Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Entailment, intensionality and text understanding

We argue that the detection of entailment and contradiction relations between texts is a minimal metric for the evaluation of text understanding systems. Intensionality, which is widespread in natural language, raises a number of detection issues that cannot be brushed aside. We describe a contexted clausal representation, derived from approaches in formal semantics, that permits an extended range of intensional entailments and contradictions to be tractably detected.
Distinct roles of L‐ and T‐type voltage‐dependent Ca2+ channels in regulation of lymphatic vessel contractile activity

Lymph transport is promoted by lymphatic pumping, a robust phasic contractile activity of the collecting lymphatic vessels. This contractile function, critical for tissue fluid homeostasis and immune cell transport to lymph nodes, is regulated by the amount of lymph entering the vessels and subsequent distension of the vessel wall. While lymphatic pumping relies on influx of Ca2+ through voltage‐dependent Ca2+ channels, characterization of these channels and details of their contribution to the regulation of stretch‐activated contractions are lacking. Here we report the expression of L‐ and T‐type Ca2+ channels in rat mesenteric lymphatic vessels and their differential role in regulating strength and frequency of lymphatic contractions. This study fosters our knowledge on the mechanisms that drive stretch‐activated lymphatic contractions. It may help in providing a basis to developing agents able to enhance lymphatic function, which could be of therapeutic benefit during lymphatic impairment such as lymphoedema.
Factors Associated With Adherence to Methylphenidate Treatment in Adult Patients With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Substance Use Disorders

Abstract Adherence to treatment is one of the most consistent factors associated with a favorable addiction treatment outcome. Little is known about factors associated with treatment adherence in individuals affected with comorbid attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and substance use disorders (SUD). This study aimed to explore whether treatment-associated factors, such as the prescribing physician's (sub)specialty and methylphenidate (MPH) dose, or patient-related factors, such as sex, age, SUD subtype, and psychiatric comorbidity, were associated with adherence to MPH treatment. Swedish national registers were used to identify adult individuals with prescriptions of MPH and medications specifically used in the treatment of SUD or a diagnosis of SUD and/or coexisting psychiatric diagnoses. Primary outcome measure was days in active MPH treatment in stratified dose groups (⩽36 mg, ≥37 mg to ⩽54 mg, ≥55 mg to ⩽72 mg, ≥73 mg to ⩽90 mg, ≥91 mg to ⩽108 mg, and ≥109 mg). Lower MPH doses (ie, ⩽36 mg day 100) were associated with treatment discontinuation between days 101 and 830 (HR⩽36 mg, 1.67; HR37–54mg, 1.37; HR55–72mg, 1.36; HR73–90mg, 1.19; HR≥108mg, 1.09). The results showed a linear trend (P < 0.0001) toward decreased risk of treatment discontinuation along with increase of MPH doses. In conclusion, this study shows that higher MPH doses were associated with long-term treatment adherence in individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and SUD.
Bacteriocin Production: a Probiotic Trait?

ABSTRACT Bacteriocins are an abundant and diverse group of ribosomally synthesized antimicrobial peptides produced by bacteria and archaea. Traditionally, bacteriocin production has been considered an important trait in the selection of probiotic strains, but until recently, few studies have definitively demonstrated the impact of bacteriocin production on the ability of a strain to compete within complex microbial communities and/or positively influence the health of the host. Although research in this area is still in its infancy, there is intriguing evidence to suggest that bacteriocins may function in a number of ways within the gastrointestinal tract. Bacteriocins may facilitate the introduction of a producer into an established niche, directly inhibit the invasion of competing strains or pathogens, or modulate the composition of the microbiota and influence the host immune system. Here we review the role of bacteriocin production in complex microbial communities and their potential to enhance human health.
Expression of mesothelial markers in malignant mesotheliomas: an immunohistochemical evaluation of 173 cases.

