Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fibrinogen Levels Following Amicar in Surgery for Idiopathic Scoliosis

Study Design. Prospective evaluation of fibrinogen levels before surgery and after surgery in patients with idiopathic scoliosis undergoing posterior spinal fusion (PSF) and segmental spinal instrumentation (SSI) who received Amicar to decrease perioperative blood loss. Objectives. To assess a possible association between postoperative fibrinogen levels and Amicar administration. Summary of Background Data. Our previous randomized, double-blind (Amicar and control) study demonstrated a rise in fibrinogen levels on the first postoperative day in the Amicar group, but not in the control group. Fibrinogen levels were not measured on the remaining postoperative days. We subsequently measured fibrinogen levels on all postoperative days in 21 consecutive patients with idiopathic scoliosis and found a dramatic increase throughout the postoperative hospitalization. This study is a continuation of our analysis of postoperative fibrinogen levels. Methods. We analyzed fibrinogen levels before surgery and on all postoperative days (4 or 5 days) until discharge in 51 consecutive patients, including our 21 previously reported patients, who received Amicar and underwent a PSF and SSI. We also analyzed the same factors with respect to perioperative blood loss as in our previous Amicar studies. Results. There were 41 females and 10 males with a mean age at surgery of 14.2 ± 1.8 years. Their mean hospitalization was 4.6 ± 0.8 days. Their mean estimated intraoperative blood loss was 766 ± 308 mL and postoperative suction drainage 532 ± 186 mL for a total perioperative blood loss of 1297 ± 311 mL. The perioperative transfusion requirements were 0.5 ± 0.6 U per patient. The preoperative fibrinogen was 255.5 ± 58.3 mg/dL, and it rose steadily throughout the postoperative period to 680.9 ± 111.9 mg/dL on the fifth postoperative day. There were no complications related to the use of Amicar. Conclusions. Fibrinogen levels rise steadily throughout the postoperative period. The significance of this increase is unknown. Was it due to the use of Amicar or just the effects of surgery itself? Further investigations will be necessary.
GANGRENOUS MASTITIS IN COWS : PATHOLOGICAL , MICROBIOLOGICAL AND SURGICOTHERAPEUTICAL INVESTIGATION

Islam M. N. , Hoque M. F. , Rima U. K. , Fatema B. Z. , Aziz F. B. , Faruk M. I.and Akter M. R. 2008. Gangrenous Mastitis in Cows: Pathological, Microbiological and Surgicotherapeutical Investigation. J . Soil . Nature. 2(3): 29-36 Gangrenous mastitis in cows was investigated at Dinajpur district of Bangladesh. The animals brought to clinics for the diagnosis and treatments were examined clinically, pathomicrobiologically and surgicotherapeutically. Out of 29 mastitis cases, only 7 cases of gangrenous mastitis were recorded. The signs, lesions and the causative organisms were characterized clinically, pathologically and bacteriologically, respectively and the surgicotherapeutical responses of the patients were noted. A presumptive diagnosis was done based on the identification of the organisms by preparing impression smears stained with Gram’s stain. The organisms were finally isolated and identified by culturing and biochemical properties of the organisms in differential sugar media without typification. The animal was accepted for the amputation of the gangrenous portion (s) despite of the doubtful negative prognosis. The amputed tissues, exudates and the milk samples were collected taking necessary precautions for bacteriological as well as gross and histopathological examinations. The formalin fixed tissues were processed, sectioned and stained with haematoxylin and eosin for the histopathological examination. Possible all measures were taken carefully during the course of surgical operation giving emphasis on to less painful operation, check more bleeding, compensate fluid and electrolytes loss, provide hygienic measurement to avoid contamination and complications, and also taken necessary postoperative care.Both local and systemic signs of the disease were recorded and characterized clinically as anorexia, moderate elevation of the body temperature, dehydration, depression, reluctant to walk. The lesions were morphopathologically characterized as extremely swollen, bluish discoloration, foul smelling, serosanguineous odoriferous exudation, painless and cool to touch that indicated the development of moist gangrenous mastitis. The causative organisms (Staphylococci, Bacilli, and E. coli) were isolated and identified. The remarkable histopathological lesions were characterized as necrosis and sloughed off alveolar lining epithelium, pink stained proteinaceous exudates in ductal lumen, erosion and ulceration in the ductal system. All animals were recovered within different periods of time except one which was died during the course of treatment. The present study was conducted to investigate the gangrenous mastitis in cows based on the findings as stated above as well as to see the prognosis of the disease managed with surgicotherapeutical means.
Relations between India and Pakistan after Mumbai Attack 26/11

