Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Time trends and familial risks in squamous cell carcinoma of the skin.

OBJECTIVES To study time trends and familial clustering of invasive and in situ squamous cell skin cancers (SCC), with particular reference to sun-exposed and covered sites of the body. DESIGN Epidemiologic follow-up study of the whole population. SETTING The Swedish Family-Cancer Database from the year 2000, to cover individuals born after 1931 with their biological parents, totaling 10.2 million persons. PATIENTS Cancer data were obtained from the Swedish Cancer Registry from 1961 through 1998 and included 1907 invasive SCCs in offspring and 12,702 and 7167 in fathers and mothers, respectively. The numbers of patients affected by in situ SCC were 2666, 13,739, and 13,321, respectively. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Standardized incidence ratios and 95% confidence intervals were calculated for SCC in offspring when parents had SCC. Incidence rates were calculated for the population in the Database. RESULTS Incidence trends showed a large increase in reported cases of SCC and particularly of in situ SCC. Among invasive cases, the increase was largest among covered sites. A clear cohort effect was observed particularly for SCC on covered sites. Familial standardized incidence ratios for offspring combining invasive and in situ SCC were 2.25 (95% confidence interval, 1.93-2.59) for concordant exposed sites and 2.60 (95% confidence interval, 1.38-4.20) for concordant covered sites, suggesting no difference between the body parts within the present statistical power. CONCLUSIONS The higher increase in incidence on covered sites and the strong cohort effect suggest a contribution by intentional tanning. The observed equal increase in the familial effect on exposed and covered sites suggests that familial risk increases proportionately to the background rate.
Pulsatile Flow and Atherosclerosis in the Human Carotid Bifurcation: Positive Correlation between Plaque Location and Low and Oscillating Shear Stress

Fluid velocities were measured by laser Doppler velocimetry under conditions of pulsatile flow in a scale model of the human carotid bifurcation. Flow velocity and wall shear stress at five axial and four circumferential positions were compared with intimal plaque thickness at corresponding locations in carotid bifurcations obtained from cadavers. Velocities and wall shear stresses during diastole were similar to those found previously under steady flow conditions, but these quantities oscillated in both magnitude and direction during the systolic phase. At the inner wall of the internal carotid sinus, in the region of the flow divider, wall shear stress was highest (systole = 41 dynes/cm2, diastole = 10 dynes/cm2, mean = 17 dynes/cm2) and remained unidirectional during systole. Intimal thickening in this location was minimal. At the outer wall of the carotid sinus where intimal plaques were thickest, mean shear stress was low (−0.5 dynes/cm2) but the instantaneous shear stress oscillated between −7 and +4 dynes/cm2. Along the side walls of the sinus, intimal plaque thickness was greater than in the region of the flow divider and circumferential oscillations of shear stress were prominent. With all 20 axial and circumferential measurement locations considered, strong correlations were found between intimal thickness and the reciprocal of maximum shear stress (r = 0.90, p < 0.0005) or the reciprocal of mean shear stress (r = 0.82, p < 0.001). An index which takes into account oscillations of wall shear also correlated strongly with intimal thickness (r = 0.82, p < 0.001). When only the inner wall and outer wall positions were taken into account, correlations of lesion thickness with the inverse of maximum wall shear and mean wall shear were 0.94 (p < 0.001) and 0.95 (p < 0.001), respectively, and with the oscillatory shear index, 0.93 (p < 0.001). These studies confirm earlier findings under steady flow conditions that plaques tend to form in areas of low, rather than high, shear stress, but indicate in addition that marked oscillations in the direction of wall shear may enhance atherogenesis.
Vínculo parental e rede de apoio social: relação com a sintomatologia depressiva na adolescência

The present study evaluated the depressive symptoms, parental influence and social support in the behavior of 11 teenagers of both genders and with ages between 12 and 18 years old, which attended Psychological Service. The data was collected from interviews and through the application of Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), human body drawings, Parental Bonding Instrument tests and from the Social Support Measure Scale (MOS). The results indicate that teenagers with depressive symptoms have inadequate parental bonding and insufficient social support. Even though the evaluated sample was limited, the results highlight the relevance of such matter and the need of enhancing social and parental bonding in order to provide safety and biopsychosocial health.
Dendritic cell-based immunotherapy: A promising approach for treatment of cancer

