Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Synovial Tissue Sublining CD68 Expression Is a Biomarker of Therapeutic Response in Rheumatoid Arthritis Clinical Trials: Consistency Across Centers

Objective. To determine whether the correlation between the mean change in disease activity and the mean change in synovial sublining (sl) CD68 expression could be demonstrated across different academic centers. Methods. Synovial biopsies obtained at arthroscopy from patients with rheumatoid arthritis before and 160 days after rituximab therapy were selected and coded. Paired sections were processed independently at Amsterdam Medical Center (AMC) and at St. Vincent’s University Hospital (SVUH), Dublin. Digital image analysis (DIA) was employed at both centers to quantify sublining CD68 expression. Results. After analysis of CD68sl expression at centers in 2 different countries, high levels of intracenter and intercenter agreement were observed. For the pooled sections stained at AMC, the correlation between 2 investigators was R = 0.942, p = 0.000, and for sections stained at SVUH, R = 0.899, p = 0.001. Similarly, the intracenter correlations for ΔCD68sl expression after treatment were R = 0.998, p = 0.000, for sections stained at AMC and R = 0.880, p = 0.000, for sections stained at SVUH. The intercenter correlation for the pooled scores of sections stained at AMC was R = 0.85, p = 0.000, and for the sