Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Two Different Doses of Intravitreal Bevacizumab for Treatment of Choroidal Neovascularization Associated with Age-related Macular Degeneration

Purpose To compare the efficacy and safety of 1.25 mg versus 2.5 mg intravitreal bevacizumab (IVB) for treatment of choroidal neovascularization (CNV) associated with agerelated macular degeneration (AMD). Methods In this randomized clinical trial, consecutive patients with active CNV associated with AMD received 1.25 mg or 2.5 mg IVB. Best corrected visual acuity (BCVA), foveal thickness and side effects of therapy were evaluated one and three months after intervention. Results Overall 86 subjects were enrolled and completed the scheduled follow-up. Forty seven and 39 patients received 1.25 and 2.5 mg IVB respectively. The study groups were balanced in terms of baseline characteristics such as age, BCVA and foveal thickness. Mean improvement in BCVA was 0.06±0.3 logMAR in the 1.25 mg group and 0.07±0.34 logMAR in the 2.5 mg group (P=0.9). Mean decrease in foveal thickness was 49±36 μm in the 1.25 mg group and 65±31μm in the 2.5 mg group (P=0.6). Three cases of vitreous reaction and one case of massive subretinal hemorrhage were observed in the 2.5 mg group. Conclusion Double dose (2.5 mg) IVB does not seem to be more effective than regular dose (1.25 mg) injections for treatment of CNV due to AMD and may lead to more complications.
COMBINING EXPLOSIVE AND HIGH‐RESISTANCE TRAINING IMPROVES PERFORMANCE IN COMPETITIVE CYCLISTS

In several recent studies, athletes experienced substantial gains in sprint and endurance performance when explosive training or high-intensity interval training was added in the noncompetitive phase of a season. Here we report the effect of combining these 2 types of training on performance in the competitive phase. We randomized 18 road cyclists to an experimental (n = 9) or control (n = 9) group for 4–5 weeks of training. The experimental group replaced part of their usual training with twelve 30-minute sessions consisting of 3 sets of explosive single-leg jumps (20 for each leg) alternating with 3 sets of high-resistance cycling sprints (5 3 30 seconds at 60–70 min-1 with 30-second recoveries between repetitions). Performance measures, obtained over 2–3 days on a cycle ergometer before and after the intervention, were mean power in a 1- and 4-km time trial, peak power in an incremental test, and lactate-profile power and oxygen cost determined from 2 fixed submaximal workloads. The control group showed little mean change in performance. Power output sampled in the training sprints of the experimental group indicated a plateau in the training effect after 8–12 sessions. Relative to the control group, the mean changes (690% confidence limits) in the experimental group were: 1-km power, 8.7% (62.5%); 4-km power, 8.1% (64.1%); peak power, 6.8% (63.6); lactate-profile power, 3.7% (64.8%); and oxygen cost, 23.0% (62.6%). Individual responses to the training were apparent only for 4-km and lactate-profile power (standard deviations of 2.5% and 2.8%, respectively). The addition of explosive training and high-resistance interval training to the programs of already well-trained cyclists produces major gains in sprint and endurance performance, partly through improvements in exercise efficiency and anaerobic threshold.
FISH Analysis for del6q21 and del17p13 in B-cell Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia in Iranians

Background B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL) is the most common leukemia in the Western world. Major progress has been made in assessing typical chromosomal abnormalities and recognition of the correlation of these chromosomal abnormalities with laboratory features and clinical course of the disease. The most frequent genomic changes are deletions at 13q14, 11q22-23 and 17p13 and trisomy of chromosome 12. Objectives The aim of this study was to investigate the frequency of chromosomal aberrations in B-CLL patients’ peripheral blood and/or bone marrow using a molecular cytogenetic method, interphase fluorescence in situ hybridization (I-FISH) and to evaluate the correlation between these genomic changes and clinical findings. Patients and Methods I-FISH analyses were performed on bone marrow and blood samples of 66 B-CLL patients. Results Deletion of 17p13 was found in 11 (16.6%) and deletion 6q21 was present in 5 (7.5%). Statistical analyses were performed to investigate the correlation of these molecular-cytogenetic findings with family history, Rai staging and CD38 marker. No clear differences in distribution was noted for del17p13 and del6q21 among patients with and without family history, and no direct correlation was noted between these genomic changes and CD38 marker, but the correlation of del17p13 and Rai stage was significant. There was a high frequency of Rai stage II within del17p13 patients. Conclusions It was demonstrated that the presence of del6q21 in B-CLL patients indicates poor prognosis and on the contrary, presence of del17p13 points at the good prognostic value of the disease.
Entropy from State Probabilities: Hydration Entropy of Cations

Entropy is an important energetic quantity determining the progression of chemical processes. We propose a new approach to obtain hydration entropy directly from probability density functions in state space. We demonstrate the validity of our approach for a series of cations in aqueous solution. Extensive validation of simulation results was performed. Our approach does not make prior assumptions about the shape of the potential energy landscape and is capable of calculating accurate hydration entropy values. Sampling times in the low nanosecond range are sufficient for the investigated ionic systems. Although the presented strategy is at the moment limited to systems for which a scalar order parameter can be derived, this is not a principal limitation of the method. The strategy presented is applicable to any chemical system where sufficient sampling of conformational space is accessible, for example, by computer simulations.
A PROBABILISTIC MODEL FOR SPELLING CORRECTION

Spelling correctors are widely encountered in computer software applications and they provide the most plausible replacements for words that are presumably incorrect. The paper proposes a spelling correction method starting from the DamerauLevenshtein edit distance and using Bayesian decision theory. The resulted algorithm is tested on a bag of words from the New York Times news articles.
Minimum-Time Link Scheduling for Emptying Wireless Systems: Solution Characterization and Algorithmic Framework

We consider a set of transmitter-receiver pairs, or links, that share a wireless medium and address the problem of emptying backlogged queues with given initial size at the transmitters in minimum time. The problem amounts to determining activation subsets of links, and their time durations, to form a minimum-time schedule. Scheduling in wireless networks has been studied under various formulations before. In this paper, we present fundamental insights and solution characterizations that include: 1) showing that the complexity of the problem remains high for any continuous and increasing rate function; 2) formulating and proving sufficient and necessary optimality conditions of two baseline scheduling strategies that correspond to emptying the queues using one-at-a-time or all-at-once strategies; and 3) presenting and proving the tractability of the special case in which the transmission rates are functions only of the cardinality of the link activation sets. These results are independent of physical-layer system specifications and are valid for any form of rate function. We then develop an algorithmic framework for the solution to this problem. The framework encompasses exact as well as sub-optimal, but fast, scheduling algorithms, all under a unified principle design. Through computational experiments, we finally investigate the performance of several specific algorithms from this framework.
Timewise Reenement for Communicating Processes

A theory of timewise reenement is presented. This allows the translation of speciications and proofs of correctness between semantic models, permitting each stage in the veriication of a system to take place at the appropriate level of abstraction. The theory is presented within the context of CSP. A denotational characterisation of reenement is given in terms of relations between behaviours at diierent levels of abstraction. Various properties for the preservation of reenement through parallel composition are discussed. An operational characterisation is also given in terms of timed and untimed tests, and observed to coincide with the denotational characterisation.
Tracking the Fear Engram: The Lateral Amygdala Is an Essential Locus of Fear Memory Storage

Although it is believed that different types of memories are localized in discreet regions of the brain, concrete experimental evidence of the existence of such engrams is often elusive. Despite being one of the best characterized memory systems of the brain, the question of where fear memories are localized in the brain remains a hotly debated issue. Here, we combine site-specific behavioral pharmacology with multisite electrophysiological recording techniques to show that the lateral nucleus of the amygdala, long thought to be critical for the acquisition of fear memories, is also an essential locus of fear memory storage.
Privileging the Participant: The Importance of Sub-Group Analysis in Social Welfare Evaluations

