Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessment of Exogenous Pigmentation in Colourless Elastic Ligatures

Introduction The aim of this study was to evaluate colour alteration of transparent elastic ligatures submitted to exogenous pigmentation. Methods Forty test specimens were divided into eight groups corresponding to one commercial brand with five test specimens in each group. The test specimens were immersed into coffee and black tea solutions with the purpose of assessing colour alteration using a portable digital spectrophotometer (Vita Easyshade Compact). The surfaces of the ligatures under scanning electron microscope (SEM) at ×30, ×150 and ×20,000 magnification were evaluated with the purpose of observing the differences in porosity of the ligatures. The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test for normality was applied followed by the one-way analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) and the level of significance adopted was 95%. Results All the groups showed modified initial colour that was perceptible to the human eye. The brand that showed greater colour alteration, in comparison with its initial colour, was the American® pearl elastic ligature and the ligatures that presented the smallest colour variation were the Ortho-Organizer®. The surface evaluations of the ligatures showed differences with regard to the topography evidencing more porosity in the ligatures that showed greater staining. Conclusion The group that changed colour significantly was the one that presented the highest porosity, and the brand that was the least altered was the one that showed the lowest porosity.
Hormone replacement therapy

Abstract Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is one of the more frequently prescribed treatments in the modern practice of gynaecology. Many hours of consultations in clinics are spent discussing HRT. Patients request it and doctors suggest it more and more frequently, convinced of its undoubted beneficial effects. Yet there is not as much evidence to support this view as one might expect. The relatively low prevalence of clinical events necessitates recruitment of large numbers of women over a considerable duration of time to provide adequate power to individual studies. Therefore, results of large, prospective, multicentre randomized trials currently underway are eagerly awaited. This review describes the recent significant developments on the subject and their potential impact in both future research and clinical practice.
Simulation Efficiency and an Introduction to Variance Reduction Methods

In these notes we discuss the efficiency of a Monte-Carlo estimator. This naturally leads to the search for more efficient estimators and towards this end we describe some simple variance reduction techniques. In particular, we describe common random numbers, control variates, antithetic Variates and conditional Monte-Carlo, all of which are designed to reduce the variance of our Monte-Carlo estimators. We will defer a discussion of stratified sampling and importance sampling until the next set of lecture notes.
Mutation of E 1-CONJUGATING ENZYME-RELATED 1 Decreases RELATED TO UBIQUITIN Conjugation and Alters Auxin Response and Development 1 [ C ] [ W ] [ OA ]

The ubiquitin-like protein RELATED TO UBIQUITIN (RUB) is conjugated to CULLIN (CUL) proteins to modulate the activity of Skp1-Cullin-F-box (SCF) ubiquitylation complexes. RUB conjugation to specific target proteins is necessary for the development of many organisms, including Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). Here, we report the isolation and characterization of e1-conjugating enzyme-related1-1 (ecr1-1), an Arabidopsis mutant compromised in RUB conjugation. The ecr1-1 mutation causes a missense change located two amino acid residues from the catalytic site cysteine, which normally functions to form a thioester bond with activated RUB. A higher ratio of unmodified CUL1 relative to CUL1-RUB is present in ecr1-1 compared to wild type, suggesting that the mutation reduces ECR1 function. The ecr1-1 mutant is resistant to the auxin-like compound indole-3propionic acid, produces fewer lateral roots than wild type, displays reduced adult height, and stabilizes a reporter fusion protein that is degraded in response to auxin, suggesting reduced auxin signaling in the mutant. In addition, ecr1-1 hypocotyls fail to elongate normally when seedlings are grown in darkness, a phenotype shared with certain other RUB conjugation mutants that is not general to auxin-response mutants. The suite of ecr1-1 molecular and morphological phenotypes reflects roles for RUB conjugation in many aspects of plant growth and development. Certain ecr1-1 elongation defects are restored by treatment with the ethylene-response inhibitor silver nitrate, suggesting that the short ecr1-1 root and hypocotyl result from aberrant ethylene accumulation. Further, silver nitrate supplementation in combination with various auxins and auxin-like compounds reveals that members of this growth regulator family may differentially rely on ethylene signaling to inhibit root growth.
Results from the PALM-3000 high-order adaptive optics system

The first of a new generation of high actuator density AO systems developed for large telescopes, PALM-3000 is optimized for high-contrast exoplanet science but will support operation with natural guide stars as faint as V ~ 18. PALM-3000 began commissioning in June 2011 on the Palomar 200" telescope and has to date over 60 nights of observing. The AO system consists of two Xinetics deformable mirrors, one with 66 by 66 actuators and another with 21 by 21 actuators, a Shack-Hartman WFS with four pupil sampling modes (ranging from 64 to 8 samples across the pupil), and a full vector matrix multiply real-time system capable of running at 2KHz frame rates. We present the details of the completed system, and initial results. Operating at 2 kHz with 8.3cm pupil sampling on-sky, we have achieved a K-band Strehl ratio as high as 84% in ~1.0 arcsecond visible seeing.
Impact of a Health Promotion Program on Employee Health Risks and Work Productivity

Purpose. Evaluate the impact of a multicomponent workplace health promotion program on employee health risks and work productivity. Design. Quasi-experimental 12-month before-after intervention-control study. Setting. A multinational corporation headquartered in the United Kingdom. Subjects. Of 618 employees offered the program, 266 (43%) completed questionnaires before and after the program. A total of 1242 of 2500 (49.7%) of a control population also completed questionnaires 12 months apart. Intervention. A multicomponent health promotion program incorporating a health risk appraisal questionnaire, access to a tailored health improvement web portal, wellness literature, and seminars and workshops focused upon identified wellness issues. Measures. Outcomes were (1) cumulative count of health risk factors and the World Health Organization health and work performance questionnaire measures of (2) workplace absenteeism and (3) work performance. Results. After adjusting for baseline differences, improvements in all three outcomes were significantly greater in the intervention group compared with the control group. Mean excess reductions of 0.45 health risk factors and 0.36 monthly absenteeism days and a mean increase of 0.79 on the work performance scale were observed in the intervention group compared with the control group. The intervention yielded a positive return on investment, even using conservative assumptions about effect size estimation. Conclusion. The results suggest that a well-implemented multicomponent workplace health promotion program can produce sizeable changes in health risks and productivity.
Resistance to Taxol in lung cancer cells associated with increased microtubule dynamics

Microtubule dynamics are crucial for mitotic spindle assembly and chromosome movement. Suppression of dynamics by Taxol appears responsible for the drug's potent ability to inhibit mitosis and cell proliferation. Although Taxol is an important chemotherapeutic agent, development of resistance limits its efficacy. To examine the role of microtubule dynamics in Taxol resistance, we measured the dynamic instability of individual rhodamine-labeled microtubules in Taxol-sensitive and -resistant living human cancer cells. Taxol-resistant A549-T12 and -T24 cell lines were selected from a human lung carcinoma cell line, A549. They are, respectively, 9- and 17-fold resistant to Taxol and require low concentrations of Taxol for proliferation. We found that microtubule dynamic instability was significantly increased in the Taxol-resistant cells. For example, with A549-T12 cells in the absence of added Taxol, microtubule dynamicity increased 57% as compared with A549 cells. The length and rate of shortening excursions increased 75 and 59%, respectively. These parameters were further increased in A549-T24 cells, with overall dynamicity increasing by 167% compared with parental cells. Thus, the decreased Taxol-sensitivity of these cells can be explained by their increased microtubule dynamics. When grown without Taxol, A549-T12 cells were blocked at the metaphase/anaphase transition and displayed abnormal mitotic spindles with uncongressed chromosomes. In the presence of 2–12 nM Taxol, the cells grew normally, suggesting that mitotic block resulted from excessive microtubule dynamics. These results indicate that microtubule dynamics play an important role in Taxol resistance, and that both excessively rapid dynamics and suppressed dynamics impair mitotic spindle function and inhibit proliferation.
Open peer review at four STEM journals: an observational overview

Open peer review, peer review where authors' and reviewers' identities are disclosed to one another, is a growing trend in scholarly publishing. Through observation of four journals in STEM disciplines, PLOS One, Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics, PeerJ, and F1000Research, an observational overview is conducted. The overview relies on defined characteristics of open peer review. Results show that despite differing open peer review implementations, each journal retains editorial involvement in scholarly publishing. Further, the analysis shows that only one of these implementations is fully transparent in its peer review and decision making process. Finally, the overview contends that journals should clearly outline peer review and editorial processes in order to allow for open peer review to be better understood and adopted by authors, reviewers, editors, and readers of science communications.
Diagnosis and surgical management of intraspinal synovial cysts: report of 19 cases

OBJECTIVE Synovial cysts of the vertebral facet joints are a source of nerve root compression. Different surgical procedures are in use, but no consensus has been formed so far as to which method should be used in synovial cysts. To clarify the role of surgical management, the efficacy of operative procedures and factors influencing the outcome in our own series of 19 patients treated between 1994 and 1998 were analysed. METHODS Nineteen patients with a mean age of 65 years underwent surgery for medically intractable radicular pain or neurological deficits caused by synovial cysts. The patients' records were retrospectively analysed for neurological deficits, cysts diameter, operative approach, segmental hypermobility, and clinical outcome; CT and MRI were analysed for additional degenerative changes. RESULTS In 17 patients an excellent result and in two patients a good postoperative result was achieved. Twelve patients were found to have hypermobility of the facet joints and six had spondylolisthesis. There was no correlation between cyst diameter, operative approach, and outcome. No intraoperative or postoperative complications occurred. CONCLUSIONS Age and hypermobility may play a part in the aetiology of facet joint synovial cysts. As all operative strategies showed equally good clinical outcome, total excision via a small flavectomy as the least invasive approach should be considered therapy of choice in patients with cysts causing neurological deficits.
A Role-Based Approach to Unmanned Team Operations

