Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
[Use of statins for preventing cardiovascular and renal outcomes in patients with chronic kidney disease excluding dialysis: guideline from the Italian Society of Nephrology].

BACKGROUND The current 3rd edition of the Italian Society of Nephrology guidelines has been drawn up to summarize evidence of key intervention issues on the basis of systematic reviews (SR) of randomized trials (RCT) or RCT data only. In the present guideline, evidence of the efficacy of statins in chronic kidney disease patients (CKD, non-dialysis patients) is presented. METHODS SR of RCT and RCT on statins in CKD (non-dialysis) patients were identified referring to a Cochrane Library and Renal Health Library search (2005 update). Quality of SR and RCT was assessed according to current methodological standards. RESULTS Three SR and 36 RCT were found addressing this intervention issue. Methodological quality of the relevant RCT was suboptimal. There is no enough evidence to suggest that statins are associated with a significant reduction in the risk of serum creatinine doubling or of end-stage renal disease in CKD patients (evidence from SR and RCT). Statins compared to placebo or no treatment are associated with significant improvements in proteinuria (evidence from SR). Statins are also associated with significant reduction in the risk of cardiovascular events and mortality in CKD patients (evidence from SR and RCT) and in renal transplant recipients (evidence from RCT), and no significant increases in the risk of rhabdomyolysis and hepatotoxicity in CKD patients. CONCLUSION Available evidence supports the hypothesis that statins should be recommended in CKD patients (non-dialysis patients) on the basis of significant evidence of cardiac and renal protection and no evidence of significant harms. Further studies are necessary to test this hypothesis in selected patient populations.
Direct Measurement of Tissue Oxygenation as a Method of Diagnosis of Acute Compartment Syndrome

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the utility of direct measurement of tissue oxygenation during compartment syndrome (CS) and tourniquet-induced ischemia in a large animal model. We hypothesize that as compartment pressure (CP) rises, circulation within the compartment will decrease resulting in a decreased level of oxygen in the muscle. Methods: This study used a dog model of both CS- and tourniquet-based ischemia. In 15 animals, CS was induced in 1 hind limb with varying degrees of severity using an infusion model. Tourniquet ischemia was induced in the contralateral hind limb for varying durations. The partial pressure of oxygen (PmO2) was continuously monitored using a polarographic oxygen probe in the muscle of both hind limbs. CP was monitored in the CS limb. PmO2 and CP were analyzed after fasciotomy, performed after approximately 7 hours of warm ischemia, or release of tourniquet. Results: With the application of tourniquet ischemia, PmO2 fell from 38.40 to 1.30 mm Hg (P < 0.001) and subsequently rose after release of the tourniquet to 39.81 mm Hg (P < 0.001). Elevated CP induced by infusion was relieved by fasciotomy (52.04–11.37 mm Hg postfasciotomy, P < 0.001). PmO2 readings in the infusion model were significantly higher in pre-CS than during CS (31.77 mm Hg vs. 3.88 mm Hg, P < 0.001) and rebounded after fasciotomy (50.24 mm Hg, P < 0.001), consistent with hyperemic response. Conclusions: Increased CP caused an observable decrease in PmO2 that was reversed by fasciotomy. PmO2 can be directly measured in real time with a polarographic tissue pO2 probe. This study is the first step of evaluating an alternative method for diagnosing acute CS.
Detecting Crowdedness Spot in City Transportation

