Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Islet Interleukin-1β Immunoreactivity Is an Early Feature of Cystic Fibrosis That May Contribute to β-Cell Failure

OBJECTIVE Cystic fibrosis–related diabetes (CFRD) is a common complication of cystic fibrosis (CF), increasing patient morbidity and mortality. Poor understanding of CFRD pathogenesis limits the development of targeted therapies to treat and/or prevent the disease. The aim of this study was to evaluate islet pathology, specifically, inflammation, amyloid deposition, and endocrine cell composition in subjects with CF with diabetes and with CF without diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A retrospective analysis of archived pancreas tissue collected at autopsy was conducted using pancreas tissue from subjects with CF and diabetes (CFRD) (n = 18) and CF without diabetes (CF-no DM) (n = 17). Two cohorts of control non-CF subjects were identified, each matched to CFRD and CF-no DM subjects for age, sex, and BMI (non-CF older, n = 20, and non-CF younger, n = 20), respectively. Immunohistochemistry was performed to assess interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and islet hormone (insulin, glucagon, somatostatin, and pancreatic polypeptide) immunoreactivity; histochemistry was performed to quantify amyloid deposition. RESULTS Islet IL-1β immunoreactivity was substantially increased in both CFRD and CF-no DM subjects compared with non-CF subjects and was common in young subjects with CF (≤10 years of age). In contrast, islet amyloid deposition was increased only in CFRD subjects. We also observe abnormal islet hormone immunoreactivity, characterized by increased glucagon immunoreactivity, in CF-no DM and CFRD subjects compared with non-CF subjects. CONCLUSIONS These findings reveal novel molecular pathways and therapeutic targets underlying islet pathology in CF subjects and may be important in developing new approaches to treat CFRD.
Efficacy of an Encapsulated Probiotic Bifidobacterium infantis 35624 in Women with Irritable Bowel Syndrome

BACKGROUND:Probiotic bacteria exhibit a variety of properties, including immunomodulatory activity, which are unique to a particular strain. Thus, not all species will necessarily have the same therapeutic potential in a particular condition. We have preliminary evidence that Bifidobacterium infantis 35624 may have utility in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). OBJECTIVES:This study was designed to confirm the efficacy of the probiotic bacteria B. infantis 35624 in a large-scale, multicenter, clinical trial of women with IBS. A second objective of the study was to determine the optimal dosage of probiotic for administration in an encapsulated formulation.METHODS:After a 2-wk baseline, 362 primary care IBS patients, with any bowel habit subtype, were randomized to either placebo or freeze-dried, encapsulated B. infantis at a dose of 1 × 106, 1 × 108, or 1 × 1010, cfu/mL for 4 wk. IBS symptoms were monitored daily and scored on to a 6-point Likert scale with the primary outcome variable being abdominal pain or discomfort. A composite symptom score, the subject's global assessment of IBS symptom relief, and measures of quality of life (using the IBS-QOL instrument) were also recorded.RESULTS:B. infantis 35624 at a dose of 1 × 108 cfu was significantly superior to placebo and all other bifidobacterium doses for the primary efficacy variable of abdominal pain as well as the composite score and scores for bloating, bowel dysfunction, incomplete evacuation, straining, and the passage of gas at the end of the 4-wk study. The improvement in global symptom assessment exceeded placebo by more than 20% (p < 0.02). Two other doses of probiotic (1 × 106 and 1 × 1010) were not significantly different from placebo; of these, the 1 × 1010 dose was associated with significant formulation problems. No significant adverse events were recorded.CONCLUSIONS:B. infantis 35624 is a probiotic that specifically relieves many of the symptoms of IBS. At a dosage level of 1 × 108 cfu, it can be delivered by a capsule making it stable, convenient to administer, and amenable to widespread use. The lack of benefits observed with the other dosage levels of the probiotic highlight the need for clinical data in the final dosage form and dose of probiotic before these products should be used in practice.
Questionnaire Study About the Practice of Electroconvulsive Therapy in Norway

