Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aortic valve stenosis: a new cardiovascular comorbidity of psoriasis?

This editorial refers to ‘Increased risk of aortic valve stenosis in patients with psoriasis: a nationwide cohort study’[†][1], by U. Khalid et al . , on page 2177. Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the skin and joints affecting >125 million people worldwide.1 There has been a revolution in our understanding of the natural history, pathophysiology, and genetics of this disease over the last decade that has been paralleled by dramatic advances in treatment options for patients with more severe disease.2 The pathophysiology of psoriasis involves chronic Th1 and Th17 inflammation, epidermal hyperproliferation, and chronic angiogenesis. Over 40 genes have been implicated in psoriasis susceptibility, and those in immune-based pathways confer the most risk for psoriasis at the population level. Psoriasis is increasingly recognized as a systemic disease. Measures of C-reactive protein and inflammatory cytokines such as tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1), and growth factors such as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEG-F) are increased in patients with psoriasis in a manner that correlates with disease severity. Moreover, skin inflamed by psoriasis overexpresses genes related to cardiovascular (CV) risk, with resultant production of proteins such as renin that may promote CV disease.3 Indeed, mouse models of psoriasis in which the construct is confined to the skin develop aortic inflammation, indicating a proof of principle that chronic inflammation and hyperproliferation of the skin can result in inflammatory changes in the systemic vasculature. … [1]: #fn-2
Stochastic accumulation of feature information in perception and memory

It is now well established that the time course of perceptual processing influences the first second or so of performance in a wide variety of cognitive tasks. Over the last 20 years, there has been a shift from modeling the speed at which a display is processed, to modeling the speed at which different features of the display are perceived and formalizing how this perceptual information is used in decision making. The first of these models (Lamberts, 1995) was implemented to fit the time course of performance in a speeded perceptual categorization task and assumed a simple stochastic accumulation of feature information. Subsequently, similar approaches have been used to model performance in a range of cognitive tasks including identification, absolute identification, perceptual matching, recognition, visual search, and word processing, again assuming a simple stochastic accumulation of feature information from both the stimulus and representations held in memory. These models are typically fit to data from signal-to-respond experiments whereby the effects of stimulus exposure duration on performance are examined, but response times (RTs) and RT distributions have also been modeled. In this article, we review this approach and explore the insights it has provided about the interplay between perceptual processing, memory retrieval, and decision making in a variety of tasks. In so doing, we highlight how such approaches can continue to usefully contribute to our understanding of cognition.
Performance Challenges of Decentralised Services

Decentralised, peer-to-peer based services present a variety of security and privacy benefits for their users, and highly scalable to cater for a growing numbers of users, without extra servers being required of the service operator. This presents a significant advantage for newly emerging mobile applications (with high numbers of users, and limited funds for infrastructure), although performance is a challenge when accessing decentralised services. In this paper, we firstly show the performance of our implementation of a decentralised chunk-based storage platform is constrained by the network. We show the impact of network latency on the performance of this decentralised storage solution, and propose our solution to this, in the form of a federated, intermediary server, thus creating a hybrid decentralised service. This approach offers relatively constant performance as latency increases, due to the use of TCP connectivity, while ensuring the advantages of the decentralised service are not lost in the process.
Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation in early rehabilitation of patients with post-stroke non-fluent aphasia: a randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled pilot study.

PURPOSE Recent research in patients with chronic aphasia shows an association between excitatory anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (A-tDCS) of the stroke-affected left hemisphere coupled with speech and language therapy (SLT) and better language performance. The present study aimed to investigate this association during the early post-stroke rehabilitation period, when adaptive changes are most possible on neurophysiological and behavioral levels. METHODS We randomized 24 patients with non-fluent aphasia to receive 15 consecutive sessions (5 days/week for 3 weeks) of A-tDCS (1 mA, 10 min; n = 14) or sham tDCS (S-tDCS: 1 mA, 25 sec; n = 10) over Broca's area followed by 45-min SLT. Naming ability was assessed before the rehabilitation, after its completion, and three months later. RESULTS Both groups significantly improved after the therapy. There were no statistically significant between-group differences in the short-term or long-term tDCS effects on naming accuracy and naming time. The A-tDCS group obtained higher effect sizes in naming time, both post-treatment and at the 3-month follow-up, suggesting potential benefits of the stimulation. CONCLUSIONS The findings provide only weak evidence for A-tDCS-related language gains during early neurorehabilitation of post-stroke aphasia. Further research is needed to explore the effectiveness of this kind of neuromodulation.
Safety Evaluation of a Novel Strain of Bacteroides fragilis