Crowdedness spot is a crowded area with an abnormal number of objects. Detecting the crowdedness spots of moving vehicles in an urban area is essential to many applications. An intuitive method is to cluster the objects in areas to get the density information. Unfortunately, the data capturing vehicle mobility possesses some new features, such as highly mobile environments, supremely limited size of sample objects, and nonuniform biased samples, and all these features have raised new challenges that make traditional density-based clustering algorithms fail to retrieve the real clustering property of objects, making the results less meaningful. In this paper, we propose a novel nondensity-based approach called mobility-based clustering. The key idea is that sample objects are employed as “sensors” to perceive the vehicle crowdedness in nearby areas using their instant mobility rather than the “object representatives. ” As such, the mobility of samples is naturally incorporated. Several key factors beyond the vehicle crowdedness have been identified, and techniques to compensate these effects are accordingly proposed. Furthermore, taking the detected crowdedness spots as a label of the taxi, we can identify one particular taxi to be a crowdedness taxi that crosses a number of different crowdedness spots. We evaluate the performance of our methods and baseline approaches based on real traffic situations (to retrieve the real traffic crowdedness) and real-life data sets. Finally, the interesting findings are provided for further discussions.
The record precipitation and flood event in Iberia in December 1876: description and synoptic analysis

The first week of December 1876 was marked by extreme weather conditions that affected the south-western sector of the Iberian Peninsula, leading to an all-time record flow in two large international rivers. As a direct consequence, several Portuguese and Spanish towns and villages located in the banks of both rivers suffered serious flood damage on 7 December 1876. These unusual floods were amplified by the preceding particularly autumn wet months, with October 1876 presenting extremely high precipitation anomalies for all western Iberia stations. Two recently digitised stations in Portugal (Lisbon and Evora), present a peak value on 5 December 1876. Furthermore, the values of precipitation registered between 28 November and 7 December were so remarkable that, the episode of 1876 still corresponds to the maximum average daily precipitation values for temporal scales between 2 and 10 days. Using several different data sources, such as historical newspapers of that time, meteorological data recently digitised from several stations in Portugal and Spain and the recently available 20th Century Reanalysis, we provide a detailed analysis on the socio-economic impacts, precipitation values and the atmospheric circulation conditions associated with this event. The atmospheric circulation during these months was assessed at the monthly, daily and sub-daily scales. All months considered present an intense negative NAO index value, with November 1876 corresponding to the lowest NAO value on record since 1865. We have also computed a multivariable analysis of surface and upper air fields in order to provide some enlightening into the evolution of the synoptic conditions in the week prior to the floods. These events resulted from the continuous pouring of precipitation registered between 28 November and 7 December, due to the consecutive passage of Atlantic low-pressure systems fuelled by the presence of an atmospheric-river tropical moisture flow over central Atlantic Ocean.
A fast detection algorithm suitable for mitigation of numerous power quality disturbances

In this paper, a fast detection method for voltage disturbances is explored. The proposed method provides reliable and fast detection for single-phase and poly-phase voltage disturbances such as voltage sags, voltage swells, flicker and frequency change in the utility voltage. The algorithm is based on the theory that allows a set of three-phase voltages be represented as DC voltages in a d-q synchronous rotating frame. In this case, the utility input voltages are sensed and then converted to DC quantities in the d-q reference frame. Thus, any disturbance at the utility input voltages will be reflected as disturbances in the d-q values. Further processing of the signals minimized the point-on-wave effect and yields an output signal indicating if the disturbance is a voltage sag or a voltage swell. Analysis, simulation and experimental results are presented for a variety of disturbances on a three-phase system. The proposed algorithm is implemented on a DSP based system to provide ride-through for critical loads.
Evaluation of the aortic root by MRI: insights from patients with homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia.

