assessment is investigated with reference to statutory requirements of the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment. Risk prioritization was defined by current adaptation progress relative to risk magnitude and implementation lead times. Use of an ecosystem approach provided insights into risk interactions, but challenges remain in quantifying ecosystem services. For all risks, indirect effects and potential systemic risks were identified from land-use change, responding to both climate and socio-economic drivers, and causing increased competition for land and water resources. Adaptation strategies enhancing natural ecosystem resilience can buffer risks and sustain ecosystem services but require improved cross-sectoral coordination and recognition of dynamic change. To facilitate this, risk assessments need to be reflexive and explicitly assess decision outcomes contingent on their riskiness and adaptability, including required levels of human intervention, influence of uncertainty and ethical dimensions. More national-scale information is also required on adaptation occurring in practice and its efficacy in moderating risks. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Advances in risk assessment for climate change adaptation policy’.
Thermosensitive Injectable Hydrogel for Simultaneous Intraperitoneal Delivery of Doxorubicin and Prevention of Peritoneal Adhesion

To improve intraperitoneal chemotherapy and to prevent postsurgical peritoneal adhesion, we aimed to develop a drug delivery strategy for controlled release of a chemotherapeutic drug from the intraperitoneally injected thermosensitive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)-based hydrogel (HACPN), which is also endowed with peritoneal anti-adhesion properties. Anticancer drug doxorubicin (DOX) was loaded into the hydrogel (HACPN-DOX) to investigate the chemotherapeutic and adhesion barrier effects in vivo. A burst release followed by sustained release of DOX from HACPN-DOX was found due to gradual degradation of the hydrogel. Cell culture studies demonstrated the cytotoxicity of released DOX toward CT-26 mouse colon carcinoma cells in vitro. Using peritoneal carcinomatosis animal model in BALB/c mice with intraperitoneally injected CT-26 cells, animals treated with HACPN-DOX revealed the best antitumor efficacy judging from tumor weight and volume, survival rate, and bioluminescence signal intensity when compared with treatment with free DOX at the same drug dosage. HACPN (or HACPN-DOX) also significantly reduced the risk of postoperative peritoneal adhesion, which was generated by sidewall defect-cecum abrasion in tumor-bearing BALB/c mice, from gross and histology analyses. This study could create a paradigm to combine controlled drug release with barrier function in a single drug-loaded injectable hydrogel to enhance the intraperitoneal chemotherapeutic efficacy while simultaneously preventing postsurgical adhesion.
From automata to animate beings: the scope and limits of attributing socialness to artificial agents

Understanding the mechanisms and consequences of attributing socialness to artificial agents has important implications for how we can use technology to lead more productive and fulfilling lives. Here, we integrate recent findings on the factors that shape behavioral and brain mechanisms that support social interactions between humans and artificial agents. We review how visual features of an agent, as well as knowledge factors within the human observer, shape attributions across dimensions of socialness. We explore how anthropomorphism and dehumanization further influence how we perceive and interact with artificial agents. Based on these findings, we argue that the cognitive reconstruction within the human observer is likely to be far more crucial in shaping our interactions with artificial agents than previously thought, while the artificial agent's visual features are possibly of lesser importance. We combine these findings to provide an integrative theoretical account based on the “like me” hypothesis, and discuss the key role played by the Theory‐of‐Mind network, especially the temporal parietal junction, in the shift from mechanistic to social attributions. We conclude by highlighting outstanding questions on the impact of long‐term interactions with artificial agents on the behavioral and brain mechanisms of attributing socialness to these agents.
AV Nodal Ablation in Heart Failure Patients with Atrial Fibrillation