Many military concepts for future employment of unmanned systems will require coordinated action by teams of unmanned vehicles and often manned/unmanned teams. The effectiveness of these heterogeneous military teams will rely on their ability to perform in dynamic, stressful situations as well as pure human teams do today. Current solutions for teaming of manned and unmanned assets rely on continuous communication for explicit coordination of team members. This strategy will quickly break down in realistic operations where unexpected events, mission changes and loss of communications frequently occur. To achieve more sophisticated teaming, new approaches and technologies are required to enable robotic entities to integrate into human teams. Lockheed Martin is developing a technology for Role-Based Operations (RBO) which allows teams of unmanned systems, or mixed teams of manned/unmanned systems, to operate via implicit coordination when continuously adaptive behavior is required of a team, and effective communication is not possible among team members. RBO applies the concept of team and mission roles by partitioning mission tasks and intra-team responsibilities into role themed collections allocated to team members. Each role defines appropriate reactions for a team member to tactical events and enables effective coordination of team actions in the absence of explicit communication. Finally, RBO allows for a natural integration of heterogeneous entities by using a teaming strategy already familiar to humans. In this paper, we describe the RBO concept in greater detail and briefly cover the RBO architecture before presenting the capabilities of our prototype implementation with our current demonstration. We will describe the extension of the RBO prototype to support predictive, role-based, implicit coordination. We also describe how this concept would be used in military operations, particularly in manned/unmanned operations, and conclude with discussion of further research directions for this work.
The translocator maintenance protein Tam41 is required for mitochondrial cardiolipin biosynthesis

The mitochondrial inner membrane contains different translocator systems for the import of presequence-carrying proteins and carrier proteins. The translocator assembly and maintenance protein 41 (Tam41/mitochondrial matrix protein 37) was identified as a new member of the mitochondrial protein translocator systems by its role in maintaining the integrity and activity of the presequence translocase of the inner membrane (TIM23 complex). Here we demonstrate that the assembly of proteins imported by the carrier translocase, TIM22 complex, is even more strongly affected by the lack of Tam41. Moreover, respiratory chain supercomplexes and the inner membrane potential are impaired by lack of Tam41. The phenotype of Tam41-deficient mitochondria thus resembles that of mitochondria lacking cardiolipin. Indeed, we found that Tam41 is required for the biosynthesis of the dimeric phospholipid cardiolipin. The pleiotropic effects of the translocator maintenance protein on preprotein import and respiratory chain can be attributed to its role in biosynthesis of mitochondrial cardiolipin.
Textual Information Extraction in Document Images Guided by a Concept Lattice

Text Information Extraction in images is concerned with extracting the relevant text data from a collection of document images. It consists in localizing (determining the location) and recognizing (transforming into plain text) text contained in document images. In this work we present a textual information extraction model consisting in a set of prototype regions along with pathways for browsing through these prototype regions. The proposed model is constructed in four steps: (1) produce synthetic invoice data containing the textual information of interest, along with their spatial positions; (2) partition the produced data; (3) derive the prototype regions from the obtained partition clusters; (4) build the concept lattice of a formal context derived from the prototype regions. Experimental results, on a corpus of 1000 real-world scanned invoices show that the proposed model improves significantly the extraction rate of an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) engine.
Kinematic calibration and pose measurement of a medical parallel manipulator by optical position sensors

The application of a parallel manipulator requires kinematic calibration of the base and tool transformation in order to eliminate the errors resulting from manufacturing and assembly of connecting parts. In this paper, a calibration method of base and tool transformation is developed by virtue of optical position sensors. Error model for calibration is constructed and an iterative calibration procedure is introduced. In addition, the pose measurement using a commercial 3D position measurement system, OPTOTRAK 3020, is described. Simulation and experiment results show that the method effectively improves the accuracy of manipulator.
Identification of DT104 and U302 Phage Types amongSalmonella enterica Serotype Typhimurium Isolates by PCR

ABSTRACT A DNA sequence was identified in isolates of Salmonella enterica serotype Typhimurium definitive type 104 (DT104). The PCR amplification of an internal segment of this sequence identified DT104 and the closely related U302 phage type among 146 isolates ofS. enterica serotype Typhimurium tested, thus providing a tool for rapid identification of DT104 and related isolates.
Starting life resistance-free.

