Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Serum levels of tumor necrosis factor–α in chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy

Background: Activated macrophages and T lymphocytes may play a role in the pathogenesis of chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP). Both cell types secrete tumor necrosis factor-α (TNFα), which has toxic effects on myelin and endothelial cells. Methods: The serum concentration of TNFα was measured by ELISA and compared with clinical and electrophysiological profiles in 20 patients with CIDP. Results: An increased serum level of TNFα was detected in 5 (25%) patients and was associated with subacute progression, severe neurologic disabilities, and symmetric weakness involving proximal as well as distal muscles. TNFα levels increased during the active phase in this subgroup of patients. The levels of TNFα correlated with the severity of demyelinating conduction abnormalities in the intermediate as well as distal nerve segments, suggesting demyelination diffusely distributed along the nerves. Conclusion: Circulating TNFα increases during the active phase in a subgroup of CIDP patients and may play a role in the pathogenesis of demyelination and the breakdown of the blood–nerve barrier in CIDP.
Socio-Tenurial Polarization in the United Kingdom, 1953-83: The Income Evidence

Family Expenditure Survey data show a widening gap between the incomes of households in different tenures during the period 1953 to 1983. In particular, a major gap has opened up between the two major tenures as the median income of owner occupied households (relative to the national average) has risen whereas that for local authority tenants has fallen sharply. Recent years have seen an acceleration of these trends and the local authority sector is now increasingly characterised by those on low incomes.
Use of the Afirma® Gene Expression Classifier for Preoperative Identification of Benign Thyroid Nodules with Indeterminate Fine Needle Aspiration Cytopathology

Ruling out malignancy in thyroid nodules historically depended on thyroid resection and histopathological evaluation until fine needle aspiration (FNA) biopsy was introduced into the United States in the 1970's. Thyroid FNA biopsy identified a majority of thyroid nodules as benign, obviating the need for surgery in over half of the patients. However, 15%-30% of thyroid FNAs have indeterminate cytology that still requires operation, even though most of these operated nodules prove to be benign post-operatively. In order to predict which cytologically indeterminate thyroid nodules are benign and to potentially avoid surgery on these nodules, a recently described commercially available Gene Expression Classifier (GEC) test (Afirma®, Veracyte, Inc., South San Francisco, CA) has been developed that can be run on the FNA sample. This paper reviews the published literature and technology assessments/guidelines by independent parties and professional groups regarding the clinical utility as well as the analytic and clinical validity of the Afirma GEC.
Cloning, expression, purification, crystallization and X-ray diffraction analysis of dihydrodipicolinate synthase from the human pathogenic bacterium Bartonella henselae strain Houston-1 at 2.1 Å resolution.

The enzyme dihydrodipicolinate synthase catalyzes the committed step in the synthesis of diaminopimelate and lysine to facilitate peptidoglycan and protein synthesis. Dihydrodipicolinate synthase catalyzes the condensation of L-aspartate 4-semialdehyde and pyruvate to synthesize L-2,3-dihydrodipicolinate. Here, the cloning, expression, purification, crystallization and X-ray diffraction analysis of dihydrodipicolinate synthase from the pathogenic bacterium Bartonella henselae, the causative bacterium of cat-scratch disease, are presented. Protein crystals were grown in conditions consisting of 20%(w/v) PEG 4000, 100 mM sodium citrate tribasic pH 5.5 and were shown to diffract to ∼2.10 Å resolution. They belonged to space group P212121, with unit-cell parameters a = 79.96, b = 106.33, c = 136.25 Å. The final R values were Rr.i. m. = 0.098, Rwork = 0.183, Rfree = 0.233.
Regulation of Heat Shock Transcription Factor 1 by Stress-induced SUMO-1 Modification*