Objectives The aim of the study was to describe the contemporary practice of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in Norway. Methods A 42- item questionnaire on the practice of ECT was sent to all the 125 Norwegian psychiatric hospitals, district psychiatric centers, and child and adolescent psychiatric units in 2004. Results A total of 67 (54%) psychiatric units responded, including 26 (67%) of 39 psychiatric hospitals, 32 (46%) of 69 district psychiatric centers, and 9 (53%) of 17 child and adolescents units. Trainee psychiatrists mostly administered ECT, with or without supervision, but underwent a training program before administering ECT. Written informed consent was used in 50% of institutions providing ECT. Right unilateral electrode placement was preferred but with variations in dosage strategies. The practice in most of the departments was to discontinue some classes of psychotropics before ECT, mostly benzodiazepines and anticonvulsants. Antidepressants and antipsychotics were most often continued. Continuation/maintenance and ambulatory ECT were used. Most patients benefited from ECT. Headache and memory impairment were frequent but seldom were serious adverse effects. Conclusions The administration of ECT in Norway in 2004 was mostly in accordance with international guidelines. All institutions used modified ECT and brief pulse machines, and unilateral ECT was the preferred electrode placement. National guidelines should be developed, as there were great variations in practice among the hospitals.
Performance Evaluation for China's Planned CO2-IPDA

Active remote sensing of atmospheric XCO2 has several advantages over existing passive remote sensors, including global coverage, a smaller footprint, improved penetration of aerosols, and night observation capabilities. China is planning to launch a multi-functional atmospheric observation satellite equipped with a CO2-IPDA (integrated path differential absorption Lidar) to measure columnar concentrations of atmospheric CO2 globally. As space and power are limited on the satellite, compromises have been made to accommodate other passive sensors. In this study, we evaluated the sensitivity of the system’s retrieval accuracy and precision to some critical parameters to determine whether the current configuration is adequate to obtain the desired results and whether any further compromises are possible. We then mapped the distribution of random errors across China and surrounding regions using pseudo-observations to explore the performance of the planned CO2-IPDA over these regions. We found that random errors of less than 0.3% can be expected for most regions of our study area, which will allow the provision of valuable data that will help researchers gain a deeper insight into carbon cycle processes and accurately estimate carbon uptake and emissions. However, in the areas where major anthropogenic carbon sources are located, and in coastal seas, random errors as high as 0.5% are predicted. This is predominantly due to the high concentrations of aerosols, which cause serious attenuation of returned signals. Novel retrieving methods must, therefore, be developed in the future to suppress interference from low surface reflectance and high aerosol loading.
Optimisation methods for ranking functions with multiple parameters

Optimising the parameters of ranking functions with respect to standard IR rank-dependent cost functions has eluded satisfactory analytical treatment. We build on recent advances in alternative differentiable pairwise cost functions, and show that these techniques can be successfully applied to tuning the parameters of an existing family of IR scoring functions (BM25), in the sense that we cannot do better using sensible search heuristics that directly optimize the rank-based cost function NDCG. We also demonstrate how the size of training set affects the number of parameters we can hope to tune this way.
Semantic Video Segmentation with Using Ensemble of Particular Classifiers and a Deep Neural Network for Systems of Detecting Abnormal Situations

A new approach based on the use of a deep neural network and an ensemble of particular classifiers is proposed. This approach is based on use of the novel block of fuzzy generalization for combines classes of objects into semantic groups, each of which corresponds to one or more particular classifiers. As result of processing, the sequence of frames is converted into the annotation of the event occurring in the video for a certain time interval.
Concurrent Validity of New Subscale Scores for the Booklet Category Test

