Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Biochemical parameters after cholecalciferol repletion in hemodialysis: results From the VitaDial randomized trial.

BACKGROUND The 2009 KDIGO (Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes) chronic kidney disease-mineral and bone disorder clinical practice guideline suggests correcting 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 (25[OH]D) levels<30ng/mL in patients treated with maintenance hemodialysis, but does not provide a specific treatment protocol. STUDY DESIGN 2-center, double-blind, randomized, 13-week, controlled trial followed by a 26-week open-label study. SETTING & PARTICIPANTS 55 adult maintenance hemodialysis patients with 25(OH)D levels<30ng/mL were recruited from June 2008 through October 2009. INTERVENTION Cholecalciferol, 25,000IU, per week orally versus placebo for 13 weeks, then 26 weeks of individualized cholecalciferol prescription based on NKF-KDOQI (National Kidney Foundation-Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative) guidelines. OUTCOMES Primary end point was the percentage of patients with 25(OH)D levels≥30ng/mL at 13 weeks. Secondary outcomes included the percentage of patients with normal calcium, phosphorus, and intact parathyroid hormone (iPTH) blood levels. Safety measures included incidence of hypercalcemia and hypervitaminosis D. MEASUREMENTS Blood calcium and phosphate were measured weekly; iPTH, 25(OH)D, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,25[OH]2D), and bone turnover markers, trimonthly; fetuin A and fibroblast growth factor 23 (FGF-23) serum levels and aortic calcification scores were determined at weeks 0 and 39. RESULTS The primary end point significantly increased in the treatment group compared with the placebo group (61.5% vs 7.4%; P<0.001), as well as 1,25(OH)2D levels (22.5 [IQR, 15-26] vs 11 [IQR, 10-15]pg/mL; P<0.001) and the proportion of patients achieving the target calcium level (76.9% vs 48.2%; P=0.03). Incidence of hypercalcemia and phosphate and iPTH levels were similar between groups. The second 26-week study phase did not significantly modify the prevalence of 25(OH)D level≥30ng/mL in patients issued from the placebo group. LIMITATIONS Small size of the study population. CONCLUSIONS Oral weekly administration of 25,000IU of cholecalciferol for 13 weeks is an effective, safe, inexpensive, and manageable way to increase 25(OH)D and 1,25(OH)2D levels in hemodialysis patients. Further evaluation of clinical end points is suggested.
Don't walk like an Egyptian : Coping with shared attention in a mobile 3D system

This thesis presents our study of a system using real-time three-dimensional graphics on handheld computers focusing on the impact of the shared attention problem. The main objective is to investigate whether a mobile RT3D system can be both usableanduseful . We postulate that one of the greater challenges to such a system is the problem of shared attention. The dynamic context of truly mobile IT use means that the user will have to share his attention between operating the system and relating to the world around him. In order to investigate this issue we developed a prototype of a Mobile 3D system. We relied on literature studies, interviews with experts and other research of relevance. As a result we formulated a set of system requirements with the intention to cope with the shared attention problem. We then performed an experiment to test how the mobile 3D system developed was utilized and how our design choices affected shared attention among the test subjects. The resulting system was received favourably by the test subjects. We observed the subjects obtaining a dynamic pattern of use where they located the destination of each task prior to movement, then checked while moving that they were on the right track. The attention demand of the system was not observed to be intrusive as the subjects appeared to be able to make efficient use of the system while moving. Although the system was received favourably by the test subjects, we suspect that our initial suppositions need to be revised. Our finds indicate that our focus on shared attention may have blinded us to other important factors. There were indications that the subjects had constructed a mental map of the geographical area prior to beginning movement and so did not use the system to aqcuire new information while they were walking. This interpretation leads to several needed revisions of our shared attention model. In our discussion we argue that focusing our design on shared attention to such an extent is not necessarily ideal for M3D systems. However the start/stop paradigm of the subjects indicates the need for a dynamic interaction design: aimed at rapidly switching between high and low attention modes.
Coordinator Traffic Diffusion for Data-Intensive Zigbee Transmission in Real-time Electrocardiography Monitoring

Zigbee is expected to have an explosive growth in wireless medical monitoring systems because it possesses the advantages of low cost, safe power strength, and easy deployment. However, limited work focuses on solving the bottleneck issue at the Zigbee coordinator in a data-intensive system to guarantee transmission reliability of life-critical data. This paper proposes coordinator traffic diffusion (CTD) method to redirect excessive traffic from coordinator to the sink in electrocardiography (ECG) medical application. CTD router, which implements CTD design, automatically redirects ECG data traffic to the sink node without involving the coordinator, and thus reliable real-time ECG monitoring service can be delivered precisely. CTD design is tested in both TI CC2530 Zigbee platform and NS2 simulation. Experimental result demonstrates that a CTD design can assist routers in successfully delivering real-time ECG data samples reliably with the best transmission rate, 24 kb/s. This performance cannot be achieved by the original Zigbee design.
Potential role of TRAns Cervical Endosonography (TRACE) in brachytherapy of cervical cancer: proof of concept

Purpose Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the gold standard for image guided adaptive brachytherapy (BT) of cervical cancer. Ultrasound is an attractive alternative with reasonable costs and high soft tissue depiction quality. This technical note aims to demonstrate the proof of principle for use of TRAns Cervical Endosonography with rotating transducer in the context of brachytherapy (TRACE BT). Material and methods TRACE BT presentation is based on a single stage IIB cervical cancer patient. Prior to second BT implant, rotating US transducer (6.9 mm diameter) was inserted in cervical canal and axial images obtained at 10 MHz, focal range of 30 mm, and axial resolution of 0.4 mm. Size and topography of hypo-echoic areas were assessed and optimal positions of interstitial needles were determined. Finally, intracavitary applicator was placed and needles inserted through vaginal ring-template according to TRACE pre-plan. MRI-based high risk clinical target volume (CTVHR) dimensions were compared with hypoechoic areas on TRACE. Topography of parametrial needles on post-insertion MRI was compared with TRACE pre-plan. Results Insertion of rotating mechanism into cervico-uterine cavity was safe, feasible and fast. The 360° imaging in axial plane enabled real-time assessment of cervix, uterus, and adjacent parametria. Qualitative comparison of TRACE with post-insertion MRI revealed favorable agreement of findings. In-plane size of CTVHR on MRI was comparable to hypoechoic areas on TRACE. Needle positions on post-insertion MRI corresponded to TRACE-based pre-plan. Main limitation of TRACE was gradual deterioration of image quality due to coupling gel removal. Conclusions Present proof of concept demonstrates potential role of TRACE-BT for cervical cancer as an attractive high-tech approach with reasonable costs. Prior to investigation of its clinical role, further development of TRACE methodology is needed. This includes reliable transducer-tissue coupling, applicator reconstruction, imaging range, limitations in extensive tumors, US-based contouring concepts, registration with other imaging methods, organ dose-assessment, real-time dosimetry, etc.
Long-term functional outcome after selective posterior rhizotomy.