Heat shock transcription factor 1 (HSF1) mediates the induction of heat shock protein gene expression in cells exposed to elevated temperature and other stress conditions. In response to stress HSF1 acquires DNA binding ability and localizes to nuclear stress granules, but the molecular mechanisms that mediate these events are not understood. We report that HSF1 undergoes stress-induced modification at lysine 298 by the small ubiquitin-related protein called SUMO-1. Antibodies against SUMO-1 supershift the HSF1 DNA-binding complex, and modification of HSF1 in a reconstituted SUMO-1 reaction system causes conversion of HSF1 to the DNA-binding form. HSF1 colocalizes with SUMO-1 in nuclear stress granules, which is prevented by mutation of lysine 298. Mutation of lysine 298 also results in a significant decrease in stress-induced transcriptional activity of HSF1 in vivo. This work implicates SUMO-1 modification as an important modulator of HSF1 function in response to stress.
Impact of high penetration of single-phase distributed energy resources on the protection of LV distribution networks

In the future millions of homes in the UK may have the appropriate characteristics to facilitate the deployment of existing micro CHP technologies, and establish "personal power stations", using different types of distributed energy resources (DERs). The micro CHP technologies to be accommodated at houses are typically driven by single-phase generators at 230 V. However, the integration of a large number of such single-phase generators may lead to changes in the behaviour of the system in both normal and abnormal operation. This paper focuses on investigating the performance of an LV distribution network with high penetration of DERs under abnormal conditions. For this investigation the DERs are based on directly- connected single-phase generators and converter-connected generation. The contribution of these sources to network fault levels and their impact on overcurrent protection schemes are assessed in order to outline the protection requirements in future LV distribution networks with active power sources located at each home.
Urban Transit Policy: An Economic and Political History

This book examines transit policy in the U.S. from an historical perspective. The perspective is useful because policy is a changeable and changing contract created by negotiation among parties at interest. Transit policy is a social contract in which many parties have a stake--riders, transit workers, downtown employers, motorists and others. This contract has been renegotiated many times, steps both necessary and difficult. Renegotiation of policy is necessary because economic conditions, technology and social aspirations change. Policies good in the short and long term may differ. Large organizations rely on standardization to achieve efficiencies and economies of scale; this may harden into inertia, inflexibility and obsolescence. Transit policy in the U.S. has been characterized as erratic and volatile; the real problem may be inertia and deadlock. Change in transit has not paced change in economic conditions, technological opportunities and social goals. There are really two policies: (1) That imbedded in the routines of organizations and the technology they use; (2) That found in plans, regulations, mission statements and legislative mandates. The author sees the transit industry as structurally obsolete; its form suits the functions and markets that were served at the turn of the century. This book's goal is to provide a constructive debate about the kind of transit service appropriate to the modern American city. It tells the story of transit's growth and decline and assesses the performance of recent policies and programs designed to preserve and revitalize transit service, concluding that subsidy has not stabilized the industry. Understanding history before examining the policies of the 1960s and 1970s indicates how they might have been more effective. The need for a reorientation would have been better than replacement of aging equipment and extension of service. Public ownership has been a reprieve for transit but has not stabilized the industry. Subsidy is necessary, but endlessly increasing subsidy is both inappropriate and unrealistic. The last chapter is the author's suggestion for a reorganization alternative.
Costs and Externalities of Road Transport in Portugal

This paper will discuss how urban dispersion (sprawl) is a reality, however unplanned it may be. Its supporters advocate contact with nature, space and intimacy, however disadvantages include land consumption, public infrastructure and mobility costs and housing prices. The Research Project “Costs and Benefits of Urban Dispersion on a local scale” seeks to contribute to the debate with an objective approach based on the quantification of costs, externalities and benefits of different urban settlement patterns. This paper presents one of the Project’s tasks, the one concerning mobility costs, including externalities. Quantified costs include investment, inspection, insurance, energy and maintenance, as well as external social and environmental costs for road transport, the most significant transport mode operating on a local scale. Different methods are combined depending on available data sources in order to achieve figures for each of the cost components per vehicle-km, ton-km and passenger-km at prices of 2005. Preliminary results for direct costs suggest that in light vehicles investment costs are responsible for the largest share of the totals, while energy costs are the most relevant cost component in heavy vehicles. Heavy duty passenger transport is significantly more expensive than their counterparts. Externalities may mount up to around half of the total costs for some road vehicles.
High-Throughput Screening: The Hits and Leads of Drug Discovery- An Overview