The Booklet Category Test (BCT) is a neuropsychological test of cognitive dysfunction that provides only one overall error score indicative of global impairment. It does not, however, delineate specific domains that might be impaired. The aim of this study is to concurrently validate 13 new BCT subscales using legacy instruments in patients with nonpenetrating traumatic brain injury (TBI). Eighty-nine patients with mild, moderate, and severe TBI completed a battery of neuropsychology tests. Partial correlations controlling for age were performed and there were significant correlations between the a priori selected scores from legacy measures of major cognitive domains and both BCT total errors and subscale scores. Additional analysis showed that several subscales were able to differentiate between performance levels on the legacy measures. Overall, our results showed that the subscales measured cognitive skills beyond global impairment, supporting the use of the BCT subscales in a population with TBI.
Mumps Outbreak among Highly Vaccinated Teenagers and Children in the Central Region of Portugal, 2012-2013.

INTRODUCTION Mumps vaccine was introduced in the National Immunization Program in Portugal in 1987, rapidly reaching a national coverage > 92%, with important reduction in the annual incidence of the disease. We report a mumps outbreak in the Central Region of Portugal, occurred in the winter 2012-13. MATERIAL AND METHODS Cases of salivary-gland swelling and other symptoms compatible with mumps were investigated. Geodemographics, clinical, laboratory and vaccination data were analyzed. RESULTS Over six months, 148 outbreak-related cases were reported: 87.8% occurred in three of the 16 affected counties and 78.4% had a known epidemiological link. Median age was 14.5 years (2-62) and 70.3% were 11-20 years old; 61.5% were male. The mean duration of disease was seven days (2-20). The disease was generally mild; 80.4% had fever and in 55.4% there was unilateral involvement of the parotid gland. Seven cases had orchitis, one oophoritis and one had nephritis. Two cases were hospitalized. School transmission predominated and class attack rates were < 30%. Most of the cases occurred in vaccinated individuals (92%) of whom 86.8% had received 2 doses; 17.7% had received one dose of the vaccine containing the Rubini strain. Mumps virus genotype G was identified in 4 cases. DISCUSSION This mumps outbreak among a highly vaccinated population, occurring mostly in teenagers at school, could be due to the partial effectiveness of the vaccine against the disease (particularly in the group vaccinated with Rubini strain), waning immunity overtime and genotype mismatch. CONCLUSIONS This outbreak report shows the importance of discussion about the need of more booster dose of the actual vaccine or new vaccine including more genotypes to improve immunogenicity.
Characterization of a single-crystal silicon micromirror array for maskless UV lithography in biochip applications

A single-crystal silicon (SCS) micromirror array (MMA) was designed, fabricated and characterized to achieve stable UV light reflectors for biochip fabrication applications such as peptide synthesis systems. The MMA was optimized for biochip applications, with a simple fabrication process (only three photomasks), a large mirror size (210 × 210 µm2) and appropriate separation (60 µm). All the mirrors in the array (16 × 16) were reliable because silicon was used as the structural material for mechanical and optical parts. The mirror surface roughness was very low, being less than 3.93 nm. The turn-on response time was 104 µs and turn-off time was about 800 µs, including settling time. The measured pull-in voltage for the 256 mirrors had an average of 97.0 V and a standard deviation of 2.1 V. A UV reflection test using standard photoresist, AZ1512, showed that the exposure contrast ratio was about 125. From these characterizations, the MMA was shown to have good performance for a useful light modulator for maskless UV lithography, especially in biochip applications.
The Theory of Polymer Dynamics

Introduction Static properties of polymers Brownian motion Dynamics of flexible polymers in dilute solution Many chain systems Dynamics of a polymer in a fixed network Molecular theory for the viscoelasticity of polymeric liquids Dilute solutions of rigid rodlike polymers Semidilute solutions of rigid rodlike polymers Concentrated solutions of rigid rodlike polymers Index.
An integrative review exploring the perceptions of patients and healthcare professionals towards patient involvement in promoting hand hygiene compliance in the hospital setting

