Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Young Athletes Cleared for Sports Participation After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction: How Many Actually Meet Recommended Return‐to‐Sport Criterion Cutoffs?

STUDY DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. BACKGROUND: While meeting objective criterion cutoffs is recommended prior to return to sports following anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction, the number of young athletes who meet recommended cutoffs and the impact of cutoffs on longitudinal sports participation are unknown. OBJECTIVES: To test the hypothesis that a higher proportion of young athletes who meet recommended cutoffs will maintain the same level of sports participation over the year following return‐to‐sport clearance compared to those who do not meet recommended cutoffs. METHODS: At the time of return‐to‐sport clearance, the International Knee Documentation Committee Subjective Knee Evaluation Form (IKDC), quadriceps and hamstring strength limb symmetry index (LSI), and single‐leg hop test LSI were assessed. Proportions of participants who met individual (IKDC score of 90 or greater; strength and hop test LSIs of 90% or greater) and combined cutoffs were calculated. Proportions of participants who continued at the same level of sports participation over the year following return‐to‐sport clearance (assessed using the Tegner activity scale) were compared between those who met and did not meet cutoffs. RESULTS: Participants included 115 young athletes (88 female). The proportions meeting individual cutoffs ranged from 43.5% to 78.3%. The proportions meeting cutoffs for all hop tests, all strength tests, and all combined measures were 53.0%, 27.8%, and 13.9%, respectively. A higher proportion of participants who met cutoffs for both strength tests maintained the same level of sports participation over the year following return‐to‐sport clearance than those who did not (81.3% versus 60.2%, P = .02). CONCLUSION: The proportions of young athletes after ACL reconstruction recently cleared for return to sports who met the combined criterion cutoffs were low. Those who met the criterion cutoffs for both strength tests maintained the same level of sports participation at higher proportions than those who did not. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Prognosis, level 2b.
Rapid Decrease in Peripheral Blood Mononucleated Cell Telomere Length After HIV Seroconversion, but Not HCV Seroconversion

HIV-infected individuals show significantly shorter leukocyte telomere length compared with uninfected controls.1–4 This may translate to accelerated cellular aging and immunosenescence in the HIV population. HIV-related factors, such as duration of HIV infection or severity of HIV disease progression, fail to explain the variance in telomere length associated with HIV infection. Although nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors can inhibit human telomerase in vitro,5,6 no associations have been reported between telomere length and exposure to nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors in vivo.7,8 In fact, exposure to combination antiretroviral therapy has been associated with longer telomere length in individuals living with HIV.9,10 In observational studies, smoking, alcohol, higher body mass index, and low income have been previously associated with shorter telomeres in the general population. However, these factors were not significantly associated with telomere length among the HIV-infected participants,4 suggesting that HIV infection masked their negative effects on telomere length. Among HIV-infected individuals, high HIV viral load set point has been independently associated with shorter telomeres in 2 independent studies.4,11 This is consistent with the reported association between shorter telomeres and poorer immunological recovery in persons living with HIV and achieving virological control on combination antiretroviral therapy.12 In addition, a history of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection has been associated with shorter telomeres in both HIV-infected and uninfected individuals.4,13 A recent study reported that although telomere length in HIV-infected individuals was shorter than that in uninfected persons, the slope of telomere length vs. age was no different, suggesting an acute shortening early on during the course of infection.11 Our aim was to measure telomere length before and immediately after HIV and/or HCV seroconversion and explore whether apparent telomere shortening occurs immediately after HIV/HCV seroconversion, or rather over time throughout the chronic infection period.
Developmental Programming of Renal Function and Re-Programming Approaches

