Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Making sense of the cause of Crohn’s – a new look at an old disease

The cause of Crohn’s disease (CD) has posed a conundrum for at least a century. A large body of work coupled with recent technological advances in genome research have at last started to provide some of the answers. Initially this review seeks to explain and to differentiate between bowel inflammation in the primary immunodeficiencies that generally lead to very early onset diffuse bowel inflammation in humans and in animal models, and the real syndrome of CD. In the latter, a trigger, almost certainly enteric infection by one of a multitude of organisms, allows the faeces access to the tissues, at which stage the response of individuals predisposed to CD is abnormal. Direct investigation of patients’ inflammatory response together with genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and DNA sequencing indicate that in CD the failure of acute inflammation and the clearance of bacteria from the tissues, and from within cells, is defective. The retained faecal products result in the characteristic chronic granulomatous inflammation and adaptive immune response. In this review I will examine the contemporary evidence that has led to this understanding, and look for explanations for the recent dramatic increase in the incidence of this disease.
Evaluation of a modified German version of the Q16 questionnaire for neurotoxic symptoms in workers exposed to solvents

OBJECTIVES To assess sensitivity and specificity of a questionnaire designed to detect neurotoxic symptoms in workers exposed to solvents and in patients with a psycho-organic syndrome. METHODS The Swedish Q16 is a self administered questionnaire for neurotoxic symptoms. The modified German version consists of 18 questions. The results were analysed from 1166 questionnaires which were completed by adults belonging to the following groups; 483 workers with occupational exposure to solvents and 193 non-exposed controls, 25 patients with a psycho-organic syndrome, 25 sex and age matched patients with a lung disease, and a sample of 440 people from the general population. RESULTS The German Q18 was easy to handle and quick to perform. Workers exposed to solvents reported significantly more complaints than controls (2.9v 2.5). All patients with a psycho-organic syndrome had five or more complaints. This was true for only 32% of patients with lung disease. These comparisons showed that chronic exposure to solvents was associated with subjective complaints related particularly to cognitive functions. In the sample of the general population, age, education level, smoking habits, and time of performance showed no significant influence on the Q18 result. Women had significantly more complaints than men (3.2v 2.3). People who reported drinking alcohol occasionally or moderately had significantly fewer complaints than teetotalers. CONCLUSIONS The German Q18 has an acceptable sensitivity and reliability, a reasonable specificity, and a good practicability. It is a useful instrument for screening workers exposed to solvents. A cut off point of 5 for men is recommended, and a cut off point of 6 for women is proposed.
Aplicação da econometria espacial, com métodos "cross-section" e em painel, na análise dos efeitos "spillovers" na produtividade dos sectores económicos das regiões portuguesas

A consideracao de efeitos espaciais nas analises realizadas com unidades espaciais (regioes, etc) e cada vez mais frequente e para isso, entre outros, contribuiu o trabalho de Anselin (1988). Pelo que neste estudo analisa-se, atraves de metodos de estimacao “cross-section” e em painel, a influencia dos efeitos espaciais na produtividade (produto por trabalhador) dos sectores economicos das NUTs III de Portugal Continental, considerando relacao de Verdoorn. Constata-se que a produtividade esta sujeita a autocorrelacao positiva, sobretudo, nos servicos e na totalidade dos servicos e eventualmente na industria. Os efeitos “spillovers” espaciais “spatial lag” e “spatial error” tem influencia na relacao de Verdoorn dos sectores economicos das regioes portuguesas, no periodo considerado (1995-1999).
Concurrent Glottic and Tracheal Stenoses: Restoration of Airway Continuity in End-Stage Malignant Disease

Six patients known to have inoperable esophageal carcinoma presented with stridor due to both malignant tracheal stenosis (with additional respiratory-digestive tract fistula in 2 patients) and bilateral vocal cord paralysis. Patency was restored by endotracheal stenting plus unilateral cordotomy. Four patients had immediate relief. Two patients required enlargement of the vocal cord incision. One of them declined reoperation and underwent tracheostomy. The stent function was uneventful, with no dislodgment or mucus impaction. The fistula seal was complete, with no aspiration through the newly shaped glottic orifice. The peak expiratory flow increased from 24.4% ± 9.7% of predicted normal before the procedure to 40.5% ± 13.7% after the procedure. Restoration of airway continuity in serial laryngotracheal stenoses by a combined approach is a feasible technique in end-stage cancer patients. It effectively relieves respiratory distress and ensures voice preservation. In addition, it may avoid the risks of tracheotomy.
Investigation of the antibacterial activity of pioglitazone

