Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Growth Factors and Their Impact on Transfusion Medicine

Hematopoietic growth factors, glycoproteins that stimulate self‐renewal, differentiation, and proliferation of responsive hematopoietic cells, promise to revolutionize transfusion medicine. Recombinant DNA technology has made several of these cytokines available at pharmacologic doses, and new candidate agents for clinical application appear regularly. Growth factors prescribed for patients have already reduced the requirement for red blood cell and granulocyte transfusions in selected clinical circumstances. A lineage‐specific thrombopoietin will likely limit the need for platelet transfusions. Hematopoietic cytokine injections have also been used to increase the number of red blood cells, granulocytes and circulating primitive progenitor cells in blood donors. Cytokine‐stimulated peripheral blood progenitor cell infusions have complemented and, in some instances, replaced bone marrow for adjunctive cancer chemotherapy and for bone marrow transplantation. Finally, synergistic combinations of cytokines can effect ex vivo expansion of lymphocytes and of progenitor cells to provide novel blood components. Hematopoietic growth factors are still expensive and their long‐term effects remain to be determined. However, as the biologic activities of cytokines and the physiology of hematopoietic progenitor cells become better understood, the clinical application of novel cellular components may redefine the concept of blood transfusion.
Evolution of a long-lived continental arc: a geochemical approach (Arequipa Batholith, Southern Peru)

Abstract. Batholith emplacements within a continental margin may bear witness of a magmatic input lasting for several million years. Consequently, the geochemical signatures of such sections are complex, and their understanding in terms of petrological processes, is crucial. The Arequipa section of the Coastal Batholith of Southern Peru was discontinuously constructed during several periods of magmatic activity, from the Jurassic to the Paleocene (200–175 Ma, and 90–60 Ma). Thermobarometric data on amphiboles indicates two main levels of emplacement at the batholith scale, the deepest between 5 and 7 km in depth and the second around 3.5 km. The present day outcropping of these different units at the same elevation argue for a large vertical movement along the Lluclla Fault System between 76 and 68 Ma. Both major/trace element contents and Nd-Sr isotopes show a large variability that is not random. The data dispersion is consistent with a two-staged evolutionary model of the magmatic arc, inspired by the MASH model: (i) an early stage dominated by hybridization and fractional crystallization processes, (ii) a late stage in which magmas were homogenized and mainly evolved by fractional crystallization. The change from one stage to another is controlled by the thermal state of the crustal arc section, especially the Deep Crustal Hot Zone.
Empowering Organizations through Customer Knowledge Acquisition: A pilot investigation

Customers are becoming more powerful, and customer knowledge can empower organizations and improve their performance. Customer knowledge has been classified in three categories: knowledge FOR customers, knowledge ABOUT customers and knowledge FROM customers. The value of knowledge management has been recognized by organizations. However, the value of external customer knowledge has not fully been recognized, and its impacts have not been sufficiently investigated. Consequently, the objective of this study is to empirically assess the impact of acquiring each type of customer knowledge. Based on a preliminary analysis of 13 organizations in the banking industry, this study detected that the acquisition of customer knowledge is significantly associated with business processes, employees, products, customers, market and financial performance.
Effect of glutamine on the total antioxidant system of rats subjected to renal ischemia and reperfusion.

PURPOSE To evaluate the protective effects of glutamine administered before renal ischemia-reperfusion on plasma antioxidant protection, and lung and renal tissue injury. METHODS 33 rats underwent right nephrectomy. On the eighth postoperative day, animals were randomized into three groups (n=11): glutamine, control and sham. Each group of animals received, by gavage, a particular diet for 7 days. On day 14 following nephrectomy, the animals were subjected to left renal ischemia-reperfusion. After this, blood samples were collected and the animals were killed. At necropsy the kidney and lung were removed for histology. RESULTS The levels of total antioxidant capacity were higher in the glutamine group and control group compared with the sham group. The levels of glutathione peroxidase in both the sham and glutamine groups were higher when compared with the control group (p<0.05). The level of superoxide dismutase in the sham group was clearly higher than that in the glutamine and control groups. Histological examination showed no differences between the three groups. CONCLUSION Prior intake of glutamine improves total antioxidant capacity and increases glutathione peroxidase levels in rats subjected to renal ischemia-reperfusion.
Effects of substrate stiffness and actomyosin contractility on coupling between force transmission and vinculin–paxillin recruitment at single focal adhesions

