Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Relationship between Paroxysmal Kinesigenic Choreoathetosis and Epilepsy

PURPOSE To clarify the relationship between paroxysmal kinesigenic choreoathetosis (PKC) and epilepsy, we investigated the clinical and electroencephalographic (EEG) findings of patients with familial PKC and epilepsy, as well as sporadic cases with both PKC and epilepsy. PATIENTS AND METHODS Patients consisted of 12 familial cases from seven families and three sporadic cases. The period of follow-up ranged from 17 months to 33 years, 7 months (average: 16 years, 8 months). During the follow-up, a total of 163 EEGs (11 EEGs per subject) were studied, including interictal and ictal EEGs. RESULTS Transient epileptic discharges were found in ten of the 15 patients (66.7 %) during the clinical course. As for focus, centro-midtemporal and frontal spikes were most often observed. The ictal EEG of an afebrile convulsion in one patient showed a partial seizure with secondary generalization which originated from the frontal area. CONCLUSIONS It appears that patients who suffer from both PKC and epilepsy have a functional abnormality of the cerebral cortex, particularly in the perirolandic and frontal regions.
Thoracic neural crest tumors in Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome.

diagnosis, degree of surgical resection or prior treatment and subsequent development of extraneural metastases was found [4]. The exact route of extraneural metastases is not known, but in the vast majority metastases occurred in the wake of craniotomy, suggesting iatrogenic vascular seeding [3]. Typically, extraneural metastases of ependymoma occur in the lungs, pleura, and lymph nodes while metastases to the mediastinum, liver, bone, and diaphragmatic muscle are even less common [4]. In most cases, the existence of pleuropulmonary metastases was disclosed only at autopsy usually coexisting with CNS recurrence and systemic metastases [5]. Extraneural metastases or relapses of ependymoma are extremely rare but physicians caring for ependymoma patients must remain aware of this possible complication.
Impairment of learning and memory and the accessory symptom in aged rat as senile dementia model (3): Oral administration of propentofylline produces recovery of reduced NGF content in the brain of aged rats.

The relationship between nerve growth factor (NGF) and senile dementia of the Alzheimer type is of interest. The administration of NGF in clinical trials has been expected; however, NGF cannot cross the blood brain barrier, since it is a polypeptide. We demonstrate here that oral administration of propentofylline, a stimulator of NGF synthesis in vitro, produced recovery of reduced NGF content. In aged rats (24-months-old), NGF content in the frontal cortex, parietal cortex, and hippocampus was lower than in young rats (8-weeks-old). Twenty-one-day successive administration of propentofylline (10 and 25 mg/kg, p.o.) produced recovery of reduced NGF content in the frontal cortex and parietal cortex of aged rats to a significant extent. There were no differences among aged, young, and propentofylline-treated groups in choline acetyltransferase activity in any brain regions. These results suggest that NGF content in the brain is reduced in aged rats and that oral administration of propentofylline leads to a recovery of this reduction.
Pre-transplant donor-specific anti-human leukocyte antigen antibodies are associated with high risk of delayed graft function after renal transplantation.