Summary The accumulating evidence in favor of tumor immunosurveillance indicates that immunotherapies may prove effective for the treatment of cancer. Many current approaches against cancer immunotherapy are often limited in their potential to induce effective anti-tumor immune responses. However, recent approach with dendritic cell based therapy proves to be an effective method for induction of anti-tumor immune response. In this review we discuss the effectiveness and complications associated with DC based immunotherapy and new strategies being perused for effective anti cancer response.
Optimization of pH values to formulate the bireagent kit for serum uric acid assay

A new formulation of the bireagent kit for serum uric acid assay was developed based on the effects of pH on enzyme stability. At 4 °C, half‐lives of uricases from Bacillus fastidious and Arthrobacter globiforms were longer than 15 months at pH 9.2, but became shorter at pH below 8.0; half‐lives of ascorbate oxidase and peroxidase were comparable at pH 6.5 and 7.0, but became much shorter at pH higher than 7.4. In the new formulation of the bireagent kit, Reagent A contained peroxidase, 4‐aminoantipyrine, and ascorbate oxidase in 50 mM phosphate buffer at pH 6.5; Reagent B contained B. fastidious or A. globiforms uricase in 50 mM sodium borate buffer at pH 9.2; Reagents A and B were mixed at 4:1 to produce a final pH from 7.2 to 7.6 for developing a stable color. The new bireagent kit consumed smaller quantities of three enzymes for the same shelf life. With the new bireagent kit, there were linear responses of absorbance at 546 nm to uric acid up to 34 mM in reaction mixtures and a good correlation of uric acid levels in clinical sera with those by a commercial kit, but stronger resistance to ascorbate. Therefore, the new formulation was advantageous.
Prevalence of rhinitis among Brazilian schoolchildren: ISAAC phase 3 results.

OBJECTIVE The International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) is a standardized method that allows international and regional comparisons of asthma and allergic diseases prevalence. The objective of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of rhinitis and related symptoms among 6-7 year-old children (SC) and 13-14 year-old adolescents (AD) from 20 Brazilian cities applying the ISAAC's standardized written questionnaire (WQ). METHODS ISAAC's WQ was applied to 23,422 SC and 58,144 AD living in different regions of Brazil: North (N), Northeast (NE), Middle West (MW), Southeast (SE), and South (S). RESULTS The prevalence of rhinoconjunctivitis in the last year ranged from 10.3% to 17.4% and from 8.9% to 28.5% among SC and AD, respectively. Considering SC the highest values were observed in SE region. In NE, the prevalence in countryside centres was higher than those along the coast. Among AD, the highest values were observed in N and S regions, mainly in Pará (Belém). The evaluation of populations probably with the same genetic background has shown higher prevalence among those living in urban centres (capital) in comparison to those in the countryside. CONCLUSIONS The prevalence of rhinitis and related symptoms were variable and predominate in Brazilian N and NE centres.
Inferring sub-cellular localization through automated lexical analysis

MOTIVATION The SWISS-PROT sequence database contains keywords of functional annotations for many proteins. In contrast, information about the sub-cellular localization is available for only a few proteins. Experts can often infer localization from keywords describing protein function. We developed LOCkey, a fully automated method for lexical analysis of SWISS-PROT keywords that assigns sub-cellular localization. With the rapid growth in sequence data, the biochemical characterisation of sequences has been falling behind. Our method may be a useful tool for supplementing functional information already automatically available. RESULTS The method reached a level of more than 82% accuracy in a full cross-validation test. Due to a lack of functional annotations, we could infer localization for fewer than half of all proteins in SWISS-PROT. We applied LOCkey to annotate five entirely sequenced proteomes, namely Saccharomyces cerevisiae (yeast), Caenorhabditis elegans (worm), Drosophila melanogaster (fly), Arabidopsis thaliana (plant) and a subset of all human proteins. LOCkey found about 8000 new annotations of sub-cellular localization for these eukaryotes.
Enabling Psychiatrists to Explore the Full Potential of E-Health