The relationship between force and focal adhesion (FA) dynamics is unclear. Substrate stiffness and contractility regulate the relationship between force and vinculin, but not paxillin, turnover at FAs. Substrate stiffness and contractility also regulate whether vinculin and paxillin turnover dynamics are correlated at FAs.
A Thread-Aware Adaptive Data Prefetcher

Most processors employ hardware data prefetching to hide memory access latencies. However the prefetching requests from different threads on a multi-core processor can cause severe interference with prefetching and/or demand requests of others. The data prefetching can lead to significant performance degradation due to shared resource contention on shared memory multi-core systems. This paper proposes a thread-aware data prefetching mechanism based on low-overhead run-time information to tune prefetching modes and aggressiveness, mitigating the resource contention in the memory system. Our solution has two new components: 1) a filtering mechanism that informs the hardware about which prefetching requests can cause shared data invalidation and should be discarded, and 2) a self-tuning prefetcher that uses run-time feedback to adjust each thread's data prefetching mode and arguments. On a set of parallel benchmarks, our thread-aware data prefetching mechanisms improve the overall performance of 64-core system by 11% and reduce the energy-delay product by 13% over a multi-mode prefetch baseline system with a two level cache organization and a conventional MESI-based directory coherence protocol. We compare our approach to the feedback directed prefetching (FDP) technique and find that it provides better performance on multi-core systems, while reducing the energy delay product.
Hypergraph Cuts & Unsupervised Representation for Image Segmentation

This paper presents a novel approach to image segmentation based on hypergraph cut techniques. Natural images contain more components: Edge, homogeneous region, noise. So, to facilitate the natural image analysis, we introduce an Image Neighborhood Hypergraph representation (INH). This representation extracts all features and their consistencies in the image data and its mode of use is close to the perceptual grouping. Then, we formulate an image segmentation problem as a hypergraph partitioning problem and we use the recent k-way hypergraph techniques to find the partitions of the image into regions of coherent brightness/color. Experimental results of image segmentation on a wide range of images from Berkeley Database show that the proposed method provides a significant performance improvement compared with the stat-of-the-art graph partitioning strategy based on Normalized Cut (Ncut) criteria.
Are maternal reflective functioning and attachment security associated with preadolescent mentalization?

This study investigated the impact of maternal reflective functioning (RF) and attachment security on children’s mentalization. The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) was administered to mothers in a sample of 41 mother–preadolescent dyads. AAI transcripts were rated in terms of the Berkeley AAI System (Main and Goldwyn, 1998) and the Reflective Functioning Scale (RFS; Fonagy et al., 1998). Preadolescent mentalization was assessed using a semi-structured interview adapted from O’Connor and Hirsch (1999) and also by analyzing mental-state talk produced during an autobiographical interview. Relationships between maternal RF and children’s mentalization were analyzed, with consideration given to the different RFS markers and references to positive, negative, and mixed-ambivalent mental states. Children’s mentalization was positively correlated with the mother’s RF, particularly the mother’s ability to mentalize negative or mixed-ambivalent mental states. No significant differences in mentalization were observed between children of secure and insecure mothers.
Transient Depolarizations Induced by Acetylstrophanthidin in Specialized Tissue of Dog Atrium and Ventricle

Isolated preparations of atrial specialized conduction fibers (“plateau” fibers) qualitatively resembled ventricular Purkinje fibers (false tendons) in their response to acetylstrophanthidin. Acetylstrophanthidin in concentrations of 1–3 ×10−7 g/ml caused coupled, frequency-dependent transient depolarizations (TDs) in both types of fiber. In free-running strands of plateau fibers the TDs could reach threshold and generate coupled action potentials, but TDs and automatic responses did not occur in ordinary atrial muscle fibers. TDs were suppressed by elevation of the external potassium concentration. Automatic activity and TDs in atrial plateau fibers were abolished by acetylcholine. Automatic activity was also sometimes suppressed in false tendons by acetylcholine, but TDs and related coupled responses were not influenced.
Ultrasonic Acoustic Velocities During Partial Melting of a Mantle Peridotite KLB‐1