BACKGROUND Sensitive screening methods have revealed that many patients have donor-specific human leucocyte antigen antibodies (DSAs) prior to transplantation, regardless of negative crossmatch results. The clinical significance of pre-transplant (pre-Tx) DSAs for early graft function has remained unclear. Our aim was to examine the association of DSAs with delayed graft function (DGF). METHODS Pre-Tx sera of 771 patients who received kidney transplants in our single-centre study were retrospectively screened. All transplantations were performed after negative complement-dependent cytotoxicity (CDC) crossmatch. RESULTS DSAs were detected in 13% of the patients. The overall DGF rate in our study was 29%. Patients with DSAs had a higher incidence of DGF when compared with non-sensitized patients (48 and 26%, respectively; P < 0.0001). Third-party antibodies had no effect for DGF incidence (28%; P = 0.6098). The relative risk (RR) of DGF for patients with DSAs in the multivariate analysis was 2.039 (95% CI 1.246-3.335; P = 0.0046). Analyses of the cumulative mean fluorescent intensity (MFI) value of the DSAs revealed a rate of DGF more than two times higher in patients with a cumulative value of 3000-5000 MFI compared with a cumulative value of 1000-3000 (65 versus 31%; P = 0.0351). DSAs against any loci showed an elevated DGF incidence of 44-69% when compared with patients without DSA (27%). CONCLUSIONS The risk of DGF is twice as high in patients having pre-formed DSAs. Pre-Tx DSAs is a modifiable risk factor that can be obviated with careful organ allocation relying on careful pre-Tx analysis of non-accepted mismatches determined with sensitive solid phase methods.
Diet and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Background: Several dietary factors have been associated with risk of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in case-control studies, but no prospective studies have investigated diet and ALS. Methods: We prospectively assessed the association of selected foods and beverages with ALS mortality among participants of the Cancer Prevention Study II, a cohort of over 1 million men and women enrolled in 1982. Habitual diet was assessed with a 44-item food frequency questionnaire. Participant follow-up was conducted from 1989 through 2002 for ALS mortality. Results: During the follow-up period, 862 cohort participants died of ALS. The strongest finding was an inverse association between chicken consumption and risk of ALS (P for trend = 0.0006). We also observed an increased risk of ALS among study participants with a high consumption of brown rice/whole wheat/barley (P for trend = 0.006) and decaffeinated coffee (P for trend = 0.01), and a decreased risk of ALS for high consumption of tea (P for trend = 0.02) and French fries (P for trend = 0.02); however, none of these latter associations remained significant after adjusting for multiple comparisons. Conclusions: Overall, these results do not provide convincing evidence that the investigated food items are related to ALS mortality. The association observed between chicken consumption and ALS mortality should be assessed in other studies.
Increasing prevalence and incidence of multiple sclerosis in South East Wales

Background and aim: Epidemiological studies of multiple sclerosis suggest a trend of increasing disease prevalence in susceptible populations. The reasons for this are unclear and may be the results of methodological differences between studies, incomplete ascertainment or advances in technologies that allow the increased identification of early or mild disease. In addition, direct comparison of cross sectional prevalence estimates performed in different epochs in ethnically and geographically distinct populations may be inappropriate. Methods: Using detailed phenotypic information and standardised methodology, a geographically defined Welsh population was resurveyed after a significant interval, establishing contemporary prevalence rates and examining demographic and clinical data to determine causes of changing disease frequency. Results: Disease prevalence increased 45% from 101 to 146 per 100 000 population over 20 years. The greatest increase was observed in women between the ages of 45 and 54 years. No significant increase in disease frequency was observed in the male population overall, or within specific age groups. There was no demographic evidence for a pattern of earlier age at onset or diagnosis to explain increased disease frequency or decrease in mean age of the prevalent population. In addition, we failed to identify a pattern of recognition of patients with less severe disability. Although there was a modest 13% increase of 2.2 years in mean disease duration, and eight new previously prevalent patients were identified, the main cause of rising disease frequency was related to a 2.8-fold increase in disease incidence for women over 23 years from 2.65 to 7.30/100 000/year increasing the sex ratio of incident patients from 1.8 to 4.3 (women:men). Conclusion: Recent change in disease incidence and prevalence in this population is likely to be the result of environmental factors that have been operative in the past few decades in women alone and infers avoidable risk factors. Modelling of current overall incidence suggests a further increase in prevalence to 260 per 100 000 population within the next 20–40 years. Further studies are needed in order to identify recent changes in sex specific environment and lifestyle that confer susceptibility.
Learning to play chess using TD( λ )-learning with database games

In this paper we present some experiments in the training of diﬀerent evaluation functions for a chess program through reinforcement learning. A neural network is used as the evaluation function of the chess program. Learning occurs by using TD( λ )-learning on the results of high-level database games. Experiments are performed with diﬀerent classes of features and neural network architectures. The results show that that separated networks for diﬀerent game situations lead to the best performance.
Barriers to Reporting Sexual Assault for Women and Men: Perspectives of College Students