The optimal medical treatment can fail in the intention to improve symptoms and quality of life of heart failure (HF) patients with severe left ventricular dysfunction and atrial fibrillation (AF) with uncontrolled ventricular rate. In these refractory cases to medical management, the necessity to utilize cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT), or the need to use catheter ablation, or both, emerges in order to achieve hemodynamic improvement. Several clinical studies with CRT demonstrated structural and functional ventricular improvement. Moreover, there are additional beneficial effects in left ventricular remodeling. It was demonstrated that there is a significant improvement in left ventricular ejection fraction, and a significant decrease in end systolic and end diastolic volumes. However, CRT may be interrupted in over 30% of patients after successful implantation of a device and the most common reason for CRT interruption is the development of AF in 18% of the cases. Those patients whom do not respond to drug therapy will require atrioventricular nodal (AVN) catheter ablation in order to restore 100% CRT functionality and improvements in clinical outcomes. There are interesting published data documenting significant acute and longterm improvement in left ventricular function, cardiac performance, symptoms, exercise tolerance, clinical outcomes, and quality of life in selected HF patients with paroxysmal and persistent drug-refractory AF who have undergone AVN ablation and permanent pacemaker implantation.
Online Best Reply Algorithms for Resource Allocation Problems

We study online resource allocation problems with a diseconomy of scale. In these problems, there are certain requests, each demanding a set of resources, that arrive in an online manner. The cost of each resource is semi-convex and grows superlinearly in the total load on the resource. An irrevocable allocation decision has to be made directly after the arrival of each request with the goal to minimize the total cost on the resources. We focus on two simple greedy online policies that provide very fast and easy approximation algorithms. The first policy is to minimize the individual cost of the current online request with respect to all previous requests that have been allocated before. The second policy is to minimize the marginal total cost over all requests that have arrived up to this point. In the literature, these type of algorithms is also considered as one-round walks in congestion games starting from the empty state. We consider the weighted and unweighted version of the problem. In the weighted variant, and for cost functions that are polynomials with maximal degree $d$ and positive coefficients, we proof a tight competitive ratio of $\left(\sqrt[d]{2}-1\right)^{-(d+1)}$ for the marginal total cost policy. This interestingly exactly matches the approximation factor for the corresponding \emph{multiple}-round walk algorithm. Our work indicates that one-round walks that start in an empty starting state are exactly as efficient as multiple-round walks. We also show that this does not carry over to the unweighted version of the problem. For unweighted instances, we provide lower bounds for both policies that are significantly larger than the corresponding multiple-round walks. We complement our results with an upper and lower bound on the solution quality of the personal cost policy for weighted and unweighted instances.
Calibration Between Undergraduate Students' Prediction of and Actual Performance: The Role of Gender and Performance Attributions

ABSTRACT This study investigated changes in male and female students' prediction and postdiction calibration accuracy and bias scores, and the predictive effects of explanatory styles on these variables beyond gender. Seventy undergraduate students rated their confidence in performance before and after a 40-item exam. There was an improvement in students' bias between prediction and postdiction judgments, although male students' decrease in bias was greater than female students. Female students' accuracy remained stable from prediction to postdiction, and male students exhibited greater accuracy then females. Additionally, the task centered and student centered testing styles positively predicted students' accuracy while the social centered style was a negative predictor, beyond the effect of gender. In addition, no attribution was a significant predictor of bias.
Beteiligung, Partizipation, Mitbestimmung - das Statut der Europäischen Aktiengesellschaft und der babylonische Turm europäischer Arbeitsbeziehungen

Zusammenfassung Bei den Mitte 1997 vorgestellten Vorschlägen der Expertengruppe unter Vorsitz von Etienne Davignon für ein “Statut der Europäischen Aktiengesellschaft” geht es um die Präsenz und die Rechte von Arbeitnehmervertretern in den Leitungsorganen der zukünftigen Europäischen Aktiengesellschaften. Obwohl die Davignon-Gruppe beim Lösungskonzept (Verhandlung plus Auffangregelung) sehr klug handelte, sind die vorgeschlagenen Begriffbestimmungen von “Beteiligung”, “Partizipation” und “Mitbestimmung” unhaltbar, da die qualitativen Unterschiede (Intensität) in der Partizipationsskala verloren gehen. Als wenig überzeugend und schließlich kontraproduktiv erweist sich auch der Diskurs, den die Davignon-Gruppe für nötig hielt, um dem Lösungskonzept zum Erfolg zu verhelfen. Der Autor plädiert für eine saubere Begrifflichkeil und einen darauf aufbauenden offenen Diskurs über die Mitbestimmung. Ein solcher Diskurs, nicht zuletzt auf der Gewerkschaftsseite, könnte der einzige Weg sein, um mit dem “Phantom des deutschen Modells” umzugehen. Summary In Summer 1997 the group of experts on the „European Company Statute“, chaired by Etienne Davignon, presented proposals on the presence and the rights of worker representatives in the company bodies of the future European Company. While the Davignon-group put forward a prudent solution (negotiation plus reference rules), the proposed definitions of „involvement“ and „participation“ are untenable since the qualitative distinctions (intensity) among different levels of participation are lost. The argumentation the group of experts considers necessary to help its solution succeed is not convincing, and may even turn out to be counterproductive. The article argues in favour of a clear terminology and an open discourse on participation, not least among the trade unions, as the only way of coping with the „phantom of the German model“.
Optimality analysis of adaptive sampled control of hybrid systems with quadratic index