Knowledge of the elastic properties of partially molten rocks is crucial for understanding low‐velocity regions in the interior of the Earth. Models of fluid and solid mixtures have demonstrated that significant decreases in seismic velocity are possible with small amounts of melt, but there is very little available data for testing these models, particularly with both P and S waves for mantle compositions. We report ultrasonic measurements of P and S velocities on a partially molten KLB‐1 sample at mantle conditions using a multi‐anvil device at a synchrotron facility. The P, S, and bulk sound velocities decrease as melting occurs. We find that the quantity, ∂lnVS/∂lnVB (where VB is the bulk sound velocity) is lower than mechanical models estimate. Instead, our data, as well as previous data in the literature, are consistent with a dynamic melting model in which melting and solidification interact with the stress field of the acoustic wave.
Ising meets Ornstein and Zernike, Debye and Hückel, Widom and Rowlinson, and others

The name Ising has come to stand not only for a specific model, but for an entire universality class - arguably the most important such class - in the theory of critical phenomena. I review several examples, both in and out of equilibrium, in which Ising universality appears or is pertinent. The "Ornstein-Zernike" connection concerns a thermodynamically self-consistent closure of the eponymous relation, which lies at the basis of the modern theory of liquids, as applied to the Ising lattice gas. Debye and Huckel founded the statistical mechanics of ionic solutions, which, despite the long-range nature of the interaction, now appear to exhibit Ising-like criticality. The model of Widom and Rowlinson involves only excluded-volume interactions between unlike species, but again belongs to the Ising universality class. Far-from-equilibrium models of voting behavior, catalysis, and hysteresis provide further examples of this ubiquitous universality class.
Evaluations of the Levels of Heavy Metals in River Water and Selected Species of Fish from Ogba River in Benin City, Nigeria

Ogba River provides source of drinking water in Benin City metropolis and also serves as repository for urban drainage and agrochemical wastes which could potentially impact the water and biota such as fish. This study was therefore aimed at assessing the concentrations of copper, cadmium, chromium and lead in water and fish from Ogba River (Nigeria). The dominant fish species encountered in the study are Clarias gariepinus, Hemichromis fasciatus and Tilapia mariae with mean weight of 127.86g, 116.60 and 74.46g respectively. Water and whole fish tissues were acid digested and analyzed for metal concentrations using the atomic absorption spectrophotometer. The results showed that in water and fish species, copper concentrations of 0.211 mg/l and 0.760 mg/kg were highest in station one, while chromium concentrations of 0.002 mg/l and 0.040 mg/kg were lowest in station two. There was significant difference in the mean concentration of the heavy metals in the selected fish species (P<0.05). The need for enforcement of regulations inhibiting unwise use of aquatic resources and regular monitoring of environmental matrices (water, sediment, and fauna) is advocated given that fish from Ogba River is unfit for human consumption. Key words: Heavy metals, Ogba River, fish.
Medium-term results from the clinical and angiographic follow-up of patients after angioplasty and implantation of sirolimus-eluting stents.