OBJECTIVE To see the distribution of Calretinin, thrombomodulin, CK5/6 and HBME-1 markers in various subtypes of mesotheliomas and extend the published data on this topic. The positivity of adenocarcinoma specific markers (CEA and BerEP4) in malignant mesotheliomas have also been evaluated. METHODS Various markers in 173 cases of malignant mesotheliomas received over a period of 8 years were evaluated by immunohistochemistry. RESULTS In majority of malignant mesotheliomas i.e., epithelioid and biphasic types, the positive staining patterns complement the gold standard histologic diagnosis. However, in a small minority mainly sarcomatoid variant, heavy reliance cannot be placed on these markers. CEA and BerEP4 are useful negative markers of mesotheliomas, although occasionally these are positive in clear cut mesotheliomas. CONCLUSIONS Specificity of various markers in malignant mesotheliomas should be assessed according to histologic subtypes. The existing generation of markers is not reliable in diagnosis of sarcomatoid mesotheliomas. Fortunately this forms only a small group of mesothelial malignancy. In common epithelioid and biphasic variants calretinin, thrombomodulin, CK5/6, HBME-1 are sensitive positive markers whereas CEA and BerEP4 are negative markers of malignant mesotheliomas.
Effects of non‐amputative wide local excision on the local control and prognosis of in situ and invasive subungual melanoma

Subungual melanomas (SUM) are rare, and amputation is often required. Non‐amputative wide local excision (WLE) of the nail unit with the periosteum of the distal phalanx, followed by skin graft, has been accepted for in situ or SUM of 0.5 mm or less thickness. However, previous reports have included a limited number of cases, and not all more than 0.5‐mm thick SUM exhibit invasion or attachment to the distal phalanx. The aim of the present study was to investigate the local recurrence and prognosis for in situ, minimally invasive and invasive SUM that were treated using WLE. We retrospectively reviewed 50 patients with in situ (n = 48) or minimally invasive SUM (n = 2) (in situ or minimally invasive group) and 12 patients with more than 0.5‐mm thick invasive SUM (invasive group) who were treated using WLE. All patients survived the follow‐up period (24–207 months), although four patients with in situ SUM experienced local recurrence at the lateral margin and re‐excision was required. In the invasive group, no patients experienced local recurrence, although one patient (8.3%) developed nodal metastasis at 86 months and regional lymph node dissection was required. WLE may provide acceptable local control for in situ and intermediate thickness SUM, without compromising the vital prognosis. However, a larger randomized prospective study with long‐term follow up is required to evaluate adequately the risks associated with a non‐amputative WLE for in situ and invasive SUM.
Symbolic Scheduling Techniques

This thesis describes an exact symbolic formulation of control-dependent, resource-constrained scheduling. The technique provides a closed-form solution set in which all satisfying schedules are encapsulated in a compressed Binary Decision Diagram (BDD) representation. This solution format greatly increases the flexibility of the synthesis task by enabling incremental incorporation of additional constraints and by supporting solution space exploration without the need for rescheduling. The technique provides a systematic treatment of speculative operation execution for arbitrary forward-branching control structures. An iterative construction method is presented along with benchmark results. The experiments demonstrate the ability of the proposed technique to efficiently exploit operation level parallelism not explicitly specified in the input description.
Sentence and Expression Level Annotation of Opinions in User-Generated Discourse

In this paper, we introduce a corpus of consumer reviews from the rateitall and the eopinions websites annotated with opinion-related information. We present a two-level annotation scheme. In the first stage, the reviews are analyzed at the sentence level for (i) relevancy to a given topic, and (ii) expressing an evaluation about the topic. In the second stage, on-topic sentences containing evaluations about the topic are further investigated at the expression level for pinpointing the properties (semantic orientation, intensity), and the functional components of the evaluations (opinion terms, targets and holders). We discuss the annotation scheme, the inter-annotator agreement for different subtasks and our observations.
Estrogenic Activity of Mineral Oil Aromatic Hydrocarbons Used in Printing Inks