Chronic kidney disease affects more than 10% of the population. Programming studies have examined the interrelationship between environmental factors in early life and differences in morbidity and mortality between individuals. A number of important principles has been identified, namely permanent structural modifications of organs and cells, long-lasting adjustments of endocrine regulatory circuits, as well as altered gene transcription. Risk factors include intrauterine deficiencies by disturbed placental function or maternal malnutrition, prematurity, intrauterine and postnatal stress, intrauterine and postnatal overnutrition, as well as dietary dysbalances in postnatal life. This mini-review discusses critical developmental periods and long-term sequelae of renal programming in humans and presents studies examining the underlying mechanisms as well as interventional approaches to “re-program” renal susceptibility toward disease. Clinical manifestations of programmed kidney disease include arterial hypertension, proteinuria, aggravation of inflammatory glomerular disease, and loss of kidney function. Nephron number, regulation of the renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system, renal sodium transport, vasomotor and endothelial function, myogenic response, and tubuloglomerular feedback have been identified as being vulnerable to environmental factors. Oxidative stress levels, metabolic pathways, including insulin, leptin, steroids, and arachidonic acid, DNA methylation, and histone configuration may be significantly altered by adverse environmental conditions. Studies on re-programming interventions focused on dietary or anti-oxidative approaches so far. Further studies that broaden our understanding of renal programming mechanisms are needed to ultimately develop preventive strategies. Targeted re-programming interventions in animal models focusing on known mechanisms will contribute to new concepts which finally will have to be translated to human application. Early nutritional concepts with specific modifications in macro- or micronutrients are among the most promising approaches to improve future renal health.
An initial rotor position estimation and sensorless starting scheme for switched reluctance motor

This paper proposes a full-cycle unsaturated inductance estimation based initial rotor position estimation and sensorless starting scheme for switched reluctance motor. To calculate the full-cycle unsaturated inductance, the high frequency voltage pulses are injected in the non-exciting phases. Under medium or high load conditions, considering the electromagnetic saturation effects in the conduction regions of each phase, a simple polynomial transfer model is introduced to transfer the calculated saturated incremental inductance into the unsaturated phase inductance. Using the calculated three-phase full-cycle unsaturated inductance, the rotor position can be real-time estimated by the unsaturated inductance vector coordinate transformation method. The experimental results verify the validity of the proposed method.
An Overview on Cardiovascular Protective Effects of Catechins.

BACKGROUND The impact of diet strategies to manage cardiovascular disease has been focused in recent years. The food ingredients, such as flavonoids, are known as cardioprotective agents; however, it is not fully understood how these compounds are effective against cardiovascular problems. Catechins are polyphenolic compounds exhibiting several biological activities in the human body, potentially in the treatment of cardiovascular disease. The present study indicates that catechins may be effective against cardiovascular problems through modulating blood lipid metabolism, protecting vascular endothelial, and decreasing blood pressure. CONCLUSION The current review has evaluated various studies on the role of catechins in the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disorders by focusing on oxidative stress and inflammatory responses.
CURLY LEAF Regulates Gene Sets Coordinating Seed Size and Lipid Biosynthesis1[OPEN]

A histone methyltransferase negatively regulates a set of genes coordinating seed size and lipid biosynthesis pathways in developing Arabidopsis embryos. CURLY LEAF (CLF), a histone methyltransferase of Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2) for trimethylation of histone H3 Lys 27 (H3K27me3), has been thought as a negative regulator controlling mainly postgermination growth in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). Approximately 14% to 29% of genic regions are decorated by H3K27me3 in the Arabidopsis genome; however, transcriptional repression activities of PRC2 on a majority of these regions remain unclear. Here, by analysis of transcriptome profiles, we found that approximately 11.6% genes in the Arabidopsis genome were repressed by CLF in various organs. Unexpectedly, approximately 54% of these genes were preferentially repressed in siliques. Further analyses of 118 transcriptome datasets uncovered a group of genes that was preferentially expressed and repressed by CLF in embryos at the mature-green stage. This observation suggests that CLF mediates a large-scale H3K27me3 programming/reprogramming event during embryonic development. Plants of clf-28 produced bigger and heavier seeds with higher oil content, larger oil bodies, and altered long-chain fatty acid composition compared with wild type. Around 46% of CLF-repressed genes were associated with H3K27me3 marks; moreover, we verified histone modification and transcriptional repression by CLF on regulatory genes. Our results suggest that CLF silences specific gene expression modules. Genes operating within a module have various molecular functions, but they cooperate to regulate a similar physiological function during embryo development.
Things You May Not Know About Android (Un)Packers: A Systematic Study based on Whole-System Emulation