OBJECT Selective posterior rhizotomy (SPR) is a well-recognized treatment for children with spastic cerebral palsy (CP). Few investigators have used quantitative outcome measures to assess the surgical results beyond 3 years. The authors analyzed data obtained from the McGill Rhizotomy Database to determine the long-term functional outcome of children who had undergone selective dorsal rhizotomy accompanied by intraoperative electrophysiological monitoring. METHODS The study population was composed of children with spastic CP who underwent SPR and were evaluated by a multidisciplinary team preoperatively, and at 6 months and 1 year postoperatively. Quantitative standardized assessments of lower-limb spasticity, passive range of motion, muscle strength, and ambulatory function were obtained. Of the 93 patients who met the entry criteria for the study, 71 completed the 3-year and 50 completed the 5-year assessments, respectively. Statistical analysis demonstrated significant improvements in spasticity, range of motion, and functional muscle strength at 1 year after SPR. The preoperative, 1-, 3-, and 5-year values for the global score of the Gross Motor Function Measure were 64.6, 70.8, 80, and 85.6, respectively. The greatest improvement occurred in the dimensions reflecting lower-extremity motor function, where the mean change was 10.1% at 1 year, 19.9% at 3 years, and 34.4% at the 5-year follow-up review in comparison with the baseline value. This was associated with a lasting improvement in alignment and postural stability during developmental positions, as well as increased ability to perform difficult transitional movements. CONCLUSIONS The results of this study support the presence of significant improvements in lower-limb functional motor outcome 1 year after SPR, and the improvements persist at 3 and 5 years. The authors conclude that SPR in conjunction with intraoperative stimulation is valuable for permanently alleviating lower-limb spasticity while augmenting motor function.
Short utterance-based video aided speaker recognition

Embedded speaker recognition in mobile devices could involve several ergonomic constraints and a limited amount of computing resources. Even if they have proved their efficiency in more classical contexts, GMM/UBM based systems show their limits in such situations, with good accuracy demanding a relatively large quantity of speech data, but with negligible harnessing of linguistic content. The proposed approach addresses these limitations and takes advantage of the linguistic nature of the speech material into the GMM/UBM framework by using clientcustomised utterances. Furthermore, the acoustic structure is then reinforced with video information. Experiments on the MyIdea database are performed when impostors know the client utterance and also when they do not, highlighting the potential of this new approach. A relative gain up to 47% in terms of EER is achieved when impostors do not know the client utterance and performance is equivalent to the GMM/UBM baseline system in other configurations.
Inductive Learning in a Mixed Paradigm Setting

In a precedent-bused domain one appeals to previous cases to support a solution, decision, explanation, or an argument. Experts typically use care in choosing cases in precedent-based domains, and apply such criteria as case relevance, prototypicality, and importance. In domains where both cases and rules are used, experts use an additional case selection criterion: the generalizations that a particular group of cases support. Domain experts use their knowledge of cases to forge the rules learned from those cases. In this paper, we explore inductive learning in a "mixed paradigm" setting, where both rule-based and case-based reasoning methods are used. In particular, we consider how the techniques of casebased reasoning in an adversarial, precedent-based domain can be used to aid a decision-tree based classification algorithm for (1) training set selection, (2) branching feature choice, and (3) induction policy preference and deliberate exploitation of inductive bias. We focus on how precedentbased argumentation may inform the selection of training examples used to build classification trees. The resulting decision trees may then be reexpressed as rules and incorporated into the mixed paradigm system. We discuss the heuristic control problems involved in incorporating an inductive learner into CABARET, a mixed paradigm reasoner. Finally, we present an empirical study in a legal domain of the classification trees generated by various training sets constructed by a case-based reasoning module.
A Lazy Learning Model for Entity Linking using Query-Specific Information

Entity linking disambiguates a mention of an entity in text to a Knowledge Base (KB). Most previous studies disambiguate a mention of a name (e.g. “AZ” ) based on the distribution knowledge learned from labeled instances, which are related to other names (e.g. “Hoffman” , “Chad Johnson” , etc.). The gaps among the distributions of the instances related to different names hinder the further improvement of the previous approaches. This paper proposes a lazy learning model, which allows us to improve the learning process with the distribution information speciﬁc to the queried name (e.g. “AZ” ). To obtain this distribution information, we automatically label some relevant instances for the queried name leveraging its unambiguous synonyms. Besides, another advantage is that our approach still can beneﬁt from the labeled data related to other names (e.g. “Hoffman” , “Chad Johnson” , etc.), because our model is trained on both the labeled data sets of queried and other names by mining their shared predictive structure.
Phase Processing for Single-Channel Speech Enhancement: History and recent advances