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES To review patients' and healthcare professionals' perceptions of patient involvement in promoting hand hygiene compliance in the hospital setting. BACKGROUND Initiatives continue to emphasise the importance of involving patients in their safety at the point of care. A patient-centred care approach aimed to empower patients to become active members of the healthcare team. However, understanding the perceptions of patients and healthcare professionals of patient involvement in promoting hand hygiene compliance among healthcare professionals has yet to be fully explored. DESIGN Integrative literature review. METHODS A five-stage review process informed by Whittemore and Knafl's methodology was conducted. MEDLINE and CINAHL were searched for papers published between January 2009-July 2017. Data were extracted manually, organised using NVivo 11 and analysed using thematic analysis. RESULTS From an identified 240 papers, 19 papers were included in this review. Thematic analysis revealed two main themes with three related subthemes. Patients were willing to remind healthcare professionals (especially nurses) to wash their hands, healthcare professionals perception towards patients' involvement varied from one study to another. However, an overall positive attitude towards patient involvement was related to how patients asked and how healthcare professionals responded to being asked. CONCLUSION There is limited evidence regarding patients' actual intention to ask healthcare professionals to wash their hands, and some evidence that patients are reluctant to do so. Further research is required to understand this area thoroughly, including which situations patients would feel more empowered to speak up. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE Simple messages promoting patient involvement may lead to complex reactions in both patients and healthcare professionals. It is unclear, yet how patients and staff react to such messages in clinical practice. There is a need for a deeper understanding of how they can work together to support harm free care.
Proton Acceleration to Therapeutic Energies with Ultra‐Intense Ultra‐Clean and Ultra‐Short Laser Pulses

The acceleration of protons to therapeutic energies of over 200 MeV by short‐pulse, high‐intensity lasers requires very high temporal intensity contrast. We describe improvements to the contrast ratio of the laser pulse produced by a multi‐terawatt chirped pulsed amplification (CPA) Ti:sapphire laser for the application of proton acceleration. The modified cross‐polarized wave generation (XPW) technique has been implemented on the Hercules laser at the University of Michigan to reject the low‐intensity amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) preceding the main laser pulse. We demonstrate that by using two BaF2 crystals, the XPW technique yields a 10−11 contrast ratio between the main peak and the ASE for a 50 TW laser system which can be maintained up to 500 TW. Such contrast may be sufficient for a preplasma‐free interaction of 225 TW laser pulses with sub‐micron thick foils at an intensity of ∼1022 W/cm2. Particle‐in‐cell (PIC) simulations were conducted under the anticipated experimental conditions: 6.75 .
Sentiment analysis using image-based deep spectrum features

We test the suitability of our novel deep spectrum feature representation for performing speech-based sentiment analysis. Deep spectrum features are formed by passing spectrograms through a pre-trained image convolutional neural network (CNN) and have been shown to capture useful emotion information in speech; however, their usefulness for sentiment analysis is yet to be investigated. Using a data set of movie reviews collected from YouTube, we compare deep spectrum features combined with the bag-of-audio-words (BoAW) paradigm with a state-of-the-art Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) based BoAW system when performing a binary sentiment classification task. Key results presented indicate the suitability of both features for the proposed task. The deep spectrum features achieve an unweighted average recall of 74.5 %. The results provide further evidence for the effectiveness of deep spectrum features as a robust feature representation for speech analysis.
Profile of the therascreen® EGFR RGQ PCR kit as a companion diagnostic for gefitinib in non-small cell lung cancer

ABSTRACT Introduction: Gefitinib is recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration as a first-line treatment for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients harboring EGFR mutations. The therascreen® EGFR RGQ PCR Kit is approved as a companion diagnostic to select patients with EGFR exon 19 deletions and L858R mutation for treatment with gefitinib. Areas covered: This article reviews the methods for detecting EGFR mutations, the technology and indication of the therascreen® kit, and the clinical utility of the assay in phase 3 and phase 4 clinical trials. Studies that compared the performance of the therascreen® kit with other assays and assessed the kit’s application in non-tissue samples are also discussed. Expert commentary: The therascreen® kit is a highly sensitive real-time polymerase chain reaction test that provides standardised testing and automated interpretation of EGFR mutation status in formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue samples. Although not indicated for these applications, the test has also shown utility in detecting uncommon sensitizing EGFR mutations as well as mutations in non-tissue samples.
Social Acknowledgment of Violent Experiences and Its Role in PTSD and Appetitive Aggression Among High-Risk Males in South Africa