BACKGROUND In homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HFH), the aortic root is prone to develop atherosclerotic plaque at an early age. However, the aortic wall and plaque have not yet been assessed in this condition by MRI. We evaluated the aortic root by use of MRI in 17 HFH patients and 12 normal control subjects in a prospective, blinded, controlled study. METHODS AND RESULTS Morphological assessment of the aortic root was done with spin-echo and gradient-echo MRI scanning. Comparisons were made with a number of measures of disease severity, including cholesterol-year score, calcium score on electron-beam CT (EBCT), and size of Achilles tendon xanthomas. Atherosclerotic plaque, visible on fat-suppressed images but never on water-suppressed images, was present in 9 HFH patients (53%). Supravalvular aortic stenosis was present in 7 patients with HFH (41%). Maximum supravalvular aortic wall thickness was significantly greater and OD and lumen cross-sectional area (CSA) were smaller in patients than in control subjects (P=0.006, 0.0005, and 0.06, respectively). Maximum wall thickness was associated with a greater calcium score on electron-beam CT (P=0.02). Although the cumulative exposure of the aortic root to cholesterol (the cholesterol-year score) was significantly correlated with the Achilles tendon CSA and vascular calcification, this score did not correlate with the wall thickness or aortic CSA. CONCLUSIONS This study not only demonstrates the utility of MRI for detecting and characterizing aortic root atherosclerotic plaque and supravalvular aortic stenosis in HFH patients but also suggests that the LDL receptor plays a direct or indirect role in aortic mural development and vascular growth.
Gütekriterien einer deutschsprachigen Version der Mini-Markers zur Erfassung der "Big Five" (überarbeitete Version, 04/2009)

In Human Resource Management research it is often necessary to consider personality traits. The existing and validated measurement devices from personality psychology are not well suited for this task. In this article we describe the adaptation of an English language short questionnaire to measure the Big Five personality traits. The questionnaire is validated with a student sample. We apply item, scale, and explorative factor analyses as well as confirmatory multitrait-multimethod-analysis. The results show that the questionnaire allows for an economic measurement of the Big Five, meets reliability standards, and is valid.
Substances producing pain and itch

Producing Pain and Itch. By C. A. Keele, MD, FRCP, and D. Armstrong, PhD. Price, $12.50. Pp 399. Edward Arnold Ltd, London, 1964. This book is a comprehensive and well\x=req-\ documented review of current knowledge about chemical substances capable of producing pain and/or itch. The authors are obviously competent in this sphere of interest, having made many important contributions themselves which are reviewed in the appropriate place in the text, with the slightly greater detail, yet reasonable modesty, that one may expect in such a work. The authors, their own experimental work, and this book all owe and acknowledge a great debt to Sir Thomas Lewis who pioneered an important and fertile new field. His cleverness and thoroughness of experimental design, using remarkably simple technical means, have apparently inspired well the subsequent generation of his scientific progeny. The directness and simplicity of methods and observations is related, of course, to the use of the skin as the major object of study, providing as it does such
A Fuzzy Logic Computational Model for Emotion Regulation Based on Gross

Emotion regulation looks into methods and strategiesthat humans use in order to control and balance theirpossible extreme levels of emotions. One importantchallenge in building a computational model of emotionsis the mainly non-quantitative nature of this problem.In this paper, we investigate a Fuzzy logic approachas a possible framework for providing the requiredqualitative and quantitative description of suchmodels. In our proposed fuzzy computational modelwhich was constructed based on Gross theory for emotionregulation, beside the fuzzy structure, it includesa learning module that enhances the model adaptivityto environmental changes through learning some relevantaspects such as patterns of events’ sequences. Theresults of the simulation experiments were comparedagainst a formerly presented non-fuzzy implementation.We observed that the agents in our proposed modelmanaged to cope better with changes in the environmentand exhibited smoother regulation behavior. Moreover,our model showed further consistency with the inferentialrules of Gross theory.
Generating Explanations for Complex Biomedical Queries

We present a computational method to generate explanations to answers of complex queries over biomedical ontologies and databases, using the high-level representation and efficient automated reasoners of Answer Set Programming. We show the applicability of our approach with some queries related to drug discovery over PHARMGKB, DRUGBANK, BIOGRID, CTD and SIDER.
Contributing student pedagogy

