Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
[Intrauterine growth retardation--perinatal mortality and postnatal morbidity in a perinatal center].

OBJECTIVES The intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR) contributes specially to perinatal mortality and morbidity. An effective treatment is not yet available. The purpose of this study is to analyse the perinatal data of a cohort with IUGR-infants including mortality and morbidity and to describe prematurity and IUGR as a combination of high risk. STUDY DESIGN We have analysed the perinatal data of a cohort of 220 patients with IUGR-infants including mortality and morbidity. Regularly we examined fetal ultrasonographic growth, doppler measurements of fetal and maternal vessels and CTG, as well as indicated amniocentesis, placentesis and cordocentesis. Entry criteria were: normal menstrual period before pregnancy, clear gestational age, complete history of pregnancy. RESULTS At the Department of Gynaecology & Obstetrics, University Hospital, Homburg/Saar, the incidence of IUGR (< 10th Percentile) in premature babies and newborns was 13.1% over five years (1993-1997). The percentage of premature babies with IUGR was 18.6%. The overall mortality was 4.1%, the perinatal mortality was 3.6% and the neonatal mortality was 2.7%. In 1.4% intrauterine foetal death was observed, all associated with a birthweight below the 3th percentile. The average duration of pregnancy was 34 + 4 weeks. A high perinatal mortality of 13.1% and an overall mortality of 14.7% was observed. 11.4% of the premature babies with IUGR showed deformities and about 2% presented chromosome aberrations. 46.4% of children have been transferred to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. 57.1% of the postnatal complications have been related to the lungs, 26.5% to the cardiovascular system and 14.3% to the cerebrum. Maternal complications were referred to: SIH/EPH-gestosis (65.4%), HELLP-syndrome (5.8%), nicotine abuse (31.4%), pregnancy anaemia (17.3%) and gestational diabetes with insuline therapy (7.7%). On the placental site the most noticeable conditions have been placental insufficiency (40.6%) and placental infarction (28.7%). CONCLUSION Children with IUGR are exposed to high perinatal mortality and postnatal morbidity. Premature babies in association with an IUGR are at high risk. The surveillance of the pregnant women and the new-born children should be performed in a perinatal centre.
REPRODUCTIVE OUTCOMES IN THE WOMEN OF THE RED RIVER VALLEY OF THE NORTH. I. THE SPOUSES OF PESTICIDE APPLICATORS: PREGNANCY LOSS, AGE AT MENARCHE, AND EXPOSURES TO PESTICIDES

In the current study, there was a modest but significant increase in risk (1.6- to 2-fold) for miscarriages and/or fetal loss occurring throughout the year in the spouses of applicators who use fungicides. There is a surprisingly significant deficit in the number of male children born to the spouses of fungicide applicators. First-trimester miscarriages occur most frequently in the spring, during the time when herbicides are applied. Use of sulfonylurea (odds ratio OR = 2.1), imidizolinone (OR = 2.6) containing herbicides, and the herbicide combination Cheyenne (OR = 2.9) by male applicators was statistically associated with increased miscarriage risk in the spring. Limited survey data from women who are the spouses of applicators did not show major alterations of long-term endocrinologic status (menarche, menopause, endometriosis). With regard to personal pesticide exposures, only women who engaged in pesticide application where there is direct exposure to these products are at demonstrable risk (OR = 1.8) for miscarriage. It was hypothesized that the overall reproductive toxicity observed in this population is, for the greater part, a male-mediated event. Clarification of exposure events leading to reproductive toxicity through direct measurements of exposure in both men and women is needed to resolve this issue.
Wildfire particulate matter in Europe during summer 2003: meso-scale modeling of smoke emissions, transport and radiative effects