The prevalent usage of runtime packers has complicated Android malware analysis, as both legitimate and malicious apps are leveraging packing mechanisms to protect themselves against reverse engineer. Although recent efforts have been made to analyze particular packing techniques, little has been done to study the unique characteristics of Android packers. In this paper, we report the first systematic study on mainstream Android packers, in an attempt to understand their security implications. For this purpose, we developed DROIDUNPACK, a whole-system emulation based Android packing analysis framework, which compared with existing tools, relies on intrinsic characteristics of Android runtime (rather than heuristics), and further enables virtual machine inspection to precisely recover hidden code and reveal packing behaviors. Running our tool on 6 major commercial packers, 93,910 Android malware samples and 3 existing state-of-the-art unpackers, we found that not only are commercial packing services abused to encrypt malicious or plagiarized contents, they themselves also introduce securitycritical vulnerabilities to the apps being packed. Our study further reveals the prevalence and rapid evolution of custom packers used by malware authors, which cannot be defended against using existing techniques, due to their design weaknesses.
Insights into the diagnosis and management of iron deficiency in inflammatory bowel disease

ABSTRACT Introduction: Iron deficiency is a frequent comorbidity of chronic diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease that can severely impact the health and quality of life of affected individuals. It can exist as a silent condition and manifest in non-specific symptoms even in the absence of anemia. Even though iron deficiency anemia is the most common complication and extra-intestinal manifestation of inflammatory bowel disease, the majority of inflammatory bowel disease patients who are diagnosed with iron deficiency anemia are not treated. Areas covered: In this review, we discuss iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia in patients with inflammatory bowel disease, and review diagnostic and therapeutic options. Expert commentary: We invite international gastroenterological societies and associations to refine the practice guidelines and include iron deficiency as a potential morbidity associated with IBD in analogy to arthritis, uveitis or any other extra intestinal manifestations. There should a more unanimous agreement among different societies on the specific diagnostic cutoff values for C-reactive protein levels, serum ferritin, and transferrin saturation in order to differentiate iron deficiency anemia from anemia of chronic disease.
An open-source toolkit for word-level confidence estimation in machine translation

Recently, a growing need of Confidence Estimation (CE) for Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) systems in Computer Aided Translation (CAT), was observed. However, most of the CE toolkits are optimized for a single target language (mainly English) and, as far as we know, none of them are dedicated to this specific task and freely available. This paper presents an open-source toolkit for predicting the quality of words of a SMT output, whose novel contributions are (i) support for various target languages, (ii) handle a number of features of different types (system-based, lexical , syntactic and semantic). In addition, the toolkit also integrates a wide variety of Natural Language Processing or Machine Learning tools to pre-process data, extract features and estimate confidence at word-level. Features for Word-level Confidence Estimation (WCE) can be easily added / removed using a configuration file. We validate the toolkit by experimenting in the WCE evaluation framework of WMT shared task with two language pairs: French-English and English-Spanish. The toolkit is made available to the research community with ready-made scripts to launch full experiments on these language pairs, while achieving state-of-the-art and reproducible performances.
DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT AND IN VITRO INVESTIGATION OF WATER IN OIL NANOEMULSION FOR TRANSDERMAL DELIVERY