Mumbai is one of the best Indian cities that are easily reachable via Arabian Sea for the Pakistani public. It is also well known because of central point of multiple points for the high class and international tourists. A few years back on 27 th of November in 2008, there were huge sequential attacks that destroyed many lives and injuries of innocent people. This attack mainly focused the high class people and the international tourists of Mumbai. This attack boosted up the differences between two states that is Pakistan and India. In response to the attack, the Indian Government and other higher authorities raised their voices against Pakistan. They claimed that Pakistan is the central place where terrorism is produced and promoted. In addition to this, India also held responsible Lashkar-e-Tayba for attacking Indian places. This cruel condition affected India-Pakistan relationship very much and raised a serious conflict between both states. Keywords : Political, Trade, Conflicts, India, Pakistan, Relations
Correlation between serum vitamin D (25(OH)D) concentration and quadriceps femoris muscle strength in Indonesian elderly women living in three nursing homes.

AIM to investigate the correlation between serum vitamin D (25(OH)D) concentration and quadriceps femoris muscle strength. METHODS this was a cross-sectional correlative study, conducted at three nursing homes in Jakarta and one nursing home in Bekasi in January 2005. The subjects were women aged 60 years or above. Those selected study subjects underwent quadriceps femoris muscle strength examination with Cybex dynamometer with 150 degrees/second speed, twice (three repetitions with 30 second rest time). The 25 (OH)D concentration was measured by ELISA. RESULTS out of 67 subjects who met the required criteria for this study, five subjects withdrew from the study during muscle strength examination. The mean age was 71.1 (SD 7.2) years old while the mean serum vitamin D concentration was 68.2 (SD 21.6) nmol/l. Vitamin D deficiency (<or= 50 nmol/l) was found in 22.6% of subjects. It was also found that the median (minimum-maximum) quadriceps femoris muscle strength was 40.00 (11-116) N.m. Approximately 82.3% of the subjects were of generalized muscle weakness. Correlation was found between serum 25 (OH)D concentration and quadriceps femoris muscle strength (r = 0.327; P = 0.009). CONCLUSION this study reveals that serum 25 (OH) D concentrations in Indonesian elderly women is correlated with quadriceps femoris muscle strength. The proportion of elderly women with muscle weakness is higher than the normal ones. The group with older age shows higher proportion of muscle weakness. Most subjects have normal serum vitamin D concentration.
Integrative Spatial Data Analytics for Public Health Studies of New York State

Increased accessibility of health data made available by the government provides unique opportunity for spatial analytics with much higher resolution to discover patterns of diseases, and their correlation with spatial impact indicators. This paper demonstrated our vision of integrative spatial analytics for public health by linking the New York Cancer Mapping Dataset with datasets containing potential spatial impact indicators. We performed spatial based discovery of disease patterns and variations across New York State, and identify potential correlations between diseases and demographic, socio-economic and environmental indicators. Our methods were validated by three correlation studies: the correlation between stomach cancer and Asian race, the correlation between breast cancer and high education population, and the correlation between lung cancer and air toxics. Our work will allow public health researchers, government officials or other practitioners to adequately identify, analyze, and monitor health problems at the community or neighborhood level for New York State.
Reliability-oriented design of a cost-effective active capacitor

This paper presents the reliability-oriented design of a two-terminal active capacitor proposed recently. The two-terminal active capacitor has the same level of convenience as a passive capacitor with reduced requirement of overall energy storage. In order to fully explore the potential of the proposed concept, a comprehensive design procedure is necessary to optimally sizing the key components of the active capacitor in terms of cost and reliability. Moreover, the inherent condition monitoring capability of the active capacitor is discussed by utilizing the existing feedback signals. A 500 W single-phase rectifier is built up to experimentally verify the theoretical studies.
Formation control with velocity assignment for second-order multi-agent systems with heterogeneous time-delays

This paper deals with a formation control problem for second-order multi-agent systems with heterogeneous time-delays. We aim to control multiple agents so as to form a desired formation pattern and to move with an assigned velocity in an assigned direction. The assigned velocity and direction are transmitted through long-distance communication from human operators as external signals. Some of the agents, called leaders, can receive the external signals. As shown in this paper, in multi-agent systems with heterogeneous time-delays, there remain formation and velocity errors because of the asymmetry of the time-delays. We investigate how large errors arise in these systems, and propose the best selection of leaders so as to minimize the velocity error. Finally, some numerical results demonstrate the validity of the proposed analyses.
Migration of Resident Cardiac Stem Cells in Myocardial Infarction