INTRODUCTION The aim of this study was to evaluate the medium-term clinical and angiographic results, as well as the occurrence and treatment of restenosis, following the implantation of sirolimus-eluting stents (SES) in patients undergoing coronary angioplasty. METHODS All patients who have an SES implanted in our department are entered into a database, with a view to evaluating the use of such stents in everyday clinical practice. This study included patients who consented to repeat angiography 8+/-2.4 months after stent implantation. The study population consisted of 91 patients (63 men, mean age 58+/-8.1 years) with 116 stenoses in all. This represented 17.4% of all patients who had an SES implanted during the study period. All the angiographic examinations were analysed independently using quantitative coronary analysis in order to determine the relationship between clinical and angiographic data and restenosis and late lumen loss. RESULTS The mean vessel diameter was 2.5+/-0.48 mm and the mean lesion length was 12.61+/-1.54 mm. The late lumen loss was 0.04+/-0.49 mm. Restenosis was seen in 10 patients (12 vessels), of whom 4 were diabetics. The restenosis was in-stent in 7 vessels, in-segment in 5, and was localised (length of restenosis <10 mm) in all patients. After repeat angioplasty and SES implantation all the patients with restenosis remained free of symptoms 8+/-1.5 months later. Diabetes mellitus was the only factor to be correlated with restenosis. CONCLUSIONS Restenosis following implantation of SES is mainly localised and occurs with about the same frequency within and outside the stent. The incidence of major cardiac events and restenosis following SES implantation is low. However, their long term efficacy in everyday clinical practice must be proved in large randomised studies in order to confirm the results presented here.
Transmission of C9orf72 hexanucleotide repeat expansions in sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: an Australian trio study

Abnormally expanded C9orf72 hexanucleotide repeats are found in up to 7% of patients with sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (SALS). It is not known whether the sporadic nature of the disease represents incomplete penetrance of the phenotype or expansion of the repeat in the SALS patient. The sizes of C9orf72 hexanucleotide repeats were measured in blood DNA of 43 SALS patients and their parents who had no symptoms of ALS. Two SALS patients (4.7%) had abnormally expanded (>30 repeats) C9orf72 repeats. Both of their fathers (one with dementia) also had abnormally expanded repeats. Nine SALS patients had intermediate-normal repeat sizes (7–30 repeats); in each of these, one parent had a similar repeat size. In the remaining 32 SALS patients, the repeat sizes were low-normal (<7 repeats). There was no evidence of repeat instability leading to abnormal numbers of repeats in any SALS patient in this trio cohort. Our results suggest that a simple monogenic mechanism is not likely to be the cause of C9orf72 repeat-related SALS.
Demographic and angiographic profile in premature cases of acute coronary syndrome: analysis of 820 young patients from South India.

BACKGROUND Prevalence of acute coronary syndrome in young individuals is increasing progressively. Previous studies have focused on the analysis of risk factors and to some extent coronary angiographic profile in young vs. old patients with acute coronary syndrome, but no study compared the angiographic profile in young patients based on the type of acute coronary syndrome. So, this study was conducted to determine the differences in demographic and coronary angiographic profile of young patients with ST-elevated myocardial infarction (STEMI) vs. those with non-ST-elevated myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) or unstable angina (UA). METHODS We retrospectively analyzed young patients (age <40 years) with acute coronary syndrome who underwent coronary angiography at Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research, Bengaluru, India between April 2010 and March 2011. Coronary risk factor profile and angiographic features were compared between STEMI and NSTEMI/UA patients. RESULTS Of 8,268 patients who underwent coronary angiography during the study period, 820 (~10%) were ≤40 year age. Of them, 611 exhibited STEMI and 209 exhibited NSTEMI/UA. Angiographic analysis revealed that single-vessel disease was significantly more common in the STEMI group (56.6% vs. 36.6% respectively; P<0.001) whereas triple-vessel disease was significantly more common in the NSTEMI/UA group (3.6% vs. 10.5% respectively; P<0.001). Conversely, left anterior descending coronary artery was more commonly involved in the STEMI group (55.3% vs. 40.2% respectively; P<0.001), whereas left circumflex coronary artery was more commonly involved in the NSTEMI/UA group (11.8 vs. 23.4% respectively; P<0.001). Of note, smoking/tobacco consumption was the most significant coronary risk factor with prevalence as high as 65% in both groups. CONCLUSIONS In the present study, significant differences were observed in coronary risk factor profile and angiographic features between young patients with STEMI and NSTEMI/UA. Larger studies will be required to establish specific associations between presentation of acute coronary syndromes and angiographic profiles in young patients.
Identifying genetic interaction evidence passages in biomedical literature