With the advancement of technology, both assisted listening devices and speech communication devices are becoming more portable and also more frequently used. As a consequence, users of devices such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and mobile telephones, expect their devices to work robustly anywhere and at any time. This holds in particular for challenging noisy environments like a cafeteria, a restaurant, a subway, a factory, or in traffic. One way to making assisted listening devices robust to noise is to apply speech enhancement algorithms. To improve the corrupted speech, spatial diversity can be exploited by a constructive combination of microphone signals (so-called beamforming), and by exploiting the different spectro? temporal properties of speech and noise. Here, we focus on single-channel speech enhancement algorithms which rely on spectrotemporal properties. On the one hand, these algorithms can be employed when the miniaturization of devices only allows for using a single microphone. On the other hand, when multiple microphones are available, single-channel algorithms can be employed as a postprocessor at the output of a beamformer. To exploit the short-term stationary properties of natural sounds, many of these approaches process the signal in a time-frequency representation, most frequently the short-time discrete Fourier transform (STFT) domain. In this domain, the coefficients of the signal are complex-valued, and can therefore be represented by their absolute value (referred to in the literature both as STFT magnitude and STFT amplitude) and their phase. While the modeling and processing of the STFT magnitude has been the center of interest in the past three decades, phase has been largely ignored.
Groups Uninformed Individuals Promote Democratic Consensus in Animal

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Potentiation of intracellular Ca2+ mobilization by hypoxia‐induced NO generation in rat brain striatal slices and human astrocytoma U‐373 MG cells and its involvement in tissue damage

The relationship between nitric oxide (NO) and intracellular Ca2+ in hypoxic–ischemic brain damage is not known in detail. Here we used rat striatal slices perfused under low‐oxygen and Ca2+‐free conditions and cultured human astrocytoma cells incubated under similar conditions as models to study the dynamics of intracellular NO and Ca2+ in hypoxia‐induced tissue damage. Exposure of rat striatal slices for 70 min to low oxygen tension elicited a delayed and sustained increase in the release of 45Ca2+. This was potentiated by the NO donors sodium nitroprusside (SNP) and spermine–NO and inhibited by N‐ω‐nitro‐L‐arginine methyl ester (L‐NAME) or by the NO scavenger 2‐phenyl‐4,4,5,5 tetramethylimidazoline‐1‐oxyl‐3‐oxide (PTIO). A membrane‐permeant form of heparin in combination with either ruthenium red (RR) or ryanodine (RY) also inhibited 45Ca2+ release. In human astrocytoma U‐373 MG cells, hypoxia increased intracellular Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i) by 67.2 ± 13.1% compared to normoxic controls and this effect was inhibited by L‐NAME, PTIO or heparin plus RR. In striatal tissue, hypoxia increased NO production and LDH release and both effects were antagonized by L‐NAME. Although heparin plus RR or RY antagonized hypoxia‐induced increase in LDH release they failed to counteract increased NO production. These data therefore indicate that NO contributes to hypoxic damage through increased intracellular Ca2+ mobilization from endoplasmic reticulum and suggest that the NO–Ca2+ signalling might be a potential therapeutic target in hypoxia‐induced neuronal degeneration.
Top-down Proteomics Reveals Concerted Reductions in Myofilament and Z-disc Protein Phosphorylation after Acute Myocardial Infarction*

