Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hydrogen Cyanide in the Rhizosphere: Not Suppressing Plant Pathogens, but Rather Regulating Availability of Phosphate

Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria produce chemical compounds with different benefits for the plant. Among them, HCN is recognized as a biocontrol agent, based on its ascribed toxicity against plant pathogens. Based on several past studies questioning the validity of this hypothesis, we have re-addressed the issue by designing a new set of in vitro experiments, to test if HCN-producing rhizobacteria could inhibit the growth of phytopathogens. The level of HCN produced by the rhizobacteria in vitro does not correlate with the observed biocontrol effects, thus disproving the biocontrol hypothesis. We developed a new concept, in which HCN does not act as a biocontrol agent, but rather is involved in geochemical processes in the substrate (e.g., chelation of metals), indirectly increasing the availability of phosphate. Since this scenario can be important for the pioneer plants living in oligotrophic alpine environments, we inoculated HCN producing bacteria into sterile mineral sand together with germinating plants and showed that the growth of the pioneer plant French sorrel was increased on granite-based substrate. No such effect could be observed for maize, where plantlets depend on the nutrients stored in the endosperm. To support our concept, we used KCN and mineral sand and showed that mineral mobilization and phosphate release could be caused by cyanide in vitro. We propose that in oligotrophic alpine environments, and possibly elsewhere, the main contribution of HCN is in the sequestration of metals and the consequential indirect increase of nutrient availability, which is beneficial for the rhizobacteria and their plant hosts.
Dengue shock syndrome

Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne arthropod-borne viral (arboviral) tropical disease in humans affecting 50–528 million people worldwide. The acute abdominal complications of dengue fever are acute appendicitis, acute pancreatitis, acute acalculous cholecystitis and non-specific peritonitis. Acute pancreatitis with new onset diabetes in dengue shock syndrome (DSS) is very rarely reported. We describe a case of 30-year-old man admitted in intensive care unit and was diagnosed with DSS with RT-PCR, NS1 antigen and dengue IgM antibody being positive. Abdominal ultrasound and computerized tomography confirmed acute pancreatitis. Patient required insulin after recovery. Diabetes mellitus caused by DSS is under-reported and lack of awareness may increase mortality and morbidity.
Preventing kidney failure : Primary care physicians must intervene earlier

337 F WE HOPE to make a dent in the rising epidemic of kidney failure, primary care physicians need to get more involved in detecting and managing chronic kidney disease in its early stages. So many people are at risk that nephrologists cannot do the job alone. The task need not be daunting. Five simple questions can help one to intervene early and effectively, using just a few minutes of an office visit: • Is the patient at risk of developing chronic kidney disease? • If the patient is at risk, does his or her kidney show signs of damage, as measured by the glomerular filtration rate (GFR)? • Is proteinuria present, and if so, how can it be minimized? • If chronic kidney disease is present, has the target blood pressure of less than 130/80 mm Hg been attained? • Is an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin-receptor blocker (ARB) indicated? To improve the care of patients in the early stages of kidney disease, the National Kidney Foundation has issued clinical practice guidelines. 1 My review draws heavily but not exclusively from their report.
A self-sustaining integrated CMOS regulator for solar and UHF RFID energy harvesting systems

A self-sustaining regulator harvesting from two energy sources, solar and radio-frequency energy, is designed. A charge pump utilizing charge transfer switch (CTS) with tunable voltages at the bottom of the pumping capacitors is proposed. Through a DC-DC switching converter with a digital pulse-width modulator, the output voltage is regulated at 1V. In the digital DC-DC switching converter, we propose to analyze the error signal by an oversampling analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The system is completely implemented and fully-integrated in a standard 0. 18μm CMOS process, and the achieved maximum end-to-end conversion efficiency is about 62%.
Deadlock- and livelock-free routing protocols for wave switching