This paper analyzes how variation in participant take-up rates affected the impacts of the New Hope project, a random-assignment, anti-poverty program. New Hope offered experimental members four benefits—child care subsidies, wage subsidies, health insurance, and, if needed, a temporary community service job—that were available to families working full time. Take-up of the benefits was far from universal and experimental participants who used one of the benefits rarely used all of them. Clustering and propensity score methods are used to analyze take-up sub-groups and to estimate program impacts within each. The majority of take-up patterns adopted by experimental members were associated with at least one positive program impact. However, the primary beneficiaries were those parents who used the community service jobs. They increased their employment effort, felt less parenting stress, and had children with higher teacher-related academic accomplishment scores. The implication of this method for the evaluation of other multi-benefit programs is discussed.
Parallel-Wiki: A Collection of Parallel Sentences Extracted from Wikipedia

Parallel corpora are essential resources for certain Natural Language Processing tasks such as Statistical Machine Translation. However, the existing publically available parallel corpora are specific to limited genres or domains, mostly juridical (e.g. JRC-Acquis) and medical (e.g. EMEA), and there is a lack of such resources for the general domain. This paper addresses this issue and presents a collection of parallel sentences extracted from the entire Wikipedia collection of documents for the following pairs of languages: English-German, English-Romanian and English-Spanish. Our work began with the processing of the publically available Wikipedia static dumps for the three languages in- volved. The existing text was stripped of the specific mark-up, cleaned of non- textual entries like images or tables and sentence-split. Then, corresponding documents for the above mentioned pairs of languages were identified using the cross-lingual Wikipedia links embedded within the documents themselves. Considering them comparable documents, we further employed a publically available tool named LEXACC, developed during the ACCURAT project, to extract parallel sentences from the preprocessed data. LEXACC assigns a score to each extracted pair, which is a measure of the degree of parallelism between the two sentences in the pair. These scores allow researchers to select only those sentences having a certain degree of parallelism suited for their intended purposes. This resource is publically available at: http://ws.racai. ro:9191/repository/search/? q=Parallel+Wiki
Neural Activity in Human Hippocampal Formation Reveals the Spatial Context of Retrieved Memories

Remembrance of Places Past The hippocampus has two major roles in cognition. Place-responsive neurons form a context-sensitive cognitive map, firing more strongly when an animal traverses specific regions of its environment. Both humans and animals thus need the hippocampus to learn their way around novel environments. Similarly, the hippocampus is critical for our ability to remember a specific event in space and time. It has thus been suggested that the spatial and memory functions of the hippocampus reflect a common architecture. Recording from neurosurgical patients playing a virtual reality memory game, Miller et al. (p. 1111) found that the recall of events was indeed associated with reinstatement of the place-firing of neurons activated as the subjects navigated through the environment. Place cells in the human brain that fired at an object’s location are reactivated during spontaneous recall. In many species, spatial navigation is supported by a network of place cells that exhibit increased firing whenever an animal is in a certain region of an environment. Does this neural representation of location form part of the spatiotemporal context into which episodic memories are encoded? We recorded medial temporal lobe neuronal activity as epilepsy patients performed a hybrid spatial and episodic memory task. We identified place-responsive cells active during virtual navigation and then asked whether the same cells activated during the subsequent recall of navigation-related memories without actual navigation. Place-responsive cell activity was reinstated during episodic memory retrieval. Neuronal firing during the retrieval of each memory was similar to the activity that represented the locations in the environment where the memory was initially encoded.
A Feedback Method of Improving the Performance of a Document Vector Space Developed on a Feature Extraction Model

In this paper, we propose a basic algorithm for an automatic feedback method to reconstruct the document vector space that is developed based on a method referred to as feature extraction model (FEM). In the feedback method, we add and remove some terms that are used to construct the vector space so that retrieval results are improved, because the distributions of document vectors are arranged properly according to purposes of searchers. The efficiency and the feasibility of the proposed method are confirmed by several experiments.
Effect of position changes after spinal anesthesia with low-dose bupivacaine in elderly patients: sensory block characteristics and hemodynamic changes