Ischemic heart disease is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Stem cell‐based therapy, which aims to restore cardiac structure and function by regeneration of functional myocardium, has recently been proposed as a novel alternative treatment modality. Resident cardiac stem cells (CSCs) in adult hearts are a key cell type under investigation. CSCs have been shown to be able to repair damaged myocardium and improve myocardial function in both human and animal studies. This approach relies not only on the proliferation of the CSCs, but also upon their migration to the site of injury within the heart. Here, we briefly review reported CSC populations and discuss signaling factors and pathways required for the migration of CSCs. Anat Rec, 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Polyglutamine Diseases and Molecular Chaperones

The polyglutamine diseases, a group of diseases currently thought to consist of nine inherited neurodegenerative diseases, are caused by the expansion of unstable CAG trinucleotide repeats that code for polyglutamine tracts in the responsible genes. These diseases are now recognized as being of a type with conformationally abnormal or amyloid‐related proteins, and thus are called 'conformational diseases'. Recently, many studies using cell cultures and model organisms have suggested that the two major machineries for protein quality control (the molecular chaperone and the protein degradation machineries) play important roles in the pathogenesis of the polyglutamine diseases. Interestingly, molecular chaperones have been shown to behave in totally different ways in these studies, namely in suppressing as well as enhancing neurodegeneration or cell death. These apparently opposite actions of molecular chaperones suggest that a certain balance between the activities of molecular chaperones and the expression level of polyglutamine is an important determinant of the pathogenesis. In this review, we summarize recent findings on such ambiguous effects of molecular chaperones on polyglutamine diseases, and discuss possible mechanisms by which molecular chaperones, especially VCP, are involved in the pathogenesis. IUBMB Life, 55: 337‐345, 2003
PERSPECTIVE: THE THEORIES OF FISHER AND WRIGHT IN THE CONTEXT OF METAPOPULATIONS: WHEN NATURE DOES MANY SMALL EXPERIMENTS

We critically review the two major theories of adaptive evolution developed early in this century, Wright's shifting balance theory and Fisher's large population size theory, in light of novel findings from field observations, laboratory experiments, and theoretical research conducted over the past 15 years. Ecological studies of metapopulations have established that the processes of local extinction and colonization of demes are relatively common in natural populations of many species and theoretical population genetic models have shown that these ecological processes have genetic consequences within and among local demes. Within demes, random genetic drift converts nonadditive genetic variance into additive genetic variance, increasing, rather than limiting, the potential for adaptation to local environments. For this reason, the genetic differences that arise by drift among demes, can be augmented by local selection. The resulting adaptive differences in gene combinations potentially contribute to the genetic origin of new species. These and other recent findings were not discussed by either Wright or Fisher. For example, although Wright emphasized epistatic genetic variance, he did not discuss the conversion process. Similarly, Fisher did not discuss how the average additive effect of a gene varies among demes across a metapopulation whenever there is epistasis. We discuss the implications of such recent findings for the Wright‐Fisher controversy and identify some critical open questions that require additional empirical and theoretical study.
Image fusion in the management of thermal tumor ablation of the liver.

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether image fusion with contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) and CT is effective in the pre-, intra- and post-interventional management of liver lesions during microwave or radiofrequency ablation. METHODS AND MATERIALS Fifteen patients with a single hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) up to 3 cm diameter, identified on both contrast-enhanced CT (Siemens Somatom Definition AS and Definition Edge, Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany) and ultrasound (Siemens ACUSON S2000™ or S3000™, Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany) were retrospectively enrolled between July 2011 and May 2012. Either automatic registration or plane match registration was chosen on CT and ultrasound for the pre-, intra- and postinterventional management of all treated liver lesions during microwave or radiofrequency ablation. Using conventional ultrasound B-mode, CEUS and image fusion including B-mode and CEUS the detectability of the liver lesions was evaluated semi-quantitatively by comparing the image sequences in a consensus reading. Eight patients underwent radiofrequency ablation and seven patients underwent microwave ablation. RESULTS All patients were examined using all diagnostic ultrasound tools of the study. The results show that the procedure is easy and convenient to perform, as well as efficient. The co-registration procedure took approximately 5 to 10 minutes depending on the amount of DICOM volume-data and the habitus of the patient. The results show that the use of image fusion with CT and contrast-enhanced ultrasound could improve the diagnostic assessment capabilities in comparison to the examination without image fusion in the pre-, intra- and postinterventional management of malignant liver lesions during thermal ablation. CONCLUSION Percutaneous thermal ablation guided by contrast-enhanced ultrasound and image fusion seems to be an efficient approach for malignant liver lesions especially if these are not clearly demarcated by B-mode. The use of the image fusion technique in the pre-, intra- and postinterventional management can increase operator confidence, the accuracy of the procedure, and technical success in real time.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis RuvX is a Holliday junction resolvase formed by dimerisation of the monomeric YqgF nuclease domain