The World Health Organization in its recent statement has highlighted the potential of the evolving field of E-Health (1). It defines E-health as the process in which health resources and health care are being communicated and transferred by electronic medium (1). It states explicitly that with the implementation of E-health, it is to be expected that there will be more efficient usage of healthcare resources in the future. Indeed, there has been major advances in the technological field over the past decade, especially so, with the introduction of Smartphone and their associated applications. Smartphones represent a new modality of technology that offers more than what conventional mobile technology could offer. Given that they are equipped with tremendous computing power, they now allow individuals and healthcare workers to access not only information but also work on the go. The authors acknowledge that E-health also encompasses other modalities of technologies, such as telephone-delivered therapy, virtual reality, and text messaging technology. In this manuscript, we will focus mainly on the smartphone aspect of E-health.
Linear predictive coding and cepstrum coefficients for mining time variant information from software repositories

This paper presents an approach to recover time variant information from software repositories. It is widely accepted that software evolves due to factors such as defect removal, market opportunity or adding new features. Software evolution details are stored in software repositories which often contain the changes history. On the other hand there is a lack of approaches, technologies and methods to efficiently extract and represent time dependent information. Disciplines such as signal and image processing or speech recognition adopt frequency domain representations to mitigate differences of signals evolving in time. Inspired by time-frequency duality, this paper proposes the use of Linear Predictive Coding (LPC) and Cepstrum coefficients to model time varying software artifact histories. LPC or Cepstrum allow obtaining very compact representations with linear complexity. These representations can be used to highlight components and artifacts evolved in the same way or with very similar evolution patterns. To assess the proposed approach we applied LPC and Cepstral analysis to 211 Linux kernel releases (i.e., from 1.0 to 1.3.100), to identify files with very similar size histories. The approach, the preliminary results and the lesson learned are presented in this paper.
Strong and Weak Electric Field Interfering: Capacitive Icing Detection and Capacitive Energy Harvesting on a 220-kV High-Voltage Overhead Power Line

This paper focuses on problems which arise when both a power-harvesting system based on a capacitive principle and a capacitive measurement device [i.e., a capacitance-to-digital converter (CDC)] are used in one electronic system to build up an autonomous measurement device for icing detection on a high-voltage overhead power line. The overall capacitance of the measurement circuitry between the conductor and the energy harvester shell must remain within a well-defined range to keep the energy-harvesting circuitry operational and to operate the CDC within its specifications. A decoupling solution for both the data path and the power supply unit has been implemented and verified experimentally in a high-voltage laboratory and a field test.
Nucleotide sequence and deletion analysis of the xylanase gene (xynZ) of Clostridium thermocellum

The nucleotide sequence of the xynZ gene, encoding the extracellular xylanase Z of Clostridium thermocellum, was determined. The putative xynZ gene was 2,511 base pairs long and encoded a polypeptide of 837 amino acids. A region of 60 amino acids containing a duplicated segment of 24 amino acids was found between residues 429 and 488 of xylanase Z. This region was strongly similar to the conserved domain found at the carboxy-terminal ends of C. thermocellum endoglucanases A, B, and D. Deletions removing up to 508 codons from the 5' end of the gene did not affect the activity of the encoded polypeptide, showing that the active site was located in the C-terminal half of the protein and that the conserved region was not involved in catalysis. Expression of xylanase activity in Escherichia coli was increased up to 220-fold by fusing fragments containing the 3' end of the gene with the start of lacZ present in pUC19. An internal translational initiation site which was efficiently recognized in E. coli was tentatively identified 470 codons downstream from the actual start codon.
The Molecular Basis of Drug Resistance against Hepatitis C Virus NS3/4A Protease Inhibitors