The present study investigates effects of wildfire emissions on air quality in Europe during an intense fire season that occurred in summer 2003. A meso-scale chemistry transport model CHIMERE is used, together with ground based and satellite aerosol optical measurements, to assess the dispersion of fire emissions and to quantify the associated radiative effects. The model has been improved to take into account a MODIS-derived daily smoke emission inventory as well as the injection altitude of smoke particles. The simulated aerosol optical properties are put into a radiative transfer model to estimate (off-line) the effects of smoke particles on photolysis rates and atmospheric radiative forcing. We have found that the simulated wildfires generated comparable amounts of primary aerosol pollutants (130 kTons of PM 2.5 , fine particles) to anthropogenic sources during August 2003, and caused significant changes in aerosol optical properties not only close to the fire source regions, but also over a large part of Europe as a result of the long-range transport of the smoke. Including these emissions into the model significantly improved its performance in simulating observed aerosol concentrations and optical properties. Quantitative comparison with MODIS and POLDER data during the major fire event (3–8 August 2003) showed the ability of the model to reproduce high aerosol optical thickness (AOT) over Northern Europe caused by the advection of the smoke plume from the Portugal source region. Although there was a fairly good spatial agreement with satellite data (correlation coefficients ranging from 0.4 to 0.9), the temporal variability of AOT data at specific AERONET locations was not well captured by the model. Statistical analyses of model-simulated AOT data at AERONET ground stations showed a significant decrease in the model biases suggesting that wildfire emissions are responsible for a 30% enhancement in mean AOT values during the heat-wave episode. The implications for air quality over a large part of Europe are significant during this episode. First, directly, the modeled wildfire emissions caused an increase in average PM 2.5 ground concentrations from 20 to 200%. The largest enhancement in PM 2.5 concentrations stayed, however, confined within a 200 km area around the fire source locations and reached up to 40 μg/m³. Second, indirectly, the presence of elevated smoke layers over Europe significantly altered atmospheric radiative properties: the model results imply a 10 to 30% decrease in photolysis rates and an increase in atmospheric radiative forcing of 10–35 W m −2 during the period of strong fire influence throughout a large part of Europe. These results suggest that sporadic wildfire events may have significant effects on regional photochemistry and atmospheric stability, and need to be considered in current chemistry-transport models.
Si ∕ SiC Heterojunctions Fabricated by Direct Wafer Bonding

The physical and electrical properties of Si/SiC heterojunctions formed by direct wafer bonding are presented. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) and imaging reveal an improved bonding quality when Si wafers are transferred to on-axis substrates as opposed to off-axis epitaxial layers. AFM analysis of the bonded wafer achieves a smoother surface when compared to molecular beam epitaxy-grown Si layers. A reduced roughness of only 5.8 nm was measured for bonded wafers. Current-voltage measurements were used to extract the rectifying characteristics of Si/SiC heterojunctions. These Si layers could lead to improved high quality and reliable SiO2 gate oxides. (C) 2008 The Electrochemical Society.
A robust inside-out approach for 3D interaction with large displays

In this contribution, we present several improvements to previous “inside-out” techniques for pointing interaction with large display systems. Fiducial markers are virtually projected from an interaction device's built-in camera onto the displays and overlaid to the display content. We reconstruct the 6-DoF camera pose by tracking these markers in real-time. For increased robustness, the marker pattern is dynamically adapted. We address display lag and high pixel response times by precisely timing image captures. Pointing locations are measured with sub-millimeter precision and camera positions with sub-centimeter precision. An update rate of 60 Hz and a latency of 24 ms were achieved. Our technique performed comparably to an OptiTrack system in 2D target selection tasks.
Novel architecture for integrated wide area protection and control