Violence exposure poses a risk for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and appetitive aggression. Does acknowledgment of violent experiences by one’s social environment also affect these adverse consequences of violence? We investigated relations between number of traumatic event types, number of violent offenses, PTSD symptoms, appetitive aggression, and social acknowledgment. A total of 290 participants were recruited through a Cape Town rehabilitation center for offenders. Using path analysis, we demonstrate higher societal disapproval to be associated with more intense PTSD symptoms and greater appetitive aggression. However, past experiences of recognition were also related to more intense PTSD symptoms. Violence exposure was positively associated with PTSD symptoms and appetitive aggression, and a higher number of violent offenses was related to greater appetitive aggression. Results indicate that besides violence exposure, social acknowledgment may play a significant role in the severity of PTSD and appetitive aggression. Intervention programs should not neglect targeting social structures.
Eliminating synchronization-related atomic operations with biased locking and bulk rebiasing

The Java™ programming language contains built-in synchronization primitives for use in constructing multithreaded programs. Efficient implementation of these synchronization primitives is necessary in order to achieve high performance.Recent research [9, 12, 10, 3, 7] has focused on the run-time elimination of the atomic operations required to implement object monitor synchronization primitives. This paper describes a novel technique called store-free biased locking which eliminates all synchronization-related atomic operations on uncontended object monitors. The technique supports the bulk transfer of object ownership from one thread to another, and the selective disabling of the optimization where unprofitable, using epoch-based bulk rebiasing and revocation. It has been implemented in the production version of the Java HotSpot™VM and has yielded significant performance improvements on a range of benchmarks and applications. The technique is applicable to any virtual machine-based programming language implementation with mostly block-structured locking primitives.
Fabrication of Graphene Using Exfoliation Method

The effect of various synthesis conditions in the fabrication of graphene using the exfoliation methods has been investigated. Graphite oxide and graphene fabricated by various synthesis conditions were identified by SEM and XRD. Graphite oxide was made from graphite by the chemical oxidation, and graphene was manufactured from graphite oxide by thermal exfoliation method. As a result, it is confirmed that graphite oxide was well formed from graphite, and the graphene could be obtained from graphite oxide. And it was found that the interlayer spacing between the graphene layers depended on the reaction time and particle size, regardless of the reaction temperature from 5°C to 25°C.
Industrial Robot : An International Journal Ring on the hook : placing a ring on a moving and pendulating hook based on visual input

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a robot vision system which put rings on hooks that are moving freely on a conveyor belt. The hook can show a significant swinging which can be well approximated by a pendulum movement. The problem is of large relevance for many industrial applications and the challenge is to compute a 3D pose that is sufficiently precise to allow for successful placements of the rings. Design/methodology/approach – This requires a fast and precise tracking and a compensation for latencies connected to the processing of visual information as well as the actual robot action. Findings – The authors achieve this through a precise pose estimation in a high-resolution stereo setup, as well as a modeling of the hook movement as a combination of a translational and a pendulum movement. Originality/value – The paper shows that under normal conditions close to 100 percent success can be achieved such that this technology now can be transferred into industrial systems.
Polymeric Versus Lipid Nanoparticles: Comparative Study of Nanoparticulate Systems as Indomethacin Carriers

This work was supported by FEDER through POFC – COMPETE and by national funds from FCT through the projects PEst-C/FIS/UI0607/2013 (CFUM). Marlene Lucio holds a position of Researcher FCT with the reference IF/00498/2012. We acknowledge NanoDelivery-I&D em Bionanotecnologia, Lda for access to their equipment.