The mechanism-based approach which corresponds to the target-based approach screens for compounds with a specific mode of action. The highly effective nature of high-throughput screening (HTS) for identification of highly target specific compounds is attributed to its precise focus on single mechanism. This logical development of receptor technology is closely connected with the changes in strategy of chemical synthesis. The vast number of compounds produced by combinatorial chemistry and the possibility of testing many compounds, including natural products, in a short period of time by HTS attracted attention of many workers. Various detection techniques like fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), Homogeneous time resolved fluorescence (HTRF), etc are available, and the screening of more than 100,000 samples per day is possible. With the introduction of robotics, automation and miniaturization techniques, it became feasible to screen 50,000 compounds a day with complex work-stations. High-throughput screening methods are also used to characterize metabolic and pharmacokinetic data about new drugs. With the use of Cassette dosing techniques even the pharmacokinetic data can be assessed for large number of drug candidates, though not free of drawbacks, yet an effective technique to further increase the drug discovery and development rate. The objective of this article is to give an overview to the High-Throughput screening methodologies used in industries as well as in academic research programmes.
Ultra wideband CMOS low noise amplifier with active input matching

A new low noise amplifier (LNA) with broadband input matching and excellent gain flatness operating at the frequency range of 3.1-4.8 GHz is designed using a 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS process. Wideband input matching using common-gate at the input stage is proposed. From a supply voltage of 1.8 V, the two-stage LNA exhibits a noise figure (NF) of 3.95-4.3 dB within the required bandwidth. The LNA has S11 less than -15 dB over the entire 3.1-4.8 GHz band. A reversed isolation (S12) less than -43 dB was achieved. A power gain (S21) of 16.5 dB with only 0.6 dB variations was obtained within the 3.1-4.8 GHz band. Input IP3 and 1 dB compression points are not of much concern in the case of the UWB LNA, since transmit power is restricted to be less than -42 dBm/Hz.
Complex systems thinking in emergency medicine: A novel paradigm for a rapidly changing and interconnected health care landscape

INTRODUCTION The specialty of emergency medicine is experiencing the convergence of a number of transformational forces in the United States, including health care reform, technological advancements, and societal shifts. These bring both opportunity and uncertainty. 21ST CENTURY CHALLENGES: Persistent challenges such as the opioid epidemic, rising health care costs, misaligned incentives, patients with multiple chronic diseases, and emergency department crowding continue to plague the acute, unscheduled care system. REDUCTIONISM AND COMPLEX SYSTEMS THINKING The traditional approach to health care practice and improvement-reductionism-is not adequate for the complexity of the twenty-first century. Reductionist thinking will likely continue to produce unintended consequences and suboptimal outcomes. Complex systems thinking provides a perspective and set of tools better suited for the challenges and opportunities facing public health in general, and emergency medicine more specifically. IMPLICATIONS FOR EMERGENCY MEDICINE This article introduces complex systems thinking and argues for its application in the context of emergency medicine by drawing on the history of the circumstances surrounding the formation of the specialty and by providing examples of its application to several practice challenges.
A New Pre-Training Method for Training Deep Learning Models with Application to Spoken Language Understanding

We propose a simple and efficient approach for pre-training deep learning models with application to slot filling tasks in spoken language understanding. The proposed approach leverages unlabeled data to train the models and is generic enough to work with any deep learning model. In this study, we consider the CNN2CRF architecture that contains Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) with Conditional Random Fields (CRF) as top layer, since it has shown great potential for learning useful representations for supervised sequence learning tasks. The proposed pre-training approach with this architecture learns the feature representations from both labeled and unlabeled data at the CNN layer, covering features that would not be observed in limited labeled data. At the CRF layer, the unlabeled data uses predicted classes of words as latent sequence labels together with labeled sequences. Latent labeled sequences, in principle, has the regularization effect on the labeled sequences, yielding a better generalized model. This allows the network to learn representations that are useful for not only slot tagging using labeled data but also learning dependencies both within and between latent clusters of unseen words. The proposed pre-training method with the CRF2CNN architecture achieves significant gains with respect to the strongest semi-supervised baseline.
Adjustment of the Stamp Duty on Stock Transactions and Its Effect on the Chinese Stock Market