Commensal non-toxigenic Bacteroides fragilis confers powerful health benefits to the host, and has recently been identified as a promising probiotic candidate. We previously isolated B. fragilis strain ZY-312 and identified it as a novel strain based on 16S rRNA sequencing and morphological analyses. We also determined that ZY-312 displayed desirable probiotic properties, including tolerance to simulated digestive fluid, adherence, and in vitro safety. In this study, we aim to investigate whether ZY-312 meets the safety criteria required for probiotic bacteria through comprehensive and systematic evaluation. Consequently, the fatty acid profile, metabolite production, and biochemical activity of strain ZY-312 were found to closely resemble descriptions of B. fragilis in Bergey’s manual. Taxonomic identification of strain ZY-312 based on whole genome sequencing indicated that ZY-312 and ATCC 25285 showed 99.99% similarity. The 33 putative virulence-associated factors identified in ZY-312 mainly encoded structural proteins and proteins with physiological activity, while the lack of bft indicated that ZY-312 was non-toxigenic. In vivo safety was proven in both normal and immune-deficient mice. The 11 identified antibiotic resistance genes were located on the chromosome rather than on a plasmid, ruling out the risk of plasmid-mediated transfer of antibiotic resistance. In vitro, ZY-312 showed resistance to cefepime, kanamycin, and streptomycin. Finally, and notably, ZY-312 exhibited high genetic stability after 100 passages in vitro. This study supplements the foundation work on the safety evaluation of ZY-312, and contributes to the development of the first probiotic representative from the dominant Bacteroidetes phylum.
Evaluation of polymorphisms in the sulfonamide detoxification genes NAT2, CYB5A, and CYB5R3 in patients with sulfonamide hypersensitivity

Objective To determine whether polymorphisms in the sulfonamide detoxification genes, CYB5A (encoding cytochrome b5), CYB5R3 (encoding cytochrome b5 reductase), or NAT2 (encoding N-acetyltransferase 2) were over-represented in patients with delayed sulfonamide drug hypersensitivity, compared with control patients who tolerated a therapeutic course of trimethoprim–sulfamethoxazole without adverse event. Methods DNA from 99 nonimmunocompromised patients with sulfonamide hypersensitivity who were identified from the Personalized Medicine Research Project at the Marshfield Clinic, and from 99 age-matched, race-matched, and sex-matched drug-tolerant controls, were genotyped for four CYB5A and five CYB5R3 polymorphisms, and for all coding NAT2 SNPs. Results CYB5A and CYB5R3 SNPs were found at low allele frequencies (<3–4%), which did not differ between hypersensitive and tolerant patients. NAT2 allele and haplotype frequencies, as well as inferred NAT2 phenotypes, also did not differ between groups (60 vs. 59% slow acetylators). Finally, no difference in NAT2 status was found in a subset of patients with more severe hypersensitivity signs (drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms) compared with tolerant patients. Conclusion We found no evidence of a substantial involvement of these nine CYB5A or CYB5R3 polymorphisms in sulfonamide hypersensitivity risk, although minor effects cannot be completely ruled out. Despite careful medical record review and full resequencing of the NAT2 coding region, we found no association of NAT2 coding alleles with sulfonamide hypersensitivity (predominantly cutaneous eruptions) in this adult Caucasian population.
Carbon nanotubes with an extended line defect.

Using concepts of defects in graphene lattices (see image) a new class of semiconducting carbon nanotubes is predicted, with an unusual one-dimensional electronic structure. These CNTs are of comparable stability to known carbon nanostructures, have similar mechanical properties, and may be useful in applications based on a combination of electronic transport properties.
Is There an Economic Case for Training Intervention in the Manual Material Handling Sector of Developing Countries?

Objective: To estimate cost-effectiveness ratios and net costs of a training intervention to reduce morbidity among porters who carry loads without mechanical assistance in a developing country informal sector setting. Methods: Pre- and post-intervention survey data (n = 100) were collected in a prospective study: differences in physical/mental composite scores and pain scale scores were computed. Costs and economic benefits of the intervention were monetized with a net-cost model. Results: Significant changes in physical composite scores (2.5), mental composite scores (3.2), and pain scale scores (−1.0) led to cost-effectiveness ratios of $6.97, $5.41, and $17.91, respectively. Multivariate analysis showed that program adherence enhanced effectiveness. The net cost of the intervention was −$5979.00 due to a reduction in absenteeism. Conclusions: Workplace ergonomic training is cost-effective and should be implemented wherein other engineering-control interventions are precluded due to infrastructural constraints.
The human oligodendrocyte proteome