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics, initially recognized in hospitals, was subsequently identified in community-acquired infections as well. Today it is a major obstacle to the treatment of infectious diseases, leading not only to treatment failures but also to increased costs.1 Recent studies have highlighted the role of the normal intestinal and skin flora as reservoirs of genes carrying resistance to human pathogens. In fact, on the basis of survey evidence,2 , 3 it appears that the carriage of high levels of antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli in the intestinal tract, even in persons who are not taking antibiotics, is something we must accept as inevitable.
Spiral: A Generator for Platform-Adapted Libraries of Signal Processing Alogorithms

SPIRAL is a generator for libraries of fast software implementations of linear signal processing transforms. These libraries are adapted to the computing platform and can be re-optimized as the hardware is upgraded or replaced. This paper describes the main components of SPIRAL: the mathematical framework that concisely describes signal transforms and their fast algorithms; the formula generator that captures at the algorithmic level the degrees of freedom in expressing a particular signal processing transform; the formula translator that encapsulates the compilation degrees of freedom when translating a specific algorithm into an actual code implementation; and, finally, an intelligent search engine that finds within the large space of alternative formulas and implementations the “best” match to the given computing platform. We present empirical data that demonstrate the high performance of SPIRAL generated code.
Peer interaction effectively, yet infrequently, enables programmers to discover new tools

Computer users rely on software tools to work effectively and efficiently, but it is difficult for users to be aware of all the tools that might be useful to them. While there are several potential technical solutions to this difficulty, we know little about social solutions, such as one user telling a peer about a tool. To explore these social solutions in one particular domain, we describe a series of interviews with 18 programmers in industry that explore how tool discovery takes place. These interviews provide a rich set of qualitative data that give us detailed insights into how programmers discover tools. One finding was that, while programmers believe that discovery from peers is effective, they actually discover tools from peers relatively infrequently. Another finding was that programmers can effectively discover tools from their peers both in a co-located and remote settings. We describe several implications of our findings, such as that discovery from peers can be enhanced by improving programmers' ability to communicate openly and concisely about tools.
The Membrane-Proximal Immunoreceptor Tyrosine-Based Inhibitory Motif Is Critical for the Inhibitory Signaling Mediated by Siglecs-7 and -9, CD33-Related Siglecs Expressed on Human Monocytes and NK Cells1

Siglec-7 and Siglec-9 are two members of the recently characterized CD33-related Siglec family of sialic acid binding proteins and are both expressed on human monocytes and NK cells. In addition to their ability to recognize sialic acid residues, these Siglecs display two conserved tyrosine-based motifs in their cytoplasmic region similar to those found in inhibitory receptors of the immune system. In the present study, we use the rat basophilic leukemia (RBL) model to examine the potential of Siglecs-7 and -9 to function as inhibitory receptors and investigate the molecular basis for this. We first demonstrate that Siglecs-7 and -9 are able to inhibit the FcεRI-mediated serotonin release from RBL cells following co-crosslinking. In addition, we show that under these conditions or after pervanadate treatment, Siglecs-7 and -9 associate with the Src homology region 2 domain-containing phosphatases (SHP), SHP-1 and SHP-2, both in immunoprecipitation and in fluorescence microscopy experiments using GFP fusion proteins. We then show by site-directed mutagenesis that the membrane-proximal tyrosine motif is essential for the inhibitory function of both Siglec-7 and -9, and is also required for tyrosine phosphorylation and recruitment of SHP-1 and SHP-2 phosphatases. Finally, mutation of the membrane-proximal motif increased the sialic acid binding activity of Siglecs-7 and -9, raising the possibility that “inside-out” signaling may occur to regulate ligand binding.
Using eQTL weights to improve power for genome-wide association studies: a genetic study of childhood asthma

Increasing evidence suggests that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with complex traits are more likely to be expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs). Incorporating eQTL information hence has potential to increase power of genome-wide association studies (GWAS). In this paper, we propose using eQTL weights as prior information in SNP based association tests to improve test power while maintaining control of the family-wise error rate (FWER) or the false discovery rate (FDR). We apply the proposed methods to the analysis of a GWAS for childhood asthma consisting of 1296 unrelated individuals with German ancestry. The results confirm that eQTLs are enriched for previously reported asthma SNPs. We also find that some SNPs are insignificant using procedures without eQTL weighting, but become significant using eQTL-weighted Bonferroni or Benjamini–Hochberg procedures, while controlling the same FWER or FDR level. Some of these SNPs have been reported by independent studies in recent literature. The results suggest that the eQTL-weighted procedures provide a promising approach for improving power of GWAS. We also report the results of our methods applied to the large-scale European GABRIEL consortium data.