Wave switching is a hybrid switching technique for high performance routers. It combines wormhole switching and circuit switching in the same router architecture. Wave switching achieves very high performance by exploiting communication locality. When two nodes are going to communicate frequently, a physical circuit is established between them. By combining circuit switching, pre-established physical circuits and wave pipelining across channels and switches, it is possible to increase network bandwidth considerably, also reducing latency for communications that use pre-established physical circuits. In this paper we propose two protocols for routers implementing wave switching. The first protocol handles the network as a cache of circuits, automatically establishing a circuit when two nodes are going to communicate. Subsequent communications use the previously established circuit. When a new circuit requests channels belonging to another circuit, a replacement algorithm selects the circuit to be torn down. The second protocol relies on the programmer and/or the compiler to decide when a circuit should be established or torn down for a set of messages. Also, we show that the proposed protocols are always able to deliver messages, and are deadlock- and livelock-free.
The effect of pretreatment with ketorolac on pain during intravenous injection of propofol

A randomised, double‐blind, controlled trial was undertaken to compare three different methods of reducing pain during the intravenous injection of propofol. In 101 patients undergoing daycase surgery, verbal rating scores, for pain during injection of propofol were compared immediately after intravenous pretreatment with ketorolac 10 mg, lignocaine 10 mg or saline. Neither pain during injection (p = 0.129), nor venous sequelae at 7 days postoperatively were significantly different between the three treatments. Pain during propofol injection remains a confounding clinical problem.
An Algorithm of Nonlinear Interpolation Segmentation Based on Distance Mask Applied to Human Brain 3D Reconstruction

In medical sequence slices, ROI (region of interest) in image need to be extracted and to be 3D reconstructed. An algorithm of nonlinear image interpolation segmentation is proposed in this paper. The algorithm is based on the distance mask. It effectively processes the segmentation of human brain image in which the distribution of intensities overlap one another, and can quickly extract ROI. The experiment shows that perfect results can be obtained by using this algorithm. And this algorithm was successfully applied to the medical image 3D visualization system
Bmc Infectious Diseases Epidemiological Evidence of Higher Susceptibility to Vcjd in the Young

Background: The strikingly young age of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (vCJD) cases remains unexplained. Age dependent susceptibility to infection has been put forward, but differential dietary exposure to contaminated food products in the UK population according to age and sex during the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) epidemic may provide a simpler explanation.
Anti-thymocyte globulin/G-CSF treatment preserves β cell function in patients with established type 1 diabetes.

BACKGROUND Previous efforts to preserve β cell function in individuals with type 1 diabetes (T1D) have focused largely on the use of single immunomodulatory agents administered within 100 days of diagnosis. Based on human and preclinical studies, we hypothesized that a combination of low-dose anti-thymocyte globulin (ATG) and pegylated granulocyte CSF (G-CSF) would preserve β cell function in patients with established T1D (duration of T1D >4 months and <2 years). METHODS A randomized, single-blinded, placebo-controlled trial was performed on 25 subjects: 17 subjects received ATG (2.5 mg/kg intravenously) followed by pegylated G-CSF (6 mg subcutaneously every 2 weeks for 6 doses) and 8 subjects received placebo. The primary outcome was the 1-year change in AUC C-peptide following a 2-hour mixed-meal tolerance test (MMTT). At baseline, the age (mean ± SD) was 24.6 ± 10 years; mean BMI was 25.4 ± 5.2 kg/m²; mean A1c was 6.5% ± 1.1%; insulin use was 0.31 ± 0.22 units/kg/d; and length of diagnosis was 1 ± 0.5 years. RESULTS Combination ATG/G-CSF treatment tended to preserve β cell function in patients with established T1D. The mean difference in MMTT-stimulated AUC C-peptide between treated and placebo subjects was 0.28 nmol/l/min (95% CI 0.001-0.552, P = 0.050). A1c was lower in ATG/G-CSF-treated subjects at the 6-month study visit. ATG/G-CSF therapy was associated with relative preservation of Tregs. CONCLUSIONS Patients with established T1D may benefit from combination immunotherapy approaches to preserve β cell function. Further studies are needed to determine whether such approaches may prevent or delay the onset of the disease. TRIAL REGISTRATION Clinicaltrials.gov NCT01106157. FUNDING The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust and Sanofi.
A Prostate Cancer Model Build by a Novel SVM-ID3 Hybrid Feature Selection Method Using Both Genotyping and Phenotype Data from dbGaP