This note is concerned with the sampled-data based linear quadratic (LQ) adaptive control of continuous-time systems with unknown Markov jump parameters. A parameter estimator and a control design method are given. It is shown that when the sample step size is small, the sampled-data based adaptive control is suboptimal under LQ index. The result is illustrated by a simulation example.
Development and characterization of synthetic antibodies binding to the cystic fibrosis conductance regulator

ABSTRACT Cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) is a chloride channel in the apical surface of epithelial cells in the airway and gastrointestinal tract, and mutation of CFTR is the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis. However, the precise molecular details of the structure and function of CFTR in native and disease states remains elusive and cystic fibrosis researchers are hindered by a lack of high specificity, high affinity binding reagents for use in structural and biological studies. Here, we describe a panel of synthetic antigen-binding fragments (Fabs) isolated from a phage-displayed library that are specific for intracellular domains of CFTR that include the nucleotide-binding domains (NBD1 and NBD2), the R-region, and the regulatory insertion loop of NBD1. Binding assays performed under conditions that promote the native fold of the protein demonstrated that all Fabs recognized full-length CFTR. However, only the NBD1-specific Fab recognized denatured CFTR by western blot, suggesting a conformational epitope requirement for the other Fabs. Surface plasmon resonance experiments showed that the R-region Fab binds with high affinity to both the phosphorylated and unphosphorylated R-region. In addition, NMR analysis of bound versus unbound R-region revealed a distinct conformational effect upon Fab binding. We further defined residues involved with antibody recognition using an overlapping peptide array. In summary, we describe methodology complementary to previous hybridoma-based efforts to develop antibody reagents to CFTR, and introduce a synthetic antibody panel to aid structural and biological studies.
Prevalence and characteristics associated with dactylitis in patients with early spondyloarthritis: results from the ESPeranza cohort.

OBJECTIVES Dactylitis is a typical feature of psoriatic arthritis. However, dactylitis was included as a spondyloarthritis (SpA) feature for both (axial and peripheral) of the ASAS classification criteria, but data about its prevalence are scarce, especially in patients with a recent onset of the disease. Our objective was to determine the prevalence and characteristics associated with dactylitis in patients with early SpA. METHODS A baseline dataset from the ESPeranza cohort was used. This programme included patients who were suspected of having SpA (age <45 years, symptoms duration of 3-24 months and with inflammatory back pain, or asymmetrical arthritis, or spinal/joint pain plus ≥1 of the SpA features). For this study, 609 patients who were diagnosed with SpA by their physician were included. Descriptive, univariable and multivariable logistic regression analyses were employed to investigate the association between the presence of dactylitis and the characteristics associated with SpA. RESULTS Fifty-eight (9.5%) patients currently or previously had dactylitis. In the multivariable analysis, dactylitis was independently associated with peripheral arthritis (OR= 4.83; p<0.001), enthesitis (OR= 2.49; p=0.01), psoriasis (OR= 3.62; p<0.01) and the physician's visual analogue scale (OR= 0.82; p=0.01). However, 67% of the patients who had dactylitis did not have peripheral arthritis or psoriasis and 15% had predominantly axial disease. CONCLUSIONS Dactylitis is a frequent manifestation in patients with SpA, even during the early stages of the disease. Its presence is mainly associated with peripheral manifestations and psoriasis. Nevertheless, dactylitis is not exclusive of patients with PsA or peripheral manifestations.