Abstract. The authors asked college students to rate the importance of a list of barriers to reporting rape and sexual assault among male and female victims. The authors' findings indicate that barriers prevalent 30 years ago, prior to efforts by the rape reform movement, continue to be considered important among college men and women. The barriers rated as the most important were (1) shame, guilt, embarrassment, not wanting friends and family to know; (2) concerns about confidentiality; and (3) fear of not being believed. Both genders perceived a fear of being judged as gay as an important barrier for male victims of sexual assault or rape and fear of retaliation by the perpetrator to be an important barrier for female victims.
Improving QoS for real-time multimedia traffic in Ad-hoc Networks with delay aware multi-path routing

A mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is a wireless network in which nodes, in the absence of fixed access points, communicate via single or multi-hop paths. Each node in a MANET should thus be able to perform necessary routing functions, and a MANET routing protocol should be able to adapt fast and effectively to sudden changes in network layout. Providing trustworthy quality of service guarantees in a MANET is very challenging due to the dynamic and uncertain nature of these networks. We extend the AODV routing protocol for MANETs to a multi-path protocol which uses end-to- end delay, instead of hop count, as metric for route selection. Multiple paths, together with the end-to-end delay provided by each path, are stored in routing tables. Upon route failure, the route table is first searched for an alternative route to the destination before a new route discovery process is initiated. This reduces both routing overhead and end-to-end packet delay. The proposed protocol is implemented and tested in OPNET Modeler and shows significant improvements in delay, delay variation, packet delivery fraction and routing overhead compared to AODV, DSR, OLSR and DYMO.
Constitutive Internalization of the Leucine-rich G Protein-coupled Receptor-5 (LGR5) to the Trans-Golgi Network*

Background: Expression of the G protein-coupled receptor LGR5 demarcates adult tissue stem cells in the intestine, stomach, hair follicle, and mammary epithelium. Results: LGR5 is rapidly and constitutively internalized to the trans-Golgi network at steady state. Conclusion: Internalization occurs through a potential phosphorylation domain within the C-terminal tail. Significance: An understanding of LGR5 trafficking dynamics is expected to clarify its role in signaling and stem cell biology. LGR5 is a Wnt pathway associated G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) that serves as a molecular determinant of stem cells in numerous tissues including the intestine, stomach, hair follicle, eye, and mammary gland. Despite its importance as a marker for this critical niche, little is known about LGR5 signaling nor the biochemical mechanisms and receptor determinants that regulate LGR5 membrane expression and intracellular trafficking. Most importantly, in cells LGR5 is predominantly intracellular, yet the mechanisms underlying this behavior have not been determined. In this work we elucidate a precise trafficking program for LGR5 and identify the motif at its C terminus that is responsible for the observed constitutive internalization. We show that this process is dependent upon dynamin GTPase activity and find that wild-type full-length LGR5 rapidly internalizes into EEA1- and Rab5-positive endosomes. However, LGR5 fails to rapidly recycle to the plasmid membrane through Rab4-positive vesicles, as is common for other GPCRs. Rather, internalized LGR5 transits through Rab7- and Rab9-positive vesicles, co-localizes in vesicles with Vps26, a retromer complex component that regulates retrograde trafficking to the trans-Golgi network (TGN) and reaches a steady-state distribution in the TGN within 2 h. Using mutagenesis, particularly of putative phosphorylation sites, we show that the amino acid pair, serine 861 and 864, is the principal C-tail determinant that mediates LGR5 constitutive internalization. The constitutive internalization of LGR5 to the TGN suggests the existence of novel biochemical roles for its Wnt pathway related, but ill defined signaling program.
Violence, abuse, alcohol and drug use, and sexual behaviors in street children of Greater Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt

Objectives:To measure the prevalence of HIV/AIDS risk behaviors and related factors in a large, probability-based sample of boys and girls aged 12–17 years living on the streets of Egypt's largest urban centers of Greater Cairo and Alexandria. Methods:Time-location sampling (TLS) was used to recruit a cross-sectional sample of street children. Procedures entailed using key informants and field observation to create a sampling frame of locations at predetermined time intervals of the day, where street children congregate in the two cities, selecting a random sample of time–locations from the complete list, and intercepting children in the selected time-locations to assess eligibility and conduct interviews. Interviews gathered basic demographic information, life events on the street (including violence, abuse, forced sex), sexual and drug use behaviors, and HIV/AIDS knowledge. Results:A total of 857 street children were enrolled in the two cities, with an age, sex, and time-location composition matching the sampling frame. The majority of these children had faced harassment or abuse (93%) typically by police and other street children, had used drugs (62%), and, among the older adolescents, were sexually active (67%). Among the sexually active 15–17-year-olds, most reported multiple partners (54%) and never using condoms (52%). Most girls (53% in Greater Cairo and 90% in Alexandria) had experienced sexual abuse. The majority of street children experienced more than one of these risks. Overlaps with populations at highest risk for HIV were substantial, namely men who have sex with men, commercial sex workers, and injection drug users. Conclusion:Our study using a randomized TLS approach produced a rigorous, diverse, probability-based sample of street children and documented very high levels of multiple concurrent risks. Our findings strongly advocate for multiple services including those addressing HIV and STI prevention and care, substance use, shelters, and sensitization of authorities to the plight of street children in Egypt.
Chain work: the cultivation of hierarchy in Sierra Leone’s cannabis economy

Violence is often treated as an organisational complement to illicit drug production in the global South. The article challenges this view with reference to the ‘chain work’ undertaken by Sierra Leone’s cannabis cultivators. Life histories reveal that the migration of cultivators from Kingston, Jamaica to Sierra Leone’s Hastings and Waterloo established apprenticeship as the means by which young men participated in the cannabis economy under the guidance of those they referred to as ‘shareholders’. These shareholders acted as gatekeepers for access to land, cross-border exchange and extra-legal networks. The resulting structural advantages limited challenges by newcomers for an activity usually understood to be ‘naturally’ contestable. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology, cultivators are shown to reproduce practices that maintained the dominance of bosses without recourse to violence.
Performance evaluation of the passive TDOA algorithm in dark areas

Positioning in wireless networks has recently concentrated the interest of the research community. Outdoor positioning has been addressed successfully, but location indoors poses some open issues. Time-based ranging techniques, such as 2-way time-of-arrival (TOA), are promising for indoor positioning but present issues such as scalability and landmark dependency. Handling these problems separately makes it difficult to find solutions that can be implemented over communication networks on which positioning solutions rely. The passive TDOA algorithm was proposed for overcoming both issues together. Preliminary results indicate that scalability can be improved. This work assesses the performance of the passive TDOA in scenarios where there are not enough landmarks to run a regular 2-way TOA algorithm. Results show that the accuracy provided is worse than in scenarios with enough landmarks but, depending on the power of the ranging noise, good enough for most of the location-based services indoors.
In Situ TEM Study of Catalytic Nanoparticle Reactions in Atmospheric Pressure Gas Environment

Abstract The understanding of solid–gas interactions has been greatly advanced over the past decade on account of the availability of high-resolution transmission electron microscopes (TEMs) equipped with differentially pumped environmental cells. The operational pressures in these differentially pumped environmental TEM (DP-ETEM) instruments are generally limited up to 20 mbar. Yet, many industrial catalytic reactions are operated at pressures equal or higher than 1 bar—50 times higher than that in the DP-ETEM. This poses limitations for in situ study of gas reactions through ETEM and advances are needed to extend in situ TEM study of gas reactions to the higher pressure range. Here, we present a first series of experiments using a gas flow membrane cell TEM holder that allows a pressure up to 4 bar. The built-in membrane heaters enable reactions at a temperature of 95–400°C with flowing reactive gases. We demonstrate that, using a conventional thermionic TEM, 2 Å atomic fringes can be resolved with the presence of 1 bar O2 gases in an environmental cell and we show real-time observation of the Kirkendall effect during oxidation of cobalt nanocatalysts.
Amphotericin B versus fluconazole for controlling fungal infections in neutropenic cancer patients.