This paper firstly reviews the recent development in power system protection, with special attention paid to the wide-area and integrated protection, in order to look into future development of protection and control system for smart grids. The paper then mainly reports on the design of a novel architecture for the integration of protection and control for wide area power network. The concept of integrated wide area protection and control is introduced, in which a hierarchically coordinated system, supported by the specially designed real-time synchronized wide area communication network, provides the protection and control for wide area or regional power substations/plants and their associated power network. Within the architecture a specially designed integrated wide area protection and control information platform receives real-time synchronized data from the communication network to support the integration of protection and control at wide area/regional level. The data received from the platform includes the static, dynamic, transient measurement and the states of circuit breakers etc., valuable information is extracted from the data and allocated to various specially designed computation algorithms in the platform to perform advanced functions of protection and control for the power network. In the platform, the sets of data that need to be transferred and their transferring speed depend on application, for example, slow for contingency analysis, near real time for monitoring and real time for control or protection. On the other hand, the information is stored in a hierarchical manner instead of centralized one, which is comprised with the hierarchical protection and control system. Equipped with the latest high speed synchronized communication technology, integrated with the advanced protection techniques and the latest developments in control system, the system offers not only fast protection, but also complete control of entire power network. It also offers a potential for merging the so called three line of defence into a unified system to more effectively ensure the reliable and safety operation of power grids. Within the architecture a cloud computing system is specially designed to implement a number of secondary functions for substations and power networks, such as the wide area fault location, fault line selection, power quality monitoring, protection settings, etc. The extended functions also include the equipment monitoring, life cycle and operation management. With the proposed cloud, the architecture of future substation equipment can be reshaped to provide a flexible framework for building interactive grid and improve the reliability and security of power grid.
Single Camera Calibration using partially visible calibration objects based on Random Dots Marker Tracking Algorithm

Camera calibration is one of the long existing research issues in computer vision domain. Typical calibration methods take two steps for the procedure: control points localization and camera parameters computation. In practical situation, control points localization is a time-consuming task because the localization puts severe assumption that the calibration object should be visible in all images. To satisfy the assumption, users may avoid moving the calibration object near the image boundary. As a result, we estimate poor quality parameters. In this paper, we aim to solve this partial occlusion problem of the calibration object. To solve the problem, we integrate a planar marker tracking algorithm that can track its target marker even with partial occlusion. Specifically, we localize control points by a RANdom DOts Markers (RANDOM) tracking algorithm that uses markers with randomly distributed circle dots. Once the control points are localized, they are used to estimate the camera parameters. The proposed method is validated with both synthetic and real world experiments. The experimental results show that the proposed method realizes camera calibration from image on which part of the calibration object is visible.
Fabrication and Dielectric Properties of CNTs/SiO2 Composites

Stable and disperse carbon nanotubes (CNTs) aqueous solution was prepared by using cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (C16TMAB) as dispersing agent and zeta potential of CNTs solution were measured to quantitatively characterize the stability of CNTs in C16TMAB aqueous solution. The CNTs /SiO2 composites were fabricated with composite powders synthesized by rapid Sol-gel method and sintered by hot-pressing technique. The electric and dielectric properties of the composites were measured and the microstructure of CNTs and composites were investigated by Field emission scanning electron microscope (FSEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The mechanisms had been investigated to explain the effect of the CNT compositions on the electric and dielectric properties of CNTs /SiO2 composites in this paper.
The Flow of Scientific Knowledge from Lab to the Lay Public

This article reports on a study of how scientific knowledge about genetically modified (GM) food flows to the American public, focusing on language and message genres in the scientific literature, newspapers, and popular magazines. A comprehensive search of these literatures from 1992 to 2002 revealed a publishing pattern of scientific communication that contrasted with that found in the lay press. Examination of this difference led researchers to a scientific study on the effect of GM corn pollen on the Monarch butterfly. The case study of the discourse surrounding this event demonstrates how press releases affect what is published in the popular press. The role of this event in generating subtle repercussions in the perceptions of U.S. consumers, similar to the ripple effects found in Kasperson’s social amplification of risk theory, is analyzed and reported.
Capacity region of the linear four-node half-duplex wireless relay network

A three-phase transmission scheme for the linear four-node half-duplex wireless relay network is proposed. In each of its two cooperative phases, the setting is equivalent to the broadcast channel with cognitive receiver, whose capacity region is determined. Based on that result, the three-phase scheme is shown to be capacity achieving. Its performance is compared with two suboptimal schemes.
Partial Solvers for Parity Games: Effective Polynomial-Time Composition