A Contributing Student Pedagogy (CSP) is a pedagogy that encourages students to contribute to the learning of others and to value the contributions of others. CSP in formal education is anticipatory of learning processes found in industry and research, in which the roles and responsibilities of 'teacher' and 'student' are fluid. Preparing students for this shift is one motivation for use of CSP. Further, CSP approaches are linked to constructivist and community theories of learning, and provide opportunities to engage students more deeply in subject material. In this paper we advance the concept of CSP and relate it to the particular needs of computer science. We present a number of characteristics of this approach, and use case studies from the available literature to illustrate these characteristics in practice. We discuss enabling technologies, provide guidance to instructors who would like to incorporate this approach in their teaching, and suggest some future directions for the study and evaluation of this technique. We conclude with an extensive bibliography of related research and case studies which exhibit elements of CSP.
Interaction of photochemical and microbial processes in the degradation of refractory dissolved organic matter from a coastal marine environment

The interaction between photochemical and biological processes in the degradation of marine dissolved organic matter (DOM) was investigated with seawater from a coastal southeastern U.S. salt marsh. Seawater supplemented with humic substances was exposed to alternating cycles of sunlight (equivalent to 8 h of midday sun) and dark incubations with natural bacterial populations (1–2 weeks in length). Photochemical degradation of the DOM was monitored during sunlight exposure by direct measurements of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and carbon monoxide (CO) formation in 0.2‐µm filtered seawater. Bacterial degradation was monitored during dark incubations by tritiated leucine uptake and changes in bacterial numbers in bacterivore‐free incubations and by direct measurements of DOM loss. The alternating cycles of sunlight and microbial activity resulted in more complete degradation of bulk DOM and marine humic substances than was found for nonirradiated controls (i.e. with microbial activity alone) by a factor of up to 3‐fold. Increased decomposition was due both to direct losses of carbon gas photoproducts (DIC and CO in a 15 : 1 ratio) and to enhanced microbial degradation of photodegraded DOM, with approximately equal contributions from each pathway. Mass balance calculations indicated that low‐molecular‐weight carbon photoproducts, currently considered to be the compounds responsible for stimulating bacterial activity following photodegradation of DOM, were insufficient to account for the enhanced bacterial production observed. Thus, higher molecular weight, chemically uncharacterized fractions of DOM may also be modified to more biologically available forms during exposure to natural sunlight.
Overview of PDEs and Their Regulation

Contraction and relaxation of vascular smooth muscle and cardiac myocytes are key physiological events in the cardiovascular system. These events are regulated by second messengers, cAMP and cGMP, in response to extracellular stimulants. The strength of signal transduction is controlled by intracellular cyclic nucleotide concentrations, which are determined by a balance in production and degradation of cAMP and cGMP. Degradation of cyclic nucleotides is catalyzed by 3′,5′-cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterases (PDEs), and therefore regulation of PDEs hydrolytic activity is important for modulation of cellular functions. Mammalian PDEs are composed of 21 genes and are categorized into 11 families based on sequence homology, enzymatic properties, and sensitivity to inhibitors. PDE families contain many splice variants that mostly are unique in tissue-expression patterns, gene regulation, enzymatic regulation by phosphorylation and regulatory proteins, subcellular localization, and interaction with association proteins. Each unique variant is closely related to the regulation of a specific cellular signaling. Thus, multiple PDEs function as a particular modulator of each cardiovascular function and regulate physiological homeostasis.
Comparative analysis of similarity measures for sentence level semantic measurement of text

The accuracy of similarity measurement between sentences is critical to the performance of several applications such as text mining, question answering, and text summarization. This paper focuses on calculating semantic similarities between sentences and performing a comparative analysis among identified similarity measurement techniques. Comparison between three popular similarity measurements which are Jaccard, Cosine and Dice similarity measures has been conducted. The performance of each identified measurement was evaluated and recorded. In this paper, we use a large lexical database of English known as WordNet to calculate the word-to-word semantic similarity. The result of this research concludes that the Jaccard and Dice performs better in measuring the semantic similarity between sentences.
miR‐155/BIC as an oncogenic microRNA