Background The purpose of this study is to compare the anesthetic characteristics in elderly patients who remain in sitting position for 2 min compared with patients that are placed in supine position after induction of spinal anesthesia. Methods Fifty-seven patients scheduled for transurethral surgery were randomized to assume supine position immediately after 6.5 mg hyperbaric bupivacaine were injected (L group) or to remain in the sitting position for 2 minutes before they also assumed the supine position (S group). Analgesic levels were assessed bilaterally, using pin-prick. Motor block was scored using a 12-point scale. The mean arterial pressure and heart rate were also recorded. Results Sensory block levels were significantly lower at all time points for the L group. However, there were no significant differences in the degree of the motor block and hemodynamic changes between the two groups. However, in the L group, ephedrine or atropine were administered to three patients. Conclusions We concluded that performing a spinal anesthesia in sitting position was technically easier and induced less hypotension.
Claudin 1 Mediates TNFα-Induced Gene Expression and Cell Migration in Human Lung Carcinoma Cells

Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is an important mechanism in carcinogenesis. To determine the mechanisms that are involved in the regulation of EMT, it is crucial to develop new biomarkers and therapeutic targets towards cancers. In this study, when TGFβ1 and TNFα were used to induce EMT in human lung carcinoma A549 cells, we found an increase in an epithelial cell tight junction marker, Claudin 1. We further identified that it was the TNFα and not the TGFβ1 that induced the fibroblast-like morphology changes. TNFα also caused the increase in Claudin-1 gene expression and protein levels in Triton X-100 soluble cytoplasm fraction. Down-regulation of Claudin-1, using small interfering RNA (siRNA), inhibited 75% of TNFα-induced gene expression changes. Claudin-1 siRNA effectively blocked TNFα-induced molecular functional networks related to inflammation and cell movement. Claudin-1 siRNA was able to significantly reduce TNF-enhanced cell migration and fibroblast-like morphology. Furthermore, over expression of Claudin 1 with a Claudin 1-pcDNA3.1/V5-His vector enhanced cell migration. In conclusion, these observations indicate that Claudin 1 acts as a critical signal mediator in TNFα-induced gene expression and cell migration in human lung cancer cells. Further analyses of these cellular processes may be helpful in developing novel therapeutic strategies.
A comparison of males and females' temporal patterning to short‐ and long‐term heat acclimation

The current study assessed sex differences in thermoregulatory and physiological adaptation to short‐term (STHA) and long‐term heat acclimation (LTHA). Sixteen (eight males; eight females) participants performed three running heat tolerance tests (RHTT), preceding HA (RHTT1), following 5 days HA (RHTT2) and 10 days HA (RHTT3). The RHTT involved 30‐min running (9 km/h, 2% gradient) in 40 °C, 40% relative humidity. Following STHA, resting rectal temperature (Trrest) (males: −0.24 ± 0.16 °C, P ≤ 0.001; females: −0.02 ± 0.08 °C, P = 0.597), peak rectal temperature (Trpeak) (males: −0.39 ± 0.36 °C, P ≤ 0.001; females −0.07 ± 0.18 °C, P = 0.504), and peak heart rate (males: −14 ± 12 beats/min, P ≤ 0.001; females: −5 ± 3 beats/min, P = 0.164) reduced in males, but not females. Following STHA, sweat rate relative to body surface area (SRBSA) increased (428 ± 269 g/h/m2, P = 0.029) in females, but not males (−11 ± 286 g/h/m2, P = 0.029). Following LTHA, Trrest (males: −0.04 ± 0.15 °C, P = 0.459; females: −0.22 ± 0.12 °C, P ≤ 0.01) and Trpeak (males: −0.05 ± 0.26 °C, P = 0.590; females: −0.41 ± 0.24 °C, P ≤ 0.01) reduced in females, but not males. Following LTHA, SRBSA increased in males (308 ± 346 g/h/m2, P = 0.029), but not females (44 ± 373 g/h/m2, P = 0.733). Males and females responded to STHA; however, females required LTHA to establish thermoregulatory and cardiovascular stability. HA protocols should be designed to target sex differences in thermoregulation for optimal adaptation.
Field emission properties of nanocomposite carbon nitride films