Partial methods play an important role in formal methods and beyond. Recently such methods were developed for parity games, where polynomial-time partial solvers decide the winners of a subset of nodes. We investigate here how effective polynomial-time partial solvers can be by studying interactions of partial solvers based on generic composition patterns that preserve polynomial-time computability. We show that use of such composition patterns discovers new partial solvers - including those that merge node sets that have the same but unknown winner - by studying games that composed partial solvers can neither solve nor simplify. We experimentally validate that this data-driven approach to refinement leads to polynomial-time partial solvers that can solve all standard benchmarks of structured games. For one of these polynomial-time partial solvers not even a sole random game from a few billion random games of varying configuration was found that it won't solve completely.
Transcriptional Activation of REST by Sp1 in Huntington's Disease Models

In Huntington's disease (HD), mutant huntingtin (mHtt) disrupts the normal transcriptional program of disease neurons by altering the function of several gene expression regulators such as Sp1. REST (Repressor Element-1 Silencing Transcription Factor), a key regulator of neuronal differentiation, is also aberrantly activated in HD by a mechanism that remains unclear. Here, we show that the level of REST mRNA is increased in HD mice and in NG108 cells differentiated into neuronal-like cells and expressing a toxic mHtt fragment. Using luciferase reporter gene assay, we delimited the REST promoter regions essential for mHtt-mediated REST upregulation and found that they contain Sp factor binding sites. We provide evidence that Sp1 and Sp3 bind REST promoter and interplay to fine-tune REST transcription. In undifferentiated NG108 cells, Sp1 and Sp3 have antagonistic effect, Sp1 acting as an activator and Sp3 as a repressor. Upon neuronal differentiation, we show that the amount and ratio of Sp1/Sp3 proteins decline, as does REST expression, and that the transcriptional role of Sp3 shifts toward a weak activator. Therefore, our results provide new molecular information to the transcriptional regulation of REST during neuronal differentiation. Importantly, specific knockdown of Sp1 abolishes REST upregulation in NG108 neuronal-like cells expressing mHtt. Our data together with earlier reports suggest that mHtt triggers a pathogenic cascade involving Sp1 activation, which leads to REST upregulation and repression of neuronal genes.
Desulfoprunum benzoelyticum gen. nov., sp. nov., a Gram-stain-negative, benzoate-degrading, sulfate-reducing bacterium isolated from a wastewater treatment plant.

A strictly anaerobic, mesophilic, sulfate-reducing bacterium, strain KoBa311(T), isolated from the wastewater treatment plant at Konstanz, Germany, was characterized phenotypically and phylogenetically. Cells were Gram-stain-negative, non-motile, oval to short rods, 3-5 µm long and 0.8-1.0 µm wide with rounded ends, dividing by binary fission and occurring singly or in pairs. The strain grew optimally in freshwater medium and the optimum temperature was 30 °C. Strain KoBa311(T) showed optimum growth at pH 7.3-7.6. Organic electron donors were oxidized completely to carbon dioxide concomitant with sulfate reduction to sulfide. At excess substrate supply, substrates were oxidized incompletely and acetate (mainly) and/or propionate accumulated. The strain utilized short-chain fatty acids, alcohols (except methanol) and benzoate. Sulfate and DMSO were used as terminal electron acceptors for growth. The genomic DNA G+C content was 52.3 mol% and the respiratory quinone was menaquinone MK-5 (V-H2). The major fatty acids were C16:0, C16:1ω7c/ω6c and C18:1ω7c. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences placed strain KoBa311(T) within the family Desulfobulbaceae in the class Deltaproteobacteria. Its closest related bacterial species on the basis of the distance matrix were Desulfobacterium catecholicum DSM 3882(T) (93.0% similarity), Desulfocapsa thiozymogenes (93.1%), Desulforhopalus singaporensis (92.9%), Desulfopila aestuarii (92.4%), Desulfopila inferna JS_SRB250Lac(T) (92.3%) and Desulfofustis glycolicus (92.3%). On the basis of phylogenetic, physiological and chemotaxonomic characteristics, strain KoBa311(T) was distinct from any related type species. Therefore, strain KoBa311(T) is considered to represent a novel species of a new genus, for which the name Desulfoprunum benzoelyticum gen. nov., sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain of Desulfoprunum benzoelyticum is KoBa311(T) ( =DSM 28570(T) =KCTC 15441(T)).
Generation of Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia-Specific T Cells in Cytokine-Modified Autologous Mixed Lymphocyte/Tumor Cell Cultures

Chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) may be amenable to cell-based adoptive immunotherapy, as suggested by the graft-versus-leukemia effect of bone marrow transplantation and the therapeutic benefit of donor leukocyte infusions. Specific adoptive immunotherapy without bone marrow transplantation might be more effective and less cost-intensive. Professional antigen-presenting cells, the dendritic cells, from patients with CML are derived from the malignant clone and may stimulate antileukemia T-cell responses. Autologous T cells may also be able to recognize tumor antigens on CML cells directly. Here, the authors show that CD4 and CD8 T-cell responses to autologous CML cells can be generated in vitro rapidly and effectively by performing modified autologous mixed lymphocyte/tumor cell cultures (MLTC) in serum-free medium in the presence of cytokines known to support dendritic cell differentiation. MLTC-sensitized T cells secreted large amounts of the type 1 cytokine interferon-&ggr;, as well as interleukin (IL)-2. However, they also secreted a variety of other cytokines, including the type 2-subtype cytokine IL-13 but not the classic type 2 cytokines IL-4, IL-5, and IL-10. Monoclonal populations of CML-specific CD4 cells could be derived from these lines in limited numbers but showed markedly enhanced reactivity. This suggests that CML-specific T cells are relatively rare in these autologous MTLC-derived sensitized populations, but that their isolation and propagation would yield much more potent antitumor effector cells for use in adoptive immunotherapy without the need for bone marrow transplantation.
Troglitazone Regulates Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptors and Inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase in Murine Ovarian Macrophages1

Abstract Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma (PPARG) and PPAR-alpha (PPARA) control metabolic processes in many cell types and act as anti-inflammatory regulators in macrophages. PPAR-activating ligands include thiazolidinediones (TZDs), such as troglitazone, once frequently used to treat insulin resistance as well as symptoms of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Since macrophages within the ovary mediate optimal follicle development, TZD actions to improve PCOS symptoms are likely to be partly mediated through these specifically localized immune cells. In mouse ovary, PPARG protein was expressed in granulosa cells and in isolated cells localized to theca, stroma, and corpora lutea, consistent with EMR1+ macrophages. Isolation of immune cells (EMR1+ or H2+) showed that Pparg and Ppara were expressed in ovarian macrophages at much higher levels than in peritoneal macrophages. Ovulatory human chorionic gonadotropin downregulated expression of Pparg and Ppara in EMR1+ ovarian macrophages, but no hormonal responsiveness was observed in H2+ cells. Downstream anti-inflammatory effects of PPARG activation were analyzed by in vitro treatment of isolated macrophages with troglitazone. Interleukin-1 beta (Il1b) expression was not altered, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (Tnf) expression was affected in peritoneal macrophages only. In ovarian macrophages, inducible nitric oxide synthase (Nos2), an important proinflammatory enzyme that regulates ovulation, was significantly reduced by troglitazone treatment, an effect that was restricted to cells from the preovulatory ovary. Thus, expression of PPARs within ovarian macrophages is hormonally regulated, reflecting the changing roles of these cells during the ovulatory cycle. Additionally, ovarian macrophages respond directly to troglitazone to downregulate expression of proinflammatory Nos2, providing mechanistic information about ovarian effects of TZD treatment.