BACKGROUND Systemic fungal infection is considered to be an important cause of morbidity and mortality in cancer patients, particularly those with neutropenia. Antifungal drugs are often given prophylactically, or to patients with persistent fever. OBJECTIVES To compare the effect of fluconazole and amphotericin B on morbidity and mortality in patients with cancer complicated by neutropenia. SEARCH STRATEGY MEDLINE and Cochrane Library (November 2001). Letters, abstracts, and unpublished trials. The industry and authors were contacted. SELECTION CRITERIA Randomised trials comparing fluconazole with amphotericin B. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS Data on mortality, invasive fungal infection, colonisation, use of additional (escape) antifungal therapy and adverse effects leading to discontinuation of therapy were extracted by both authors independently. MAIN RESULTS Sixteen trials (3760 patients, 341 deaths) were included. In 3 large 3-armed trials, results for amphotericin B were combined with results for nystatin in a "polyene" group. Because nystatin is an ineffective drug in these circumstances, this approach creates a bias in favour of fluconazole. Furthermore, most patients were randomised to oral amphotericin B, which is poorly absorbed and poorly documented. It was unclear whether there was overlap among the "polyene" trials. We were unable to obtain any information to clarify these issues from the trial authors or from Pfizer, the manufacturer of fluconazole. There were no significant differences in effect between fluconazole and amphotericin B, but the confidence intervals were wide. More patients dropped out of the study when they received amphotericin B, but as none of the trials were blinded, decisions on premature interruption of therapy could have been biased. Furthermore, amphotericin B was rarely given under optimal circumstances, with premedication to reduce infusion-related toxicity, slow infusion, and with potassium and magnesium supplements to prevent nephrotoxicity. REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS Amphotericin B had been disfavoured in several of the trials through their design or analysis. Since intravenous amphotericin B is the only antifungal agent for which there is good evidence suggesting an effect on mortality and is considerably cheaper than fluconazole, it should be preferred.
Are developing β-adrenoceptors able to desensitize? Acute and chronic effects of β-agonists in neonatal heart and liver

During fetal and neonatal development, β-adrenergic receptors (β-ARs) appear to be resistant to desensitization by β-agonist drugs. To determine the mechanisms underlying the regulatory differences between adults and neonates, we administered isoproterenol, a mixed β 1 /β 2 -AR agonist, and terbutaline, a β 2 -selective agonist. Effects were examined in the ensuing 4 h after a single injection, or after the last of four daily injections. We prepared cell membranes from heart (predominantly β 1 -ARs) and liver (predominantly β 2 -ARs) and assessed signal transduction in the adenylyl cyclase (AC) pathway. In the first few hours after a single administration of isoproterenol to adult rats, cardiac β-ARs showed activation of G proteins (elevated AC response to forskolin) and desensitization of β-AR-mediated responses; after the fourth injection, heterologous desensitization emerged, characterized by a loss of signaling mediated either through β-ARs or glucagon receptors. Terbutaline evoked an increase in the forskolin response but no desensitization of receptor-mediated responses. When we gave the same treatments to neonatal rats, we observed cardiac G protein activation, but there was neither homologous nor heterologous desensitization of β-ARs or glucagon receptors. In the adult liver, isoproterenol and terbutaline both failed to evoke desensitization, regardless of whether the drugs were given once or for 4 days. In neonates, however, acute or chronic treatment elicited homologous desensitization of β-AR-mediated AC signaling, while sensitizing the response to glucagon. These results show that neonatal β-ARs are inherently capable of desensitization in some, but not all, cell types; cellular responses can be maintained through heterologous sensitization of signaling proteins downstream from the receptor. Differences from adult patterns of response are highly tissue selective and are likely to depend on ontogenetic differences in subtypes of β-ARs and AC.