Through Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) many Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP)-complex disease relations can be investigated. The output of GWAS can be high in amount and high dimensional, also relations between SNPs, phenotypes and diseases are most likely to be nonlinear. In order to handle high volume-high dimensional data and to be able to find the nonlinear relations we have utilized data mining approaches and a hybrid feature selection model of support vector machine and decision tree has been designed. The designed model is tested on prostate cancer data and for the first time combined genotype and phenotype information is used to increase the diagnostic performance. We were able to select phenotypic features such as ethnicity and body mass index, and SNPs those map to specific genes such as CRR9, TERT. The performance results of the proposed hybrid model, on prostate cancer dataset, with 90.92% of sensitivity and 0.91 of area under ROC curve, shows the potential of the approach for prediction and early detection of the prostate cancer.
Cardiac microvasculature in DOCA-salt hypertensive rats : effect of endothelin ET(A) receptor antagonism.

The cardiac abnormalities associated with hypertension include left ventricular hypertrophy and vascular changes. The latter may affect the cardiac microvasculature and predispose to myocardial ischemia. To test the hypothesis that endothelin-1 contributes to changes in the microcirculation of the heart, we studied cardiac microvessels of the deoxycorticosterone acetate-salt (DOCA-salt) model of hypertension in the rat, in which the endothelin system is activated, and the effect of the endothelin-A (ET(A)) subtype-selective endothelin receptor antagonist A-127722. A-127722 (30 mg x kg(-1) x d(-1)) was administered for 4 weeks. Arterioles (</=20 microm in lumen diameter) were identified in the myocardium by use of immunolabeling with an anti-smooth muscle alpha-actin antibody, and capillaries with an anti-laminin antibody with nuclear counterstaining by nuclear fast red. Systolic blood pressure was 103+/-1.6 mm Hg in unilaterally nephrectomized rats (UniNx), 202+/-3.2 mm Hg in DOCA-salt (P<0.01 versus UniNx), and 182+/-3.1 mm Hg in ET(A) antagonist-treated DOCA-salt (P<0.01 versus DOCA-salt or UniNx). Arteriolar and capillary densities were altered significantly in the subendocardial myocardium but not in the subepicardial myocardium of the left ventricle. Arteriolar density per square millimeter was 18.1+/-1.48 in UniNx, 31.9+/-3.26 in DOCA-salt (P<0.01 versus UniNx), and 24.2+/-1.36 in ET(A) antagonist-treated DOCA-salt (P<0.05 versus DOCA-salt or UniNx). Capillary density per square millimeter was 2395+/-148 in UniNx, 1576+/-107 in DOCA-salt (P<0.01 versus UniNx), and 1982+/-31 in ET(A) antagonist-treated DOCA-salt (P<0.01 versus DOCA-salt or UniNx). In conclusion, in DOCA-salt hypertensive rats, subendocardial arteriolar growth and capillary rarefaction were observed in the left ventricular myocardium, and both were partially corrected by ET(A) receptor antagonism. This suggests a role for endothelin-1 in cardiac arteriolar growth and capillary rarefaction, which may have pathophysiological implications by contributing to myocardial ischemia in hypertension.
Exposures to Environmental Toxicants and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in U.S. Children

Objective The purpose of this study was to examine the association of exposures to tobacco smoke and environmental lead with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Methods Data were obtained from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999–2002. Prenatal and postnatal tobacco exposure was based on parent report; lead exposure was measured using blood lead concentration. ADHD was defined as having current stimulant medication use and parent report of ADHD diagnosed by a doctor or health professional. Results Of 4,704 children 4–15 years of age, 4.2% were reported to have ADHD and stimulant medication use, equivalent to 1.8 million children in the United States. In multivariable analysis, prenatal tobacco exposure [odds ratio (OR) = 2.5; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.2–5.2] and higher blood lead concentration (first vs. fifth quintile, OR = 4.1; 95% CI, 1.2–14.0) were significantly associated with ADHD. Postnatal tobacco smoke exposure was not associated with ADHD (OR = 0.6; 95% CI, 0.3–1.3; p = 0.22). If causally linked, these data suggest that prenatal tobacco exposure accounts for 270,000 excess cases of ADHD, and lead exposure accounts for 290,000 excess cases of ADHD in U.S. children. Conclusions We conclude that exposure to prenatal tobacco and environmental lead are risk factors for ADHD in U.S. children.
Utilization of mental health and substance abuse services among homeless adults in Los Angeles.