A group of recently published articles on microRNAs (miRNAs; He et al., 2005; Lu et al., 2005; O’Donnell et al., 2005) supports arguments that noncoding RNAs play important roles in oncogenesis and hence may be valuable as diagnostic markers and therapeutic targets. To our knowledge, the first miRNA-encoding RNA shown to participate in oncogenesis was BIC RNA, which was originally identified several years ago as a noncoding RNA from a common retroviral integration site in avian leukosis virus–induced lymphomas (Tam et al., 1997; McManus, 2003). It was subsequently shown that overexpression of a highly structured, phylogenetically conserved region in the last exon of BIC RNA led to an increase in the incidence of leukemia and a decrease in the latency of lymphoma development in chickens with elevated levels of MYC (Tam et al., 2002). This work was done before the dawn of the miRNA era; despite recognition of the potential significance of the highly ordered RNA structure (Tam, 2001), the mechanism of oncogenicity of this noncoding RNA remained a mystery until recently. We now understand that this region encompasses the pre-miR155 sequence and that elevated levels of BIC RNA are associated with elevated levels of miR-155 (Eis et al., 2005; Kluiver et al., 2005). It follows that miR-155 is very likely to be a contributing factor in the etiology of human lymphomas. Our recent work has shown that in certain human diffuse large B-cell lymphomas, the levels of miR155 increase as much as 60-fold above normal and that higher levels are associated with poorer clinical prognosis (Eis et al., 2005). BIC/miR-155 is also elevated in Hodgkin lymphoma cell lines and clinical samples (van den Berg et al., 2003; Eis et al., 2005; Kluiver et al., 2005), as well as in childhood Burkitt’s lymphoma (Metzler et al., 2004). To our knowledge, the work on BIC and MYC in a chicken lymphoma model represents the first example of an miRNA-encoding gene shown directly to function as an oncogene. Despite its similarity to the oncogenic collaboration between miR-17-92 and MYC demonstrated in mice (He et al., 2005), our earlier work was not mentioned in the article by He at al., and we think it deserves the recognition. It remains to be seen if miRNAs derived from the miR-17-92 polycistron and miR155 affect the same or different oncogenic pathways. Regardless, miR-155 should also be considered an onco-miRNA. The mechanisms by which these onco-miRNAs contribute to tumor initiation and progression will be a major focus of cancer research for years to come.
PMQR genes oqxAB and aac(6′)Ib-cr accelerate the development of fluoroquinolone resistance in Salmonella typhimurium

Emergence of multidrug-resistant Salmonella typhimurium strains, especially the ACSSuT and nalidixic acid R types, has significantly compromised the effectiveness of current strategies to control Salmonella infections, resulting in increased morbidity and mortality. Clinical S. typhimurium isolates recovered in Hong Kong during the period of 2005–2011 were increasingly resistant to ciprofloxacin (CIP) and antibiotics of the ACSSuT group. Our data revealed that oqxAB and aac(6′)Ib-cr were encoded on plasmids of various sizes and the presence of these two elements together with a single gyrA mutation in S. typhimurium were sufficient to mediate resistance to CIP. Acquisition of the oqxAB and aac(6′)Ib-cr encoding plasmids by S. typhimurium caused a fourfold increase in CIP minimal inhibitory concentration. Furthermore, the presence of oqxAB and aac(6′)Ib-cr in Salmonella dramatically increased the mutation prevention concentration of CIP which may due to mutational changes in the drug target genes. In conclusion, possession of oqxAB and aac(6′)Ib-cr encoding plasmid facilitate the selection of CIP resistant S. typhimurium, thereby causing a remarkable increase of CIP resistance among clinical Salmonella strains in Hong Kong.
An analysis on adaptive cluster ratio in wireless sensor networks

Clustering schemes have been adopted as efficient solutions to prolong network lifetime and improve network scalability. In such clustering schemes cluster ratio is represented by the rate of the number of cluster heads and the number of total nodes and affects the performance of clustering schemes. In this paper, we mathematically analyze relation between cluster ratio and path loss in a cluster and an optimal cluster ratio is developed to provide promising channel and minimize packet loss. We examine its performance through a set of simulations. The simulation results show that the proposed optimal cluster ratio effectively guarantees packet reception rate in WSN.