The objective of the study was to investigate the potential of w/o nanoemulsion prepared by high energy method for transdermal delivery of hydrophilic drug. Tacrine hydrochloride was selected as a model drug for the study. Coarse emulsions prepared by oil phase titration method were subjected to sonication for 30 minutes to produce nanosized droplets. In vitro skin permeation of optimized nanoemulsions showed significant increase (p < 0.05) in steady state flux (Jss) and permeability coefficient as compared to controls. Maximum value of permeation flux (6.172±2.94 μg/cm 2 /h) was obtained with formulation TD7 comprising of 7 mg of tacrine hydrochloride dissolved in 10% w/w of distilled water, 30% w/w surfactant mixture (Labrafil M and Transcutol P in ratio of 1:4) and 60 % Capryol 90 as continuous phase. Effective permeation of w/o nanoemulsion is attributed to its components which themselves acted as permeation enhancers. Optimized formulation showed least droplet size of 156.4 ±0.48 nm with poly dispersity index of 0.36 ± 0.4. Reduced droplet size as a result of sonication was directly related to the permeation profile of nanoemulsions. TD7 had pH of 6.1 ± 0.28 and viscosity of 20.24± 0.24 cps. The refractive index was found to be 1.412 ± 0.22. Transmission electron microscopy & scanning electron microscopy images showed spherical shaped aqueous droplets dispersed in oily phase with size ranging from 97 to 267 nm. Optimized nanoemulsion was converted to nanoemulsion gel by using ethyl cellulose (20cps) as thickening agent. Slow release of drug was due to w/o nanoemulsion acting as a reservoir. WO
Duplicated Leptin Receptors in Two Species of Eel Bring New Insights into the Evolution of the Leptin System in Vertebrates

Since its discovery in mammals as a key-hormone in reproduction and metabolism, leptin has been identified in an increasing number of tetrapods and teleosts. Tetrapods possess only one leptin gene, while most teleosts possess two leptin genes, as a result of the teleost third whole genome duplication event (3R). Leptin acts through a specific receptor (LEPR). In the European and Japanese eels, we identified two leptin genes, and for the first time in vertebrates, two LEPR genes. Synteny analyses indicated that eel LEPRa and LEPRb result from teleost 3R. LEPRb seems to have been lost in the teleost lineage shortly after the elopomorph divergence. Quantitative PCRs revealed a wide distribution of leptins and LEPRs in the European eel, including tissues involved in metabolism and reproduction. Noticeably, leptin1 was expressed in fat tissue, while leptin2 in the liver, reflecting subfunctionalization. Four-month fasting had no impact on the expression of leptins and LEPRs in control European eels. This might be related to the remarkable adaptation of silver eel metabolism to long-term fasting throughout the reproductive oceanic migration. In contrast, sexual maturation induced differential increases in the expression of leptins and LEPRs in the BPG-liver axis. Leptin2 was strikingly upregulated in the liver, the central organ of the reproductive metabolic challenge in teleosts. LEPRs were differentially regulated during sexual maturation, which may have contributed to the conservation of the duplicated LEPRs in this species. This suggests an ancient and positive role of the leptin system in the vertebrate reproductive function. This study brings new insights on the evolutionary history of the leptin system in vertebrates. Among extant vertebrates, the eel represents a unique case of duplicated leptins and leptin receptors as a result of 3R.
NP-hardness of Minimum Circuit Size Problem for OR-AND-MOD Circuits

The Minimum Circuit Size Problem (MCSP) asks for the size of the smallest boolean circuit that computes a given truth table. It is a prominent problem in NP that is believed to be hard, but for which no proof of NP-hardness has been found. A significant number of works have demonstrated the central role of this problem and its variations in diverse areas such as cryptography, derandomization, proof complexity, learning theory, and circuit lower bounds. The NP-hardness of computing the minimum numbers of terms in a DNF formula consistent with a given truth table was proved by W. Masek [31] in 1979. In this work, we make the first progress in showing NP-hardness for more expressive classes of circuits, and establish an analogous result for the MCSP problem for depth-3 circuits of the form OR-AND-MOD2. Our techniques extend to an NP-hardness result for MODm gates at the bottom layer under inputs from (Z/mZ)n.
Comparision Of Dna Extraction Methods From Teeth Samples And Evaluation In Terms Of Forensic Sciences