This paper studies how the last three adjustments of the stamp duty on stock transactions (SDST) have affected trading behavior on the Chinese stock market. To exclude other shocks from our event study, we focus only on the SDST's short-term effects. Based on an interval autoregressive (IAR) model, we find that the SDST's effects on interval return are trivial; moreover, its ability to influence market volatility and trading volume is cast into doubt. Our empirical evidence lends support to the view that in China the SDST is not an effective policy tool.
Effects of vitamin C and aspirin in ischemic stroke‐related lipid peroxidation: Results of the AVASAS (Aspirin Versus Ascorbic acid plus Aspirin in Stroke) Study

A condition of oxidative stress is known to occur in ischemic stroke, the current therapeutic intervention of which is largely limited to thrombolysis. To assess the effect of vitamin C ‐ in conjunction to aspirin ‐ in ischemic stroke‐related lipid peroxidation, we measured plasma levels of ascorbate, of 8,12‐isoprostanes F2α‐VI (8,12‐iPF2α‐VI) and activities and levels of a broad spectrum of antioxidant enzymes and micronutrients in stroke patients randomized to receive, from stroke onset and up to three months, either vitamin C (200 mg/day) plus aspirin (300 mg/day) or only aspirin (300 mg/day). By the end of the first week, patients treated with vitamin C plus aspirin had higher vitamin C levels (p = 0.02) and lower 8,12‐iPF2α‐VI levels (p = 0.01) than patients treated with aspirin alone. The significance was maintained for the increase of vitamin C after three months of therapy (p < 0.01). The clinical functional outcome for both groups of patients similarly ameliorated after three months of treatment. We conclude that vitamin C, at the dose of 200∼mg/day and in conjunction with aspirin, significantly decreases ischemic stroke‐related lipid peroxidation in humans. Further studies are warranted to clarify whether the use of vitamin C may add clinical long‐term beneficial effects in patients with stroke.
Self-consistently improved finite temperature effective potential for gauge theories.

The finite temperature effective potential of the Abelian Higgs model is studied using the self-consistent composite operator method, which can be used to sum up the contributions of daisy and superdaisy diagrams. The effect of the momentum dependence of the effective masses is estimated by using a Rayleigh-Ritz variational approximation.
A very low dose of rivastigmine-induced Pisa syndrome in a clozapine-treated patient