OBJECTIVES Even though psychiatric disorders are disproportionately present among the homeless, little is known about the extent to which homeless people receive treatment for those problems or the factors that are associated with receiving treatment. This article examines utilization and predictors of mental health and substance abuse treatment among a community-based probability sample of homeless adults. METHODS The data analyzed here were collected through face-to-face interviews with 1,563 homeless individuals. Bivariate analyses examined differences between homeless men and women in (1) the prevalence of major mental illnesses and substance dependence and (2) utilization of inpatient and outpatient treatment services for those with specific diagnoses. Logistic regression analyses identified predictors of mental health treatment among those with chronic mental illness and substance abuse treatment among those with recent substance dependence. RESULTS Two-thirds of these homeless adults met criteria for chronic substance dependence, whereas 22% met criteria for chronic mental illness, with substantial overlap between those two disorders: 77% of those with chronic mental illness were also chronic substance abusers. Only one-fifth of each of those two groups reported receiving treatment for those disorders within the last 60 days. Mental health service utilization was predicted largely by factors related to need (eg, diagnosis, acknowledgment of a mental health problem), whereas substance abuse service utilization was predicted by myriad additional factors, reflecting, in part, critical differences in the organization and financing of these systems of care. CONCLUSIONS More attention must be directed at how to better deliver appropriate mental health and substance abuse services to homeless adults.
Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Online Motor Correction Processing Revealed by High-density Electroencephalography

The ability to control online motor corrections is key to dealing with unexpected changes arising in the environment with which we interact. How the CNS controls online motor corrections is poorly understood, but evidence has accumulated in favor of a submovement-based model in which apparently continuous movement is segmented into distinct submovements. Although most studies have focused on submovements' kinematic features, direct links with the underlying neural dynamics have not been extensively explored. This study sought to identify an electroencephalographic signature of submovements. We elicited kinematic submovements using a double-step displacement paradigm. Participants moved their wrist toward a target whose direction could shift mid-movement with a 50% probability. Movement kinematics and cortical activity were concurrently recorded with a low-friction robotic device and high-density electroencephalography. Analysis of spatiotemporal dynamics of brain activation and its correlation with movement kinematics showed that the production of each kinematic submovement was accompanied by (1) stereotyped topographic scalp maps and (2) frontoparietal ERPs time-locked to submovements. Positive ERP peaks from frontocentral areas contralateral to the moving wrist preceded kinematic submovement peaks by 220–250 msec and were followed by positive ERP peaks from contralateral parietal areas (140–250 msec latency, 0–80 msec before submovement peaks). Moreover, individual subject variability in the latency of frontoparietal ERP components following the target shift significantly predicted variability in the latency of the corrective submovement. Our results are in concordance with evidence for the intermittent nature of continuous movement and elucidate the timing and role of frontoparietal activations in the generation and control of corrective submovements.
Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells as a Disease Modeling and Drug Screening Platform

Abstract: Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) hold great hopes for therapeutic application in various diseases. Although ongoing research is dedicated to achieving clinical translation of iPSCs, further understanding of the mechanisms that underlie complex pathogenic conditions is required. Compared with other classical models for studying diseases, iPSCs provide considerable advantages. A newly emerging application of iPSCs is in vitro disease modeling, which can significantly improve the never-ending search for new pharmacological cures. Here, we will discuss current efforts to create iPSC-dependent patient-specific disease models. Furthermore, we will review the use of iPSCs for development and testing of new therapeutic agents and the implications for high-throughput drug screening.
The Autocrine/Paracrine Loop After Myocardial Stretch: Mineralocorticoid Receptor Activation