The majority of printing inks are based on mineral oils (MOs) which contain complex mixtures of saturated and aromatic hydrocarbons. Consumer exposure to these oils occurs either through direct skin contacts or, more frequently, as a result of MO migration into the contents of food packaging that was made from recycled newspaper. Despite this ubiquitous and frequent exposure little is known about the potential toxicological effects, particularly with regard to the aromatic MO fractions. From a toxicological point of view the huge amount of alkylated and unsubstituted compounds therein is reason for concern as they can harbor genotoxicants as well as potential endocrine disruptors. The aim of this study was to assess both the genotoxic and estrogenic potential of MOs used in printing inks. Mineral oils with various aromatic hydrocarbon contents were tested using a battery of in vitro assays selected to address various endpoints such as estrogen-dependent cell proliferation, activation of estrogen receptor α or transcriptional induction of estrogenic target genes. In addition, the comet assay has been applied to test for genotoxicity. Out of 15 MOs tested, 10 were found to potentially act as xenoestrogens. For most of the oils the effects were clearly triggered by constituents of the aromatic hydrocarbon fraction. From 5 oils tested in the comet assay, 2 showed slight genotoxicity. Altogether it appears that MOs used in printing inks are potential endocrine disruptors and should thus be assessed carefully to what extent they might contribute to the total estrogenic burden in humans.
Backhaul traffic balancing and dynamic content-centric clustering for the downlink of Fog Radio Access Network

Recently, an evolution of the Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) has been proposed, named as Fog Radio Access Network (F-RAN). Compared to C-RAN, the Radio Units (RUs) in F-CAN are equipped with local caches, which can store some frequently requested files. In the downlink, users requesting the same file form a multicast group, and are cooperatively served by a cluster of RUs. The requested file is either available locally in the cache of this cluster or fetched from the Central Processor (CP) via backhauls. Thus caching some frequently requested files can greatly reduce the burden on backhaul links. Whether a specific RU should be involved in a cluster to serve a multicast group depends on its backhaul capacity, requested files, cached files and the channel. Therefore it is subject to optimization. In this paper we investigate the joint design of multicast beamforming, dynamic clustering and backhaul traffic balancing. Beamforming and clustering are jointly optimized in order to minimize the power consumed, while QoS of each user is to be met and the traffic on each backhaul link is balanced according to its capacity.
A New Approach to Monitoring Dengue Activity

Among the world's most vexing emerging infectious diseases, dengue continues to spread, and in its many endemic areas is a major public health problem [1]–[3]. There is no vaccine available, and the immunology of dengue, whereby immunological “priming” can result in extremely severe manifestations (e.g., dengue hemorrhagic fever) complicates vaccine development [4]. Thus dengue control is dependent on controlling the mosquito vector, and resistance to insecticides, environmental and social disruption, climate change, and global movement of goods and people (and incidentally, vectors) provide ongoing hurdles to effective vector control [5], [6].
Self-assembly model, hepatocytes attachment and inflammatory response for silk fibroin/chitosan scaffolds

Silk fibroin is an attractive natural fibrous protein for biomedical application due to its good biocompatibility and high tensile strength. Silk fibroin is apt to form a sheet-like structure during the freeze-drying process, which is not suitable for the scaffold of tissue engineering. In our former study, the adding of chitosan promoted the self-assembly of silk fibroin/chitosan (SFCS) into a three-dimensional (3D) homogeneous porous structure. In this study, a model of the self-assembly is proposed; furthermore, hepatocytes attachment and inflammatory response for the SFCS scaffold were examined. The rigid chain of chitosan may be used as a template for β-sheet formation of silk fibroin, and this may break the sheet structure of the silk fibroin scaffold and promote the formation of a 3D porous structure of the SFCS scaffold. Compared with the polylactic glycolic acid scaffold, the SFCS scaffold further facilitates the attachment of hepatocytes. To investigate the inflammatory response, SFCS scaffolds were implanted into the greater omentum of rats. From the results of implantation, we could demonstrate in vivo that the implantation of SFCS scaffolds resulted in only slight inflammation. Keeping the good histocompatibility and combining the advantages of both fibroin and chitosan, the SFCS scaffold could be a prominent candidate for soft tissue engineering, for example, in the liver.
A Lebesgue Sampling based Diagnosis and Prognosis Methodology with Application to Lithium-ion Batteries