Myelination of the CNS is performed by oligodendrocytes (OLs), which have been implicated in brain disorders, such as multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia. We have used the human oligodendroglial cell line MO3.13 to establish an OL reference proteome database. Proteins were prefractionationated by SDS‐PAGE and after in‐gel digestion subjected to nanoflow LC‐MS analysis. Approximately 11 600 unique peptides were identified and, after stringent filtering, resulted in 2290 proteins representing nine distinct biological processes and various molecular classes and functions. OL‐specific proteins, such as myelin basic protein (MBP) and 2′,3′‐cyclic nucleotide 3′‐phosphodiesterase (CNP), as well as other proteins involved in multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia were also identified and are discussed. Proteins of this dataset have also been classified according to their chromosomal origin for providing useful data to the Chromosome‐centric Human Proteome Project (C‐HPP). Given the importance of OLs in the etiology of demyelinating and oligodendrogial disorders, the MO3.13 proteome database is a valuable data resource. The MS proteomics data have been deposited to the ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD000263 (http://proteomecentral.proteomexchange.org/dataset/PXD000263).
Sensing and actuation for the design of upper limb prosthetics

The objective of this thesis has been to improve upper limb prosthetics. With this aim in mind, and based on reported user needs, we targeted two main aspects of contemporary active prosthetics: sensing and actuation. The restoration of proprioceptive capabilities through the artificial limb is vital for their intuitive and precise control. In order to capture the prosthetics position, we designed extremely soft microfluidic sensors using conductive liquids such as eutectic Gallium Indium (eGaIn) or Room Temperature Ionic Liquid (RTIL) embedded in soft elastomers. These sensors were used first to sense unidirectional strain, then normal force through Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) in a soft microfluidic skin, and were finally embedded in a soft artificial skin that was used to measure the human hand motion. Conventional electromagnetic actuators are poorly suited for prosthetic actuation. Grasping tasks typically require large torque at low speeds whereas conventional actuators are designed to be efficient at high rotational speeds. In consequence, we designed the "Programmable Permanent Magnet" (PPM) actuator. This unique actuator, based on the magnetization of permanent magnets by current pulses, is able to maintain a large torque at no speed and for no energetic cost. This actuator is especially suited for tasks such as grasping or walking and represents a new type of electromagnetic actuator that will enable efficient low speed high torque efficient actuation for robotic and prosthetic applications.
Differential Requirement of CD27 Costimulatory Signaling for Naïve Versus Alloantigen‐Primed Effector/Memory CD8+ T Cells

CD8+ memory T cells endanger allograft survival by causing acute and chronic rejection and prevent tolerance induction. We explored the role of CD27:CD70 T‐cell costimulatory pathway in alloreactive CD8+/CD4+ T‐cell activation. CD27‐deficient (CD27−/−) and wild‐type (WT) B6 mice rejected BALB/c cardiac allografts at similar tempo, with or without depletion of CD4+ or CD8+ T cells, suggesting that CD27 is not essential during primary T‐cell alloimmune responses. To dissect the role of CD27 in primed effector and memory alloreactive T cells, CD27−/− or WT mice were challenged with BALB/c hearts either 10 or 40 days after sensitization with donor‐type skin grafts. Compared to WT controls, allograft survival was prolonged in day 40‐ but not day 10‐sensitized CD27−/− recipients. Improved allograft survival was accompanied by diminished secondary responsiveness of memory CD8+ T cells, which resulted from deficiency in memory formation rather than their lack of secondary expansion. Chronic allograft vasculopathy and fibrosis were diminished in CD27−/− recipients of class I‐ but not class II‐mismatched hearts as compared to WT controls. These data establish a novel role for CD27 as an important costimulatory molecule for alloreactive CD8+ memory T cells in acute and chronic allograft rejection.
A State Exploration-Based Approach to Testing Java Monitors

A Java monitor is a Java class that defines one or more synchronized methods. Unlike a regular object, a Java monitor object is intended to be accessed by multiple threads simultaneously. Thus, testing a Java monitor can be significantly different from testing a regular class. In this paper, we propose a state exploration-based approach to testing a Java monitor. A novel aspect of our approach is that during exploration, threads are introduced on-the-fly, and as needed, to simulate race conditions that can occur when multiple threads try to access a monitor object at the same time. Furthermore, each transition is defined in a way such that the behavior of the threads along each path can be precisely characterized and controlled. We describe a prototype tool called MonitorExplorer and report three case studies that are designed to provide an initial evaluation of our approach
Toward Proof of Concept of a One Health Approach to Disease Prediction and Control

A One Health approach considers the role of changing environments with regard to infectious and chronic disease risks affecting humans and nonhuman animals. Recent disease emergence events have lent support to a One Health approach. In 2010, the Stone Mountain Working Group on One Health Proof of Concept assembled and evaluated the evidence regarding proof of concept of the One Health approach to disease prediction and control. Aspects examined included the feasibility of integrating human, animal, and environmental health and whether such integration could improve disease prediction and control efforts. They found evidence to support each of these concepts but also identified the need for greater incorporation of environmental and ecosystem factors into disease assessments and interventions. The findings of the Working Group argue for larger controlled studies to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of the One Health approach.
BSS misdiagnosed as ITP.