The stretch of cardiac muscle increases developed force in two phases. The first phase, which occurs rapidly, constitutes the well-known Frank-Starling mechanism and it is generally attributed to enhanced myofilament responsiveness to Ca2+. The second phase or slow force response (SFR) occurs gradually and is due to an increase in the calcium transient amplitude as a result of a stretch-triggered autocrine/paracrine mechanism. We previously showed that Ca2+ entry through reverse Na+/Ca2+ exchange underlies the SFR, as the final step of an autocrine/paracrine cascade involving release of angiotensin II/endothelin, and a Na+/H+ exchanger (NHE-1) activation-mediated rise in Na+. In the present review we mainly focus on our three latest contributions to the understanding of this signalling pathway triggered by myocardial stretch: 1) The finding that an increased production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) from mitochondrial origin is critical in the activation of the NHE-1 and therefore in the genesis of the SFR; 2) the demonstration of a key role played by the transactivation of the epidermal growth factor receptor; and 3) the involvement of mineralocorticoid receptors (MR) activation in the stretch-triggered cascade leading to the SFR. Among these novel contributions, the critical role played by the MR is perhaps the most important one. This finding may conceivably provide a mechanistic explanation to the recently discovered strikingly beneficial effects of MR antagonism in humans with cardiac hypertrophy and failure.
Geographical Analysis of the Patterns of Healthcare Facilities and HIV/AIDS Response Sites in Benue State, Nigeria

This study analysed the spatial patterns and characteristics of healthcare facilities and HIV/AIDS response sites; and the relationship between the distribution of population and healthcare facilities/HIV/AIDS response sites in Benue State, the State with the highest record of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria. Primary and secondary data were used for the study. GPS receiver was used to obtain the geographic coordinates of healthcare facilities and HIV/AIDS response sites; and questionnaire to acquire attribute data of the sites. The secondary data used included the list of all healthcare facilities at community and LGA levels, maps, and the population of the state. The spatial analyses of the phenomena of interest were done based on the LGAs. All the 1243 healthcare facilities in the 23 LGAs of the state were captured in the study. Four key HIV/AIDS services (VCT, PMTCT, ART and HBC) were purposively selected for the study. The analogue map of Benue State was processed and used for various GIS analyses and cartographic enhancement for the purpose of report presentation. The study identified three categories of Healthcare Facilities (primary, secondary and tertiary) in the state. There existed spatial variation in the distribution of the various healthcare facilities in the state. The PHCs were observed to be more widely distributed in the state (93.4%) than the SHCs (6.3%) and THCs (0.2%) which were observed to be largely concentrated in the urban LGAs. Also, specialised HIV/AIDS services like PMTCT and ART were observed to be concentrated in the urban LGAs. The population/Facility ratio for PHCF, SHCF and THCF were 2,371:1; 34,413:1; and 1,376,539:1 respectively. There existed a direct relationship between both population and distribution of healthcare facilities (r = 0.694, p > 0.5); and population and the distribution of HIV/AIDS response sites (r = 0.664, p > 0.5) in the state. The study concluded that the problem of HIV/AIDS in Benue State is more engendered by the paucity of information about the availability of response sites than their inadequacy; and recommends that a robust database for healthcare facilities and HIV/AIDS response sites be developed at all levels in order to enhance information flow to policy formulators and by extension people who require healthcare and HIV/AIDS services.
CGHregions: Dimension Reduction for Array CGH Data with Minimal Information Loss

An algorithm to reduce multi-sample array CGH data from thousands of clones to tens or hundreds of clone regions is introduced. This reduction of the data is performed such that little information is lost, which is possible due to the high dependencies between neighboring clones. The algorithm is explained using a small example. The potential beneficial effects of the algorithm for downstream analysis are illustrated by re-analysis of previously published colorectal cancer data. Using multiple testing corrections suitable for these data, we provide statistical evidence for genomic differences on several clone regions between MSI+ and CIN+ tumors. The algorithm, named CGHregions, is available as an easy-to-use script in R.