Purpose: To evaluate the antibacterial potential of pioglitazone, a member of the thiazolidinediones class of drugs, against Gram-positive (Streptococcus pneumoniae) and Gram-negative (Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae) bacteria. Methods: Susceptibility testing was done using the antibiotic disk diffusion method and the minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of pioglitazone was measured according to the broth micro incubation standard method. Results: Pioglitazone induced a dose-dependent antibacterial activity in which the optimal concentration was 80 μM. Furthermore, results indicated that while E. coli was sensitive (MIC = 31.25 ± 3.87 mg/L) to pioglitazone-induced cytotoxicity, S. pneumoniae and K. pneumoniae were resistant (MIC = 62.5 ± 3.77 mg/L and MIC = 62.5 ± 4.14 mg/L, respectively). Moreover, pretreatment of bacteria with a suboptimal concentration of pioglitazone (40 μM) before adding amoxicillin, cephalexin, co-trimoxazole, or ciprofloxacin enhanced the antibacterial activity of all agents except co-trimoxazole. This enhancing effect was particularly seen against K. pneumoniae. Conclusion: These results indicate the possibility of a new and potentially important pioglitazone effect and the authors’ ongoing studies aim to illustrate the mechanism(s) by which this antibacterial effect is induced.
Protecting SRAM-based FPGAs against multiple bit upsets using erasure codes

Multiple bit upsets due to radiation-induced soft errors are a major concern in nanoscale technology nodes. Once such errors occur in the configuration frames of an FPGA device, they permanently affect the functionality of the mapped design. The combination of error correction schemes and configuration scrubbing is an efficient approach to avoid such permanent errors. Existing solutions exploit coding techniques with considerably high overhead to protect configuration frames against multiple bit upsets. In this paper, we propose a generic scrubbing scheme which reconstructs the erroneous configuration frame based on the concept of erasure codes. Our proposed scheme does not require any changes to the FPGA architecture. Experimental results on a Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGA device show that the proposed scheme achieves error recovery coverage of 99.30% with only 3% resource occupation while the mean time to repair is comparable with previous schemes.
Impaired Notch‐MKP‐1 signalling in hidradenitis suppurativa: an approach to pathogenesis by evidence from translational biology

Recent findings in familial hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) demonstrated loss‐of‐function mutations of components of the γ‐secretase (GS) complex leading to decreased protease cleaving activity, which may compromise canonical Notch signalling. Appropriate Notch signalling is of pivotal importance for maintaining the inner and outer root sheath of the hair follicle and skin appendages. This viewpoint on the pathogenesis of HS is primarily supported by circumstantial evidence derived from translational biology. Impaired Notch signalling is proposed to be the major pathogenic mechanism of HS. Deficient Notch signalling switches the fate of outer root sheath cells, resulting in conversion of hair follicles to keratin‐enriched epidermal cysts. Impaired Notch signalling may compromise apocrine gland homoeostasis as well. Damage‐associated molecular pattern molecules released by either ruptured epidermal cysts exposing keratin fibres or altered structural components of less maintained apocrine glands may both stimulate TLR‐mediated innate immunity. All aggravating factors of HS, that is, smoking, obesity, skin occlusion, androgens and progesterone, may further promote inflammation by release of proinflammatory cytokines derived from activated monocyte/macrophages. Inappropriate Notch signalling may not only initiate inflammation in HS but may lead to insufficient feedback inhibition of overstimulated innate immunity. Regular Notch signalling via induction of MAPK phosphatase‐1 (MKP‐1) terminates TLR‐MAPK‐signalling in macrophages and IL‐23 secreting DCs, the key players for Th17 cell polarization. Thus, impaired Notch signalling links HS to other Th17‐driven comorbidities. All major therapeutic interventions in HS appear to attenuate increased MAPK activation of innate immune cells due to impaired Notch‐mediated feedback regulation of innate immunity.
Dissimilatory Metabolism of Nitrogen Oxides in Bacteria: Comparative Reconstruction of Transcriptional Networks