The extraction of genetic material from teeth is an essential part of DNA analysis especially in forensic investigations. Teeth are widely used in forensic cases because they are the hardest structures of the human body that is resistant to adverse conditions such as humidity, high temperature and the microbial action. There are currently many DNA extraction methods from teeth, however, more conservative methods are gaining importance recently rather than grinding the whole tooth because the tooth samples of archaeological evidence or museum samples have to be preserved. The advantages of conservative technique are its simplicity, relatively low cost and preservation of the tooth integrity which can be considered in forensic investigations. In this report we aimed to clarify the advantages and disadvantages of Retrograde Reverse Root Canal Technique, Orthograde Entrance Technique, Bone Mill Preparition Technique (Traditional) and some other methods. Besides assessments on their importance in terms of forensic science are given.
A Framework for the Establishment of a Cnidarian Gene Regulatory Network for “Endomesoderm” Specification: The Inputs of ß-Catenin/TCF Signaling

Understanding the functional relationship between intracellular factors and extracellular signals is required for reconstructing gene regulatory networks (GRN) involved in complex biological processes. One of the best-studied bilaterian GRNs describes endomesoderm specification and predicts that both mesoderm and endoderm arose from a common GRN early in animal evolution. Compelling molecular, genomic, developmental, and evolutionary evidence supports the hypothesis that the bifunctional gastrodermis of the cnidarian-bilaterian ancestor is derived from the same evolutionary precursor of both endodermal and mesodermal germ layers in all other triploblastic bilaterian animals. We have begun to establish the framework of a provisional cnidarian “endomesodermal” gene regulatory network in the sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis, by using a genome-wide microarray analysis on embryos in which the canonical Wnt/ß-catenin pathway was ectopically targeted for activation by two distinct pharmaceutical agents (lithium chloride and 1-azakenpaullone) to identify potential targets of endomesoderm specification. We characterized 51 endomesodermally expressed transcription factors and signaling molecule genes (including 18 newly identified) with fine-scale temporal (qPCR) and spatial (in situ) analysis to define distinct co-expression domains within the animal plate of the embryo and clustered genes based on their earliest zygotic expression. Finally, we determined the input of the canonical Wnt/ß-catenin pathway into the cnidarian endomesodermal GRN using morpholino and mRNA overexpression experiments to show that NvTcf/canonical Wnt signaling is required to pattern both the future endomesodermal and ectodermal domains prior to gastrulation, and that both BMP and FGF (but not Notch) pathways play important roles in germ layer specification in this animal. We show both evolutionary conserved as well as profound differences in endomesodermal GRN structure compared to bilaterians that may provide fundamental insight into how GRN subcircuits have been adopted, rewired, or co-opted in various animal lineages that give rise to specialized endomesodermal cell types.
Influence of thermal and mechanical aspects on deformation behaviour of NiTi alloys

NiTi alloys are widely used notably as a biomaterial (stents for heart artery). Recent studies have shown that the conventional understanding of nominal stress-strain curve during super elastic tensile test was, assuming homogeneity, not sufficient to model the behaviour of such a material. In fact NiTi SMAs exhibit localized phases transformations and are influenced by many factors. This work is dedicated to the study of these phase transformations and especially when they are localized. Two types of samples are tested under various conditions, namely, thin tubes in tensile tests and thin plates in tensile and shear tests. Two measurement techniques are used, namely, digital image correlation for strain field measurements and infrared thermography for temperature field measurements. The first one allows observing strain localization and the second one allows monitoring phase transformations. The use of these two techniques needs special analysis tools, which have been developed during this work, as (i) spatial and temporal synchronisation for both strain and temperature fields, (ii) heat sources estimations from the noisy temperature field measurements. This study have enhance the presence of homogeneous phase(s) transformation(s) at the beginning of loading prior the stress plateau and at the beginning of unloading. Localisation morphologies were quantitatively characterised. The tools developed are a first attempt to perform a local DSC under mechanical loading.