[Figure][1] A 23-year-old primigravida woman presented with recurrent mucocutaneous bleeding since the age of 7 years. She was diagnosed with acute immune-mediated thrombocytopenia (ITP), and splenectomy was performed in 2006 after failure to respond to steroid therapy. Two close family
Toward a model of type inheritance

D espite the fact that languages and products supporting some kind of type inheritance already exist (and have so done for some time), and despite the fact that type inheritance has been talked about for many years in books and articles and presentations, there still seems to be little consensus on a formal, rigorous, and abstract— clearly defined and generally agreed—type inheritance model. To quote an article by Taivalsaari: " The basic idea of inheritance is quite simple . [and yet, despite] its central role in current object systems, inheritance is still quite a controversial mechanism . [a] comprehensive view of inheritance is still missing " [8]. Here are some more quotes illustrating the same general point: • " [There] are at least four types of inheritance: substitution inheritance , inclusion inheritance, constraint inheritance, and specialization inheritance . Various degrees of these four types of inheritance are provided by existing systems and prototypes, and we do not prescribe a specific style of inheritance " [1]. • " [Inheritance can be] based on [a variety of] different criteria and there is no commonly accepted standard definition. " This book proceeds to give eight possible interpretations [3] (refererence [7] gives 12). • " [A] programming language [merely] provides a set of [inheritance] mechanisms. While these mechanisms certainly restrict what one can do in that language and what views of inheritance can be implemented . they do not by themselves validate some view of inheritance or other. Classes, specializations, generalizations, and inheritance are only concepts , and . they do not have a universal objective meaning . This [fact] implies that how inheritance is to be incorporated into a specific system is up to the designers of [that] system, and it constitutes a policy decision that must be implemented with the available mechanisms. " In other words, there is no model [2]. Others have proposed counter-intuitive or otherwise undesirable inheritance models. For example, the current SQL3 proposals [5] permit such things as " nonsquare squares " (i.e., values of type SQUARE whose sides are of different lengths), with the result that SQL3 can hardly be regarded as a good " model of reality. " In fact, those SQL3 proposals do not allow type constraints , such as the constraint that values of type SQUARE must have sides of equal length, even to be stated, much less enforced [5, 6]. We are more optimistic. …
Microwave InterConnections and Switching by means of Carbon Nanotubes Review article

In this work, carbon nanotube (CNT) based interconnections and switches will be reviewed, discussing the possibility to use nanotubes as potential building blocks for signal routing in microwave networks. In particular, theoretical design of coplanar waveguide (CPW), micro‐strip single‐pole‐single‐throw (SPST) and single‐pole‐double‐throw (SPDT) devices has been performed to predict the electrical performances of CNT‐based RF switching configurations. Actually, by using the semiconductor‐conductor transition obtained by properly biasing the CNTs, an isolation better than 30 dB can be obtained between the ON and OFF states of the switch for very wide bandwidth applications. This happens owing to the shape deformation and consequent change in the band‐gap due to the external pressure caused by the electric field. State‐of‐art for other switching techniques based on CNTs and their use for RF nano‐interconnections is also discussed, together with current issues in measurement techniques.
Spiking network simulation code for petascale computers

Brain-scale networks exhibit a breathtaking heterogeneity in the dynamical properties and parameters of their constituents. At cellular resolution, the entities of theory are neurons and synapses and over the past decade researchers have learned to manage the heterogeneity of neurons and synapses with efficient data structures. Already early parallel simulation codes stored synapses in a distributed fashion such that a synapse solely consumes memory on the compute node harboring the target neuron. As petaflop computers with some 100,000 nodes become increasingly available for neuroscience, new challenges arise for neuronal network simulation software: Each neuron contacts on the order of 10,000 other neurons and thus has targets only on a fraction of all compute nodes; furthermore, for any given source neuron, at most a single synapse is typically created on any compute node. From the viewpoint of an individual compute node, the heterogeneity in the synaptic target lists thus collapses along two dimensions: the dimension of the types of synapses and the dimension of the number of synapses of a given type. Here we present a data structure taking advantage of this double collapse using metaprogramming techniques. After introducing the relevant scaling scenario for brain-scale simulations, we quantitatively discuss the performance on two supercomputers. We show that the novel architecture scales to the largest petascale supercomputers available today.