Fault diagnosis and prognosis (FDP) plays an important role in the modern complex industrial systems to maintain their reliability, safety, and availability. Diagnosis aims to monitor the fault state of the component or the system in real-time. Prognosis refers to the generation of long-term predictions that describe the evolution of a fault and the estimation of the remaining useful life (RUL) of a failing component or subsystem. Traditional Riemann sampling-based FDP (RS-FDP) takes samples and executes algorithms in periodic time intervals and, in most cases, requires significant computational resources. This makes it difficult or even impossible to implement RS-FDP algorithms on hardware with very limited computational capabilities, such as embedded systems that are widely used in industries. To overcome this bottleneck, this proposal develops a novel Lebesgue sampling-based FDP (LS-FDP), in which FDP algorithms are implemented “as-neede”. Different from RS-FDP, LS-FDP divides the state axis by a number of predefined states (also called Lebesgue states). The computation of LS-based diagnosis is triggered only when the value of measurements changes from one Lebesgue state to another, or “event-triggered”. This method significantly reduces the computation demands by eliminating unnecessary computation. This LS-FDP design is generic and able to accommodate different algorithms, such as Kalman filter and its variations, particle filter, relevant vector machine, etc. This proposal first develops a particle filtering based LS-FDP for li-ion battery applications. To improve the accuracy and precision of the diagnosis and prognosis
Economic Impact of Hyponatremia in Hospitalized Patients: A Retrospective Cohort Study

Abstract Background: Hyponatremia is the most common electrolyte abnormality seen in general hospital patients, with an incidence of 1% to 6% in the United States. Objective: We aimed to evaluate the impact of varying levels of hyponatremia at admission on length of stay (LOS) and cost of care in adult hospitalized patients. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted using an existing clinical database from a large academic-setting hospital. All adult admissions from January 2004 through May 2005 with serum sodium level at admission of ≤ 134 mEq/L were separated into 2 cohorts: patients with moderate-to-severe hyponatremia (serum sodium level at admission of ≤ 129 mEq/L, n = 547) and patients with mild-to-moderate hyponatremia (serum sodium level of 130–134 mEq/L, n = 1500). ICD-9 diagnosis codes for these 2047 admissions with hyponatremia were used to identify a cohort of 7573 admissions with the same principal admitting diagnoses and a serum sodium level of 135 to 145 mEq/L. Differences in hospital LOS, intensive care unit (ICU) admission rate, and median total costs per admission between cohorts were examined using multiple linear regression, logistic, and quantile regression models. Results: Admissions with hyponatremia had significantly longer hospital LOS than those admitted without hyponatremia (median LOS: moderate-to-severe hyponatremia, 8 days; mild-to-moderate hyponatremia, 8 days; normal, 6 days; P < 0.001). Patients with more severe hyponatremia were also more likely to be admitted to the ICU during the hospital stay (moderate-to-severe hyponatremia, 32%; mild-to-moderate hyponatremia, 26%; normal, 22%; P < 0.001). These trends were also reflected in the total costs per admission, with median costs of $16 606 for moderate-to-severe hyponatremia cases, $14 266 for mild-to-moderate hyponatremia cases, and $13 066 for normal admissions (P < 0.001). Conclusions: Hyponatremia at admission was associated with increased LOS and cost of care for hospitalized patients. Interventions or pharmacotherapies for the prompt treatment of hyponatremia could potentially reduce morbidity and LOS, thereby reducing the utilization of health care resources.
Analysis of Radiation Interactions and Biological Effects for Boron Neutron Capture Therapy