The Mycobacterium tuberculosis genome possesses homologues of the ruvC and yqgF genes that encode putative Holliday junction (HJ) resolvases. However, their gene expression profiles and enzymatic properties have not been experimentally defined. Here we report that expression of ruvC and yqgF is induced in response to DNA damage. Protein‐DNA interaction assays with purified M. tuberculosis RuvC (MtRuvC) and YqgF (MtRuvX) revealed that both associate preferentially with HJ DNA, albeit with differing affinities. Although both MtRuvC and MtRuvX cleaved HJ DNA in vitro, the latter displayed robust HJ resolution activity by symmetrically related, paired incisions. MtRuvX showed a higher binding affinity for the HJ structure over other branched recombination and replication intermediates. An MtRuvXD28N mutation, eliminating one of the highly conserved catalytic residues in this class of endonucleases, dramatically reduced its ability to cleave HJ DNA. Furthermore, a unique cysteine (C38) fulfils a crucial role in HJ cleavage, consistent with disulfide‐bond mediated dimerization being essential for MtRuvX activity. In contrast, E. coli YqgF is monomeric and exhibits no branched DNA binding or cleavage activity. These results fit with a functional modification of YqgF in M. tuberculosis so that it can act as a dimeric HJ resolvase analogous to that of RuvC.
Sumitro's Role in Foreign Trade Policy

In June 1968, Dr. Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, probably Indonesia's most prominent economist, accepted the position of Minister of Trade for the Republic. Sumitro, in his past writings, has developed a number of ideas on the role of government in economic development in general, and using foreign trade as an instrument of economic policy in particular. Thus it seems particularly relevant at this time to survey his actions over the past fourteen months in the foreign trade sector in relation to his previously-expressed views. '
SegBOMP: An efficient algorithm for block non-sparse signal recovery

Block sparse signal recovery methods have attracted great interests which take the block structure of the nonzero coefficients into account when clustering. Compared with traditional compressive sensing methods, it can obtain better recovery performance with fewer measurements by utilizing the block-sparsity explicitly. In this paper we propose a segmented-version of the block orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm in which it divides any vector into several sparse sub-vectors. By doing this, the original method can be significantly accelerated due to the dimension reduction of measurements for each segmented vector. Experimental results showed that with low complexity the proposed method yielded identical or even better reconstruction performance than the conventional methods which treated the signal in the standard block-sparsity fashion. Furthermore, in the specific case, where not all segments contain nonzero blocks, the performance improvement can be interpreted as a gain in “effective SNR” in noisy environment.
Testing Engineering Students: Are We Really Fair?

Since its publication by the Educational Testing Service in 1962, the MBTI (Myers-Briggs-Type Indicator) has seen application in a variety of settings. Its usefulness to the classroom teacher, however, is unclear at this time. This investigation addressed the relationship of two dimensions of that instrument, Sensing-Intuiting (S-N) and Judging-Perceiving (J-P), to performance on tests containing both computational problems and multiple choice questions. The objective of the investigation was to determine whether particular types of testing offer an advantage to certain individuals due to their preferred ways of internalizing and processing information. Tests in a sophomore-level strength of materials course were constructed to contain several computational problems and 10 multiple choice questions each. Questions were designed to operate at one of three levels of the problem-solving taxonomy: diagnosis, routines or interpretation. The performances of both S-N students and J-P students were compared on both problems and multiple choice questions within each test and on the departmental final examination. No differences due to the J-P dimension were detected. The S-N dimension, however, yielded several significant differences. N-type students performed substantially better on multiple choice questions on two of the three examinations given and better on computational problems on one of the three examinations. As expected, they excelled on those questions which tested at the ``interpretation'' level. No differences were seen on questions requiring diagnosis or routines. In all cases, even when differences did not achieve significance, there was a trend favoring the N-type student.