A modified cathodic arc technique has been used to deposit carbon nitride thin films directly on n+ Si substrates. Transmission electron microscopy showed that clusters of fullerene-like nanoparticles are embedded in the deposited material. Field emission in vacuum from as-grown films starts at an electric field strength of 3.8 V/μm. When the films were etched in an HF:NH4F solution for 10 min, the threshold field decreased to 2.6 V/μm. The role of the carbon nanoparticles in the field emission process and the influence of the chemical etching treatment are discussed.
An Automatic Mass Detection System in Mammograms Based on Complex Texture Features

It is difficult for radiologists to identify the masses on a mammogram because they are surrounded by complicated tissues. In current breast cancer screening, radiologists often miss approximately 10-30% of tumors because of the ambiguous margins of lesions and visual fatigue resulting from long-time diagnosis. For these reasons, many computer-aided detection (CADe) systems have been developed to aid radiologists in detecting mammographic lesions which may indicate the presence of breast cancer. This study presents an automatic CADe system that uses local and discrete texture features for mammographic mass detection. This system segments some adaptive square regions of interest (ROIs) for suspicious areas. This study also proposes two complex feature extraction methods based on cooccurrence matrix and optical density transformation to describe local texture characteristics and the discrete photometric distribution of each ROI. Finally, this study uses stepwise linear discriminant analysis to classify abnormal regions by selecting and rating the individual performance of each feature. Results show that the proposed system achieves satisfactory detection performance.
A general estimator for the variance of the Mantel-Haenszel odds ratio.

This commentary presents a new estiof matching variables, unmatched varimator of the variance of the natural log of ables, or both. This notation encompasses the Mantel-Haenszel odds ratio and illusthe full spectrum of matched and untrates its application in typical case-control matched designs. For example, in the pairdesigns. In contrast with any single previmatched study, MI and Mo are always one; ously proposed estimator (1-7), this estiin a design with J controls uniquely mator is easily computed and can be used matched to each case (1: J matching), MI in the analysis of data from any sampling is always one and Mo is always J; in an design (e.g., individually matched, category unmatched design, MI and Mo will usually matched, or unmatched). Furthermore, in vary in an arbitrary fashion across the a series of Monte Carlo simulations, this strata. estimator yielded confidence limits as good Suppose now that the parameter of inas or better than those obtained using preterest is the odds ratio and the odds ratio vious estimators (8). has a common (constant) value across strata. If R = AD/T and S = BC/T, the BACKGROUND Mantel-Haenszel estirnator2f the common We will use the following notation to odds ratio is defined as ORMH = R+/S+, where R+ = C, R, S+ = C, S, and the sumrepresent data values in a basic stratum mations are acrzss all strata. from an epidemiologic study: Valid use of O R M ~ requires that the study ' Exposed Unexposed Totals sample be "large," but there are at least two
Rodent Hypoxia–Ischemia Models for Cerebral Palsy Research: A Systematic Review

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a complex multifactorial disorder, affecting approximately 2.5–3/1000 live term births, and up to 22/1000 prematurely born babies. CP results from injury to the developing brain incurred before, during, or after birth. The most common form of this condition, spastic CP, is primarily associated with injury to the cerebral cortex and subcortical white matter as well as the deep gray matter. The major etiological factors of spastic CP are hypoxia/ischemia (HI), occurring during the last third of pregnancy and around birth age. In addition, inflammation has been found to be an important factor contributing to brain injury, especially in term infants. Other factors, including genetics, are gaining importance. The classic Rice–Vannucci HI model (in which 7-day-old rat pups undergo unilateral ligation of the common carotid artery followed by exposure to 8% oxygen hypoxic air) is a model of neonatal stroke that has greatly contributed to CP research. In this model, brain damage resembles that observed in severe CP cases. This model, and its numerous adaptations, allows one to finely tune the injury parameters to mimic, and therefore study, many of the pathophysiological processes and conditions observed in human patients. Investigators can recreate the HI and inflammation, which cause brain damage and subsequent motor and cognitive deficits. This model further enables the examination of potential approaches to achieve neural repair and regeneration. In the present review, we compare and discuss the advantages, limitations, and the translational value for CP research of HI models of perinatal brain injury.