Heart failure (HF) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide and is most often precipitated by myocardial infarction. However, the molecular changes driving cardiac dysfunction immediately after myocardial infarction remain poorly understood. Myofilament proteins, responsible for cardiac contraction and relaxation, play critical roles in signal reception and transduction in HF. Post-translational modifications of myofilament proteins afford a mechanism for the beat-to-beat regulation of cardiac function. Thus it is of paramount importance to gain a comprehensive understanding of post-translational modifications of myofilament proteins involved in regulating early molecular events in the post-infarcted myocardium. We have developed a novel liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry-based top-down proteomics strategy to comprehensively assess the modifications of key cardiac proteins in the myofilament subproteome extracted from a minimal amount of myocardial tissue with high reproducibility and throughput. The entire procedure, including tissue homogenization, myofilament extraction, and on-line LC/MS, takes less than three hours. Notably, enabled by this novel top-down proteomics technology, we discovered a concerted significant reduction in the phosphorylation of three crucial cardiac proteins in acutely infarcted swine myocardium: cardiac troponin I and myosin regulatory light chain of the myofilaments and, unexpectedly, enigma homolog isoform 2 (ENH2) of the Z-disc. Furthermore, top-down MS allowed us to comprehensively sequence these proteins and pinpoint their phosphorylation sites. For the first time, we have characterized the sequence of ENH2 and identified it as a phosphoprotein. ENH2 is localized at the Z-disc, which has been increasingly recognized for its role as a nodal point in cardiac signaling. Thus our proteomics discovery opens up new avenues for the investigation of concerted signaling between myofilament and Z-disc in the early molecular events that contribute to cardiac dysfunction and progression to HF.
Cholesterol Assimilation by Lactic Acid Bacteria and Bifidobacteria Isolated from the Human Gut

ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of human gut-derived lactic acid bacteria and bifidobacteria on cholesterol levels in vitro. Continuous cultures inoculated with fecal material from healthy human volunteers with media supplemented with cholesterol and bile acids were used to enrich for potential cholesterol assimilators among the indigenous bacterial populations. Seven potential probiotics were found: Lactobacillus fermentum strains F53 and KC5b, Bifidobacterium infantis ATCC 15697, Streptococcus bovis ATCC 43143, Enterococcus durans DSM 20633, Enterococcus gallinarum, and Enterococcus faecalis. A comparative evaluation regarding the in vitro cholesterol reduction abilities of these strains along with commercial probiotics was undertaken. The degree of acid and bile tolerance of strains was also evaluated. The human isolate L. fermentum KC5b was able to maintain viability for 2 h at pH 2 and to grow in a medium with 4,000 mg of bile acids per liter. This strain was also able to remove a maximum of 14.8 mg of cholesterol per g (dry weight) of cells from the culture medium and therefore was regarded as a candidate probiotic.
A Heat-Inducible Transcription Factor, HsfA2, Is Required for Extension of Acquired Thermotolerance in Arabidopsis1[W][OA]

The expression of heat shock proteins (Hsps) induced by nonlethal heat treatment confers acquired thermotolerance (AT) to organisms against subsequent challenges of otherwise lethal temperature. After the stress signal is removed, AT gradually decays, with decreased Hsps during recovery. AT of sufficient duration is critical for sessile organisms such as plants to survive repeated heat stress in their environment, but little is known regarding its regulation. To identify potential regulatory components, we took a reverse genetics approach by screening for Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) T-DNA insertion mutants that show decreased thermotolerance after a long recovery (2 d) under nonstress conditions following an acclimation heat treatment. Among the tested mutants corresponding to 48 heat-induced genes, only the heat shock transcription factor HsfA2 knockout mutant showed an obvious phenotype. Following pretreatment at 37°C, the mutant line was more sensitive to severe heat stress than the wild type after long but not short recovery periods, and this could be complemented by the introduction of a wild-type copy of the HsfA2 gene. Quantitative hypocotyl elongation assay also revealed that AT decayed faster in the absence of HsfA2. Significant reduction in the transcript levels of several highly heat-inducible genes was observed in HsfA2 knockout plants after 4 h recovery or 2 h prolonged heat stress. Immunoblot analysis showed that Hsa32 and class I small Hsp were less abundant in the mutant than in the wild type after long recovery. Our results suggest that HsfA2 as a heat-inducible transactivator sustains the expression of Hsp genes and extends the duration of AT in Arabidopsis.