The direct and indirect ionizing radiation sources for boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT)are identi? ed. The mechanisms of physical, chemical and biological radiation interactions for BNCT are systematically described and analyzed. The relationship between the effect of biological radiation and radiation dose are illustrated and analyzed for BNCT. If the DNAs in chromosomes are damaged by ion- izing radiations, the instructions that control the cell function and reproduction are also damaged. This radiation damage may be reparable, irreparable, or incorrectly repaired. The irreparable damage can result in cell death at next mitosis while incorrectly repaired damage can result in mutation. Cell death leads to variable degrees of tissue dysfunction, which can affect the whole organism’s functions. Can- cer cells cannot live without oxygen and nutrients via the blood supply. A cancer tumor can be shrunk by damaging angiogenic factors and/or capillaries via ionizing radiations to decrease blood supply into the cancer tumor. The collisions between ionizing radiations and the target nuclei and the absorption of the ultraviolet, visible light, infrared and microwaves from bremsstrahlung in the tumor can heat up and damage cancer cells and function as thermotherapy. The cancer cells are more chemically and biologically sensitive at the BNCT-induced higher temperatures since free-radical-induced chemical re- actions are more random and vigorous at higher temperatures after irradiation, and consequently the cancer cells are harder to divide or even survive due to more cell DNA damage. BNCT is demonstrated via a recent clinical trial that it is quite effective in treating recurrent nasopharyngeal cancer.
Tolerability and immunogenicity of an inactivated enterovirus 71 vaccine in Chinese healthy adults and children

In this open labeled phase 1 clinical trial with enterovirus 71 (EV71) vaccine (ClinicalTrials.gov number: NCT01267903) performed in Donghai County, Jiangsu Province, China, in January 2011. A total of 100 healthy participants, stratified by age (40 adults aged 16–22 y and 60 children aged 6–15 y), were enrolled from volunteers and sequentially received EV71 vaccines of 160U (only for children), 320U, or 640U on day 0 and 28, in a manner of dose escalation. All the participants were followed for 28 d after each shot. During the study period, 37 participants reported at least one injection-site or systemic adverse reaction. No case of grade 3 adverse reaction or serious adverse event (SAE) was observed. Also no dose-related increase in reaction rate was noticed. Pain at injection-site and fever were the most frequently reported local and systematic reaction, respectively. The studied EV71 vaccines demonstrated acceptable tolerability and no anti-nuclear antibody (ANA) seropositive was detected pre or post vaccinations in participants. Also, no clinically significant abnormal change for the liver or kidney function indexes was found. In the according-to-protocol cohort for immunogenicity, it was observed one dose of EV71 vaccine elicited good immune response in the participants, especially for the ones with sero-positive baseline. No obvious dose-response relationship for immunogenicity was found. This study was co-founded by Beijing Vigoo Biological Co., LTD and Chinese governmental grants (2008BAI69B01 and 2009ZX10004–806).
Transcriptome Sequencing and Characterization for the Sea Cucumber Apostichopus japonicus (Selenka, 1867)

Background Sea cucumbers are a special group of marine invertebrates. They occupy a taxonomic position that is believed to be important for understanding the origin and evolution of deuterostomes. Some of them such as Apostichopus japonicus represent commercially important aquaculture species in Asian countries. Many efforts have been devoted to increasing the number of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) for A. japonicus, but a comprehensive characterization of its transcriptome remains lacking. Here, we performed the large-scale transcriptome profiling and characterization by pyrosequencing diverse cDNA libraries from A. japonicus. Results In total, 1,061,078 reads were obtained by 454 sequencing of eight cDNA libraries representing different developmental stages and adult tissues in A. japonicus. These reads were assembled into 29,666 isotigs, which were further clustered into 21,071 isogroups. Nearly 40% of the isogroups showed significant matches to known proteins based on sequence similarity. Gene ontology (GO) and KEGG pathway analyses recovered diverse biological functions and processes. Candidate genes that were potentially involved in aestivation were identified. Transcriptome comparison with the sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus revealed similar patterns of GO term representation. In addition, 4,882 putative orthologous genes were identified, of which 202 were not present in the non-echinoderm organisms. More than 700 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) and 54,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were detected in the A. japonicus transcriptome. Conclusion Pyrosequencing was proven to be efficient in rapidly identifying a large set of genes for the sea cucumber A. japonicus. Through the large-scale transcriptome sequencing as well as public EST data integration, we performed a comprehensive characterization of the A. japonicus transcriptome and identified candidate aestivation-related genes. A large number of potential genetic markers were also identified from the A. japonicus transcriptome. This transcriptome resource would lay an important foundation for future genetic or genomic studies on this species.