Bacterial response to nitric oxide (NO) is of major importance since NO is an obligatory intermediate of the nitrogen cycle. Transcriptional regulation of the dissimilatory nitric oxides metabolism in bacteria is diverse and involves FNR-like transcription factors HcpR, DNR, and NnrR; two-component systems NarXL and NarQP; NO-responsive activator NorR; and nitrite-sensitive repressor NsrR. Using comparative genomics approaches, we predict DNA-binding motifs for these transcriptional factors and describe corresponding regulons in available bacterial genomes. Within the FNR family of regulators, we observed a correlation of two specificity-determining amino acids and contacting bases in corresponding DNA recognition motif. Highly conserved regulon HcpR for the hybrid cluster protein and some other redox enzymes is present in diverse anaerobic bacteria, including Clostridia, Thermotogales, and delta-proteobacteria. NnrR and DNR control denitrification in alpha- and beta-proteobacteria, respectively. Sigma-54-dependent NorR regulon found in some gamma- and beta-proteobacteria contains various enzymes involved in the NO detoxification. Repressor NsrR, which was previously known to control only nitrite reductase operon in Nitrosomonas spp. , appears to be the master regulator of the nitric oxides' metabolism, not only in most gamma- and beta-proteobacteria (including well-studied species such as Escherichia coli), but also in Gram-positive Bacillus and Streptomyces species. Positional analysis and comparison of regulatory regions of NO detoxification genes allows us to propose the candidate NsrR-binding motif. The most conserved member of the predicted NsrR regulon is the NO-detoxifying flavohemoglobin Hmp. In enterobacteria, the regulon also includes two nitrite-responsive loci, nipAB (hcp-hcr) and nipC (dnrN), thus confirming the identity of the effector, i.e. nitrite. The proposed NsrR regulons in Neisseria and some other species are extended to include denitrification genes. As the result, we demonstrate considerable interconnection between various nitrogen-oxides-responsive regulatory systems for the denitrification and NO detoxification genes and evolutionary plasticity of this transcriptional network.
Fluid modern ethnic spaces: contesting the spatial ordering of the State in Bolivia

Relationships between the Bolivian State and the emerging indigenous and peasant social movements have become increasingly fluid since the end of the 1970s. Although this process could be traced back to the 1953 Agrarian Reform, it was not until the world crisis of the 1970s and the surge in globalisation that it led to radical changes in the relationship between State and indigenous peoples. Seen from the point of view of the State, our case study of a group of Quechua communities seems to illustrate a process of fragmentation leading to ungovernability and disorder. This understanding has to do with a lack of ‘legibility’. However here I replace that ‘image’ of disorder with another ‘feeling’ of cultural ordering, one that emerges from indigenous people's livelihoods, strategies and governance from below. I argue for understanding the apparent lack of governance as the expression of an autonomous reorganising process that leads to the regrouping and expansion of indigenous localities linked into new forms of regionalisation.
Multicolor Observations of the GRB 000926 Afterglow

We present multicolor light curves of the optical afterglow of gamma-ray burst (GRB) 000926. Beginning ~1.5 days after the burst, the light curves of this GRB steepen measurably. The existence of such achromatic breaks is usually taken to be an important observational signature that the ejecta are not expanding isotropically but rather have a collimated jetlike geometry. If we interpret the data in this context, we derive an opening angle of 5°, which reduces the energy release compared with an isotropic model by a factor of ~275, to 1.7 × 1051 ergs. To fit the data with a simple jet model requires extinction along the line of sight. The derived AV is in the range 0.11-0.82 mag, depending on the adopted extinction law and whether the electrons giving rise to the optical emission are undergoing synchrotron cooling or not. Since this is in excess of the expected extinction from our Galaxy, we attribute this to the GRB host. We note that this extinction is typical of a galactic disk, and therefore the event likely took place in the disk of its host.
Receiver operating characteristic analysis under tree orderings of disease classes

Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and its summary statistics (e.g., the area under curve (AUC)) are commonly used to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy for disease processes with binary classification. The ROC curve has been extended to ROC surface for scenarios with three ordinal classes or to hyper‐surface for scenarios with more than three classes. For classifier under tree or umbrella ordering in which the marker measurement for one class is lower or higher than those for the other classes, the commonly adopted diagnostic measures are the naive AUC (NAUC) based on a pooled class of all the unordered classes and the umbrella volume (UV) based on the concept of volume under surface. However, both NAUC and UV have some limitations. For example, NAUC depends on the sampling weights for all the classes in population, and UV has only been introduced for three‐class settings. In this article, we initiate the idea of a new ROC framework for tree or umbrella ordering (denoted as TROC) and propose the area under TROC curve (denoted as TAUC) as an appropriate diagnostic measure. The proposed TROC and TAUC share many nice features with the traditional ROC and AUC. Both parametric and nonparametric approaches are explored to construct the confidence interval estimation of TAUC. The performances of these methods are compared in simulation studies under a variety settings. At the end, the proposed methods are applied to a published microarray data set. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Nuklearmedizinische Diagnostik in der Neuroonkologie

Zusammenfassung Die Beurteilung der Ausdehnung von Hirntumoren, die Abschätzung der Prognose und die Rezidivdiagnostik stellen auch im Zeitalter der Magnetresonanztomografie (MRT) noch wichtige Herausforderungen in der neuroonkologischen Diagnostik dar. Nuklearmedizinische Verfahren unter Verwendung der Positronen- Emissions-Tomografie (PET) und Single- Photonen-Emissions-Computertomografie (SPECT) können einen wesentlichen Beitrag leisten. So ermöglichen die PET und SPECT mit radioaktiv markierten Aminosäuren eine optimierte Darstellung der Ausdehnung von zerebralen Gliomen, was bei der Probeentnahme, der Planung einer Operation und einer Bestrahlung hilfreich sein kann. Außerdem können mit verschiedenen Tracern Tumorrezidive von posttherapeutischen Veränderungen besser differenziert werden sowie Hinweise auf den Malignitätsgrad und die Prognose von Hirntumoren gewonnen werden.
Experimental allergic encephalomyelitis: successful treatment in vivo with a monoclonal antibody that recognizes T helper cells.

Monoclonal antibody W3/25, which recognizes rat T helper cells, was injected i.p. or i.v. into Lewis rats with clinical signs of experimental allergic encephalomyelitis (EAE). This treatment, which was given 12 or 13 days after inducing EAE by the injection of purified myelin basic protein, significantly affected the course of the disease in that treated animals recovered, on the average, in 2 days, whereas control animals exhibited signs of EAE for a minimum of 4 days. Two pan-T cell monoclonal antibodies given in similar dosage failed to affect the course of the disease.
An Efficient Method for Content Aware Image Resizing Using PSC

Digital image processing is the most common and versatile method of processing image data and has got wide applications. With the invention of many display devices of varying resolutions (Mobile display, PDA etc.), it became essential to resize the images to suit the target devices on which it is displayed. It include content unaware methods (Cropping, Scaling, Warping etc.) and also content aware methods like Seam carving which has gained popularity lately. Seam Carving uses a simple image operator called seam. Seam is an optimal 8-connected path of pixels on a single image from top to bottom, or left to right, where optimality is defined by an image energy function. By repeatedly carving out or inserting seams we can change the aspect ratio of an image or retarget the image to a new size. This approach claims that the seams must be continuous and monotonical. Continuous seams some times include pixels on the object of interest thereby resizing it (or even distorting it). To overcome the problem an efficient new approach using PSC (piecewise seam carving) is proposed which divides the image into several segments and seam carves each of it individually. It preserves objects of interest by avoiding carving in the segments containing them. This method allows the user to interactively define number of seams in each segment thereby resizing each segment to different ratio. The proposed method works fine even in images where the objects of interest are scattered over the image. Keywords— PSC-Piecewise Seam Carving, ROI – Region Of Interest.
Timing of peak troponin T and creatine kinase-MB elevations after percutaneous coronary intervention.