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infects over 170 million people worldwide and is the leading cause of chronic liver diseases, including cirrhosis, liver failure, and liver cancer. Available antiviral therapies cause severe side effects and are effective only for a subset of patients, though treatment outcomes have recently been improved by the combination therapy now including boceprevir and telaprevir, which inhibit the viral NS3/4A protease. Despite extensive efforts to develop more potent next-generation protease inhibitors, however, the long-term efficacy of this drug class is challenged by the rapid emergence of resistance. Single-site mutations at protease residues R155, A156 and D168 confer resistance to nearly all inhibitors in clinical development. Thus, developing the next-generation of drugs that retain activity against a broader spectrum of resistant viral variants requires a comprehensive understanding of the molecular basis of drug resistance. In this study, 16 high-resolution crystal structures of four representative protease inhibitors – telaprevir, danoprevir, vaniprevir and MK-5172 – in complex with the wild-type protease and three major drug-resistant variants R155K, A156T and D168A, reveal unique molecular underpinnings of resistance to each drug. The drugs exhibit differential susceptibilities to these protease variants in both enzymatic and antiviral assays. Telaprevir, danoprevir and vaniprevir interact directly with sites that confer resistance upon mutation, while MK-5172 interacts in a unique conformation with the catalytic triad. This novel mode of MK-5172 binding explains its retained potency against two multi-drug-resistant variants, R155K and D168A. These findings define the molecular basis of HCV N3/4A protease inhibitor resistance and provide potential strategies for designing robust therapies against this rapidly evolving virus.
Variation in natural killer activity in peripheral blood during the menstrual cycle.

"specific guidance from the consultant with regard to exercise," although they will need a knowledge of exercise physiology and of the problems which can arise from exercising coronary patients (see Ms Gloag's references). The community sports centre is the most appropriate place for coronary rehabilitation since it can be seen by the patient as fun, not treatment, encouraging long term compliance.
Molecular Dissection of Telomeric Repeat-Containing RNA Biogenesis Unveils the Presence of Distinct and Multiple Regulatory Pathways

ABSTRACT Telomeres are transcribed into telomeric repeat-containing RNA (TERRA), large, heterogeneous, noncoding transcripts which form part of the telomeric heterochromatin. Despite a large number of functions that have been ascribed to TERRA, little is known about its biogenesis. Here, we present the first comprehensive analysis of the molecular structure of TERRA. We identify biochemically distinct TERRA complexes, and we describe TERRA regulation during the cell cycle. Moreover, we demonstrate that TERRA 5′ ends contain 7-methylguanosine cap structures and that the poly(A) tail, present on a fraction of TERRA transcripts, contributes to their stability. Poly(A)− TERRA, but not poly(A)+ TERRA, is associated with chromatin, possibly reflecting distinct biological roles of TERRA ribonucleoprotein complexes. In support of this idea, poly(A)− and poly(A)+ TERRA molecules end with distinct sequence registers. We also determine that the bulk of 3′-terminal UUAGGG repeats have an average length of 200 bases, indicating that the length heterogeneity of TERRA likely stems from its subtelomeric regions. Finally, we find that TERRA is regulated during the cell cycle, being lowest in late S phase and peaking in early G1. Our analyses offer the basis for investigating multiple regulatory pathways that affect TERRA synthesis, processing, turnover, and function.
Combining task and path planning for a humanoid two-arm robotic system

The ability to perform both causal (means-end) and geometric reasoning is important in order to achieve autonomy for advanced robotic systems. In this paper, we describe work in progress on planning for a humanoid two-arm robotic system where task and path planning capabilities have been integrated into a coherent planning framework. We address a number of challenges of integrating combined task and path planning with the complete robotic system, in particular concerning perception and execution. Geometric backtracking is considered: this is the process of revisiting geometric choices (grasps, positions etc.) in previous actions in order to be able to satisfy the geometric preconditions of the action presently under consideration of the planner. We argue that geometric backtracking is required for resolution completeness. Our approach is demonstrated on a real robotic platform, Justin at DLR, and in a simulation of the same robot. In the latter, we consider the consequences of geometric backtracking.
Teachers’ Perception of Interactive White Boards: A Case Study

Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) are touch-sensitive new generation boards controlled by a computer that is connected to a digital projector (Saltan and Arslan, 2009). In many countries, teachers have begun to use this instructional tool in primary and high schools. In order to investigate teachers’ perceptions and acceptance towards IWBs, this case study was conducted in a primary school in Turkey. 34 teachers from different subject matters participated in the present study. Data were collected through a questionnaire consisting of three parts -- perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and attitude towards interactive white boards. Descriptive statistic was utilized to analyze the data. Mainly frequencies and percentages were run on the likert-type questions. Results showed that teachers found interactive whiteboard relatively easy to use and useful, in addition they had a positive attitude toward the IWB. However means of the perceived ease of use and attitude toward IWB is lower than perceived usefulness.
Ganztagsschule und Jugendhilfe in "lokalen Bildungslandschaften"

Unter dem Stichwort lokale Bildungslandschaften werden werden Planungsprozesse im Ganztagsschul-Zeitalter, die weit uber die Einzelschule hinausgehen, thematisiert. Der Begriff lokale Bildungslandschaften wird erklart, um vor dem Hintergrund eines Forschungsprojektes des Deutschen Jugendinstituts eine (mogliche) Position der Kinder- und Jugendhilfe in lokalen Bildungslandschaften zu diskutieren. (Autorin)
Costs of new atypical antipsychotic agents for schizophrenia: does unrestricted access reduce hospital utilization?

OBJECTIVES To determine whether increased expenditures to provide unrestricted access to expensive atypical antipsychotic drugs would be associated with a reduction in hospital utilization and cost by patients with schizophrenia. Secondary objectives were to determine the factors associated with length of stay (LOS) and readmission for schizophrenia sufferers. METHODS Retrospective chart review identified all acute hospitalizations for schizophrenia in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. LOS and readmission rates, as well as risk factors influencing them, were measured during three time periods: (1) 1995/96, beginning of restricted access; (2) 1998, last year of restricted access; and (3) 2000, second year of open access. Average per diem costs were multiplied by LOS to determine hospital expenditures, and the provincial drug plan database provided the amount of money reimbursed for antipsychotic drugs. RESULTS Days of hospitalization for schizophrenia totalled 15,089 in 1995/96, 16,318 in 1998 and 15,691 in 2000, resulting in per annum costs of $6,474,095, $7,080,065 and $6,615,795, respectively. There were 57 (18.2%) fewer patients hospitalized and 98 (16.7%) fewer admissions during open access (2000) when compared to a period of restricted access (1995/96). However, median LOS in 2000 was significantly longer than in 1995/96 (22.0 vs. 15.0 days, P<0.001), and was independent of other factors significantly associated with LOS (e.g., suicidal ideation on admission). No change in the number of readmissions was observed. Government expenditures for atypical agents were $217,273 in 1995/96 and $3.8 million in 2000, a 17.5-fold increase. CONCLUSIONS The unrestricted reimbursement policy for atypical antipsychotics was associated with a large increase in drug plan expenditure, which was not offset by a decrease in hospital utilization by schizophrenia sufferers. Although a decrease in hospital admissions occurred, any associated savings were negated by an increase in LOS.
Microbial Reefs in the Black Sea Fueled by Anaerobic Oxidation of Methane

Massive microbial mats covering up to 4-meter-high carbonate buildups prosper at methane seeps in anoxic waters of the northwestern Black Sea shelf. Strong 13C depletions indicate an incorporation of methane carbon into carbonates, bulk biomass, and specific lipids. The mats mainly consist of densely aggregated archaea (phylogenetic ANME-1 cluster) and sulfate-reducing bacteria (Desulfosarcina/Desulfococcusgroup). If incubated in vitro, these mats perform anaerobic oxidation of methane coupled to sulfate reduction. Obviously, anaerobic microbial consortia can generate both carbonate precipitation and substantial biomass accumulation, which has implications for our understanding of carbon cycling during earlier periods of Earth's history.