In this work, we report our contributions to the BioC Track of BioCreative V for the task of identifying genetic interaction evidence passages. Text describing genetic interactions is difficult to identify due to no simple definition for these interactions and lack of training data. We prepared two manually annotated datasets containing 1793 PubMed abstract and 1000 full text sentences, respectively. We also built two classification systems to identify genetic interaction evidence, one based on word and context features, and one based on query features used for genetic evidence information retrieval. Both models gave satisfactory results on our manually annotated datasets and we produced four different runs, which were submitted for inclusion in the complete BioC Track system. Identification of genetic interactions in biomedical text is a challenging problem with much work still needing to be done.
Efficacy and safety of deflazacort vs prednisone and placebo for Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Objective: To assess safety and efficacy of deflazacort (DFZ) and prednisone (PRED) vs placebo in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Methods: This phase III, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, multicenter study evaluated muscle strength among 196 boys aged 5–15 years with DMD during a 52-week period. In phase 1, participants were randomly assigned to receive treatment with DFZ 0.9 mg/kg/d, DFZ 1.2 mg/kg/d, PRED 0.75 mg/kg/d, or placebo for 12 weeks. In phase 2, placebo participants were randomly assigned to 1 of the 3 active treatment groups. Participants originally assigned to an active treatment continued that treatment for an additional 40 weeks. The primary efficacy endpoint was average change in muscle strength from baseline to week 12 compared with placebo. The study was completed in 1995. Results: All treatment groups (DFZ 0.9 mg/kg/d, DFZ 1.2 mg/kg/d, and PRED 0.75 mg/kg/d) demonstrated significant improvement in muscle strength compared with placebo at 12 weeks. Participants taking PRED had significantly more weight gain than placebo or both doses of DFZ at 12 weeks; at 52 weeks, participants taking PRED had significantly more weight gain than both DFZ doses. The most frequent adverse events in all 3 active treatment arms were Cushingoid appearance, erythema, hirsutism, increased weight, headache, and nasopharyngitis. Conclusions: After 12 weeks of treatment, PRED and both doses of DFZ improved muscle strength compared with placebo. Deflazacort was associated with less weight gain than PRED. Classification of evidence: This study provides Class I evidence that for boys with DMD, daily use of either DFZ and PRED is effective in preserving muscle strength over a 12-week period.
Impaired cAMP production in human airway smooth muscle cells by bradykinin: role of cyclooxygenase products.

Interleukin (IL)-1β impairs human airway smooth muscle (ASM) cell cAMP responses to isoproterenol (Iso). We investigated if bradykinin (BK) could cause a similar effect and the role of cyclooxygenase (COX) products in this event, since we have recently reported that BK, like IL-1β, also causes COX-2 induction and prostanoid release in human ASM cells. BK pretreatment significantly attenuated Iso-induced cAMP generation in a time- and concentration-dependent manner. cAMP generation by prostaglandin (PG) E2 but not by forskolin was also impaired. The COX inhibitor indomethacin completely prevented the impairment, whereas the selective COX-2 inhibitors NS-398 and nimesulide, protein synthesis inhibitors cycloheximide and actinomycin D, and steroid dexamethasone were all partially effective. The impairment was mimicked by the B2 agonist [Tyr(Me)8]BK, the Ca2+ ionophore A-23187, and PGE2 and prevented by the B2 antagonist HOE-140, but anti-IL-1β serum was ineffective. The results indicate that BK impairs human ASM cell responses to Iso, and the effect is largely mediated by B2 receptor-related COX product release via both COX isoforms and is independent of IL-1β.
Manipulation system for subsea operation

The authors developed an automatically controlled manipulation system for subsea operation. The manipulation system was developed to provide inspection, cleaning and maintenance, that have been accomplished by divers, at an ocean oil exploitation platform in maximum 200 m depth under the water. The manipulator is designed to have one extension arm and two working arms equipped on the end of the extension arm so as to have a wide service area. Each working arm has 6 articulated joints and a grip. It has a light-weight and high-rigid arm mechanism. The control system to perform a sway compensation control, a hybrid position/force control, a co-operation control of two working arms and a force reflection bilateral control using master arm, has been developed. Various types of water pressure proof sensors have been developed to realize these controls. <<ETX>>