Pisa syndrome (PS) is a movement disorder characterized by persistent dystonia with head lateralization and flexion of the back to one side. It is a rare axial symptom and is usually observed in patients with neurodegenerative diseases. Here, we present a patient with chronic schizophrenia who received clozapine to control her symptoms for years and subsequently developed acute PS after adding very low-dose rivastigmine. A 67-year-old woman with chronic schizophrenia had been treated with clozapine at 150 mg/day for many years. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (Mini–Mental State Examination score is 20 points) and was prescribed a low dose of the cholinesterase inhibitor rivastigmine 1.5 mg orally once a day. On the fifth day, she presented with acute and sustained lateral flexion of the body and head rotation to her right side. She could walk without assistance but showed a marked axial rotation of the trunk and contractures of the back muscles (Figure 1(A)). The patient was diagnosed with PS based on the marked lateral flexion on the coronal plane. After rivastigmine was tapered, her PS resolved fully within 7 days (Figure 1(B)). During the course, the patient’s positive, negative syndrome scale (PANSS = 47) score and dosage of clozapine did not change, and there were no symptoms of catatonia, such as catalepsy, waxy flexibility or posturing. PS is a rare involuntary movement disorder in which patients exhibit postural disturbances with lateralization of the trunk and head to one side. According to the US Food and Drug Administration Adverse Event Reporting System in the United States, 52 cases of PS were reported from 1997 to 2011 (Zannas et al., 2014). Doherty et al. (2011) proposed the criterion of lateral flexion of more than 10° that can be resolved completely by passive movement or when lying supine. The initiation of neuroleptics induced or stopped the syndrome, which also supports the idea that an imbalance of dopaminergic neurons in the basal ganglia may contribute to PS. Clozapine has lower D2 antagonist action, with a dissociation constant (Ki) value of approximately 75 nm. PS after discontinuing antipsychotics with anticholinergic effects was reported before, and the physician should be aware of the risks of cholinergic rebound hypersensitivity after long-term inhibition (Yeh et al., 2009). In the presence of antagonism, the syndrome may also be explained by receptor upregulation and functional expression. Rivastigmine may induce higher levels of acetylcholine in the brain that competitively bind to Letters 741983 ANP0010.1177/0004867417741983ANZJP CorrespondenceANZJP Correspondence research-article2017
Beliefs about Exchange‐Rate Stability: Survey Evidence from the Currency Board in Bulgaria

Abstract Currency pegs seldom achieve full credibility even after delivering low inflation and a stable exchange rate for many years. We use unique survey data from Bulgaria’s currency board to investigate the origins of incomplete credibility. We show that the limitations imposed by the currency board on output stabilization policies are a major source of concern. Many people view the financial stabilization policies as a reason for high unemployment and therefore as unsustainable. Another important factor for low credibility is the concern over potential international shocks. Conversely, past instability does not seem to translate strongly into expectations of future instability.
Theory of the Consumption Function

What is the exact nature of the consumption function? Can this term be defined so that it will be consistent with empirical evidence and a valid instrument in the hands of future economic researchers and policy makers? In this volume a distinguished American economist presents a new theory of the consumption function, tests it against extensive statistical J material and suggests some of its significant implications.Central to the new theory is its sharp distinction between two concepts of income, measured income, or that which is recorded for a particular period, and permanent income, a longer-period concept in terms of which consumers decide how much to spend and how much to save. Milton Friedman suggests that the total amount spent on consumption is on the average the same fraction of permanent income, regardless of the size of permanent income. The magnitude of the fraction depends on variables such as interest rate, degree of uncertainty relating to occupation, ratio of wealth to income, family size, and so on.The hypothesis is shown to be consistent with budget studies and time series data, and some of its far-reaching implications are explored in the final chapter.
Choreoathetosis, hypothyroidism, and pulmonary alterations due to human NKX2-1 haploinsufficiency.

The occurrence of neurological symptoms and developmental delay in patients affected by congenital hypothyroidism (CH) has been attributed to the lack of thyroid hormone in the developing CNS. Accordingly, after the introduction of neonatal screening programs for CH, which allowed early and adequate treatment, an almost normal outcome for most CH patients could be achieved. However, a few patients did not reach this favorable outcome despite early and adequate treatment. Here we describe five patients with variable degrees of CH who suffered from choreoathetosis, muscular hypotonia, and pulmonary problems, an association of symptoms that had not been described before this study. Since this clinical picture matched the phenotype of mice targeted for deletion of the transcription factor gene Nkx2-1, we investigated the human NKX2-1 gene in these five patients. We found heterozygous loss of function mutations in each of these five patients, e.g., one complete gene deletion, one missense mutation (G2626T), and three nonsense mutations (2595insGG, C2519A, C1302A). Therefore, the unfavorable outcome in patients with CH, especially those with choreoathetosis and pulmonary symptoms, can be explained by mutations in the NKX2-1 gene rather than by hypothyroidism. Moreover, the association of symptoms in the patients with NKX2-1 mutations points to an important role of human NKX2-1 in the development and function of thyroid, basal ganglia, and lung, as already described for rodents.