STUDY OBJECTIVE The prognostic significance of elevations in creatine kinase-MB and troponin T (cTnT), which have been conventionally measured 6 to 8 h after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), has been established. However, the time to peak biomarker appearance in the circulation has not been defined and is the purpose of this pilot study. DESIGN Nonrandomized, nonconsecutive patient cohort. SETTING Clinical practice, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN. PATIENTS Cohort (n = 57) undergoing elective PCI. INTERVENTIONS cTnT and creatine kinase (CK)-MB measured at baseline, 2 h, 4 h, 8 h, and > or = 2 h (mean +/- SEM, 18 +/- 5 h) after PCI. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS Postprocedure cTnT elevations were detected in 30 of 57 patients (53%). Of these, 4 of 30 patients (13%) had peak cTnT at 4 h (0.80 +/- 0.40 ng/mL), 5 of 30 patients (17%) had peak cTnT at 8 h (1.07 +/- 0.48 ng/mL), and 21 of 30 patients (70%) had peak cTnT at > or = 12 h (0.21 +/- 0.06 ng/mL); 22 of 30 patients received abciximab. Elevations in CK-MB occurred in 14 of 57 patients (25%). Of these, 3 of 14 patients (21%) demonstrated peak CK-MB at 2 h (18.5 +/- 7.9 ng/mL) and the remainder (11 of 14 patients, 79%) during the 12- to 20-h interval (20.2 +/- 4.4 ng/mL); 12 of 14 patients received abciximab. CONCLUSION More cTnT than CK-MB elevations occur after PCI; however, both biomarkers demonstrate a longer time to peak value than anticipated in clinical practice. Early surveillance monitoring (< 12 h) does not detect peak biomarker levels, especially in patients with normal baseline values. If peak levels are to be used to determine prognosis, then longer time intervals should be used for post-PCI surveillance. The timing of peak elevations appears to be influenced by baselines values as well. Early elevations may reflect the conjoint effects of injury associated with the disease process and the intervention itself. These data suggest that a re-evaluation of surveillance monitoring to account for the variability reported and the influence of baseline elevations of biomarkers may improve the prognostic power of the measurements.
Is It a Rational Choice to Treat with Lumbar Epidural Blood Patch Headache Caused by Spontaneous Cervical CSF Leak?

Spontaneous intracranial hypotension (SIH) is characterized by orthostatic headache, low CSF pressure and diffuse pachymeningeal enhancement on brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) (1, 2). Atypical cases with normal CSF pressure (3), normal cranial MRI (4) and without postural headache (5) have also been reported. SIH generally results from spinal spontaneous CSF leakage, sometimes associated with underlying connective tissue disorders (6, 7). Treatment is usually conservative. Sometimes an autologous epidural blood patch (AEBP) at the site of CSF leakage may be necessary (8). We describe a patient with a spontaneous cervical CSF leak treated with autologous lumbar epidural blood patch (far from the site of the CSF leak).
Synthesizing Sierpinski Antenna by Genetic Algorithm and Swarm Optimization

The paper discusses the synthesis of the Sierpin- ski antenna operating at three prescribed frequencies: 0.9 GHz, 1.8 GHz (both GSM) and 2.4 GHz (Bluetooth). In order to synthesize the antenna, a genetic algorithm and a particle swarm optimization were used. The numerical model of the antenna was developed in Zeland IE3D, opti- mization scripts were programmed in MATLAB. Results of both the optimization methods are compared and experi- mentally verified.
NLRP 3 polymorphism is associated with protection against human T-lymphotropic virus 1 infection

Inter-individual heterogeneity in the response to human T-lymphotropic virus 1 (HTLV-1) infection has been partially attributed to host genetic background. The antiviral activity of the inflammasome cytoplasmic complex recognises viral molecular patterns and regulates immune responses via the activation of interleukin (IL)-1 family (IL-1, IL-18 and IL-33) members. The association between polymorphisms in the inflammasome receptors NLRP1 and NLRP3 and HTLV-1 infection was evaluated in a northeastern Brazilian population (84 HTLV-1 carriers and 155 healthy controls). NLRP3 rs10754558 G/G was associated with protection against HTLV-1 infection (p = 0.012; odds ratio = 0.37). rs10754558 affects NLRP3 mRNA stability; therefore, our results suggest that higher NLRP3 expression may augment first-line defences, leading to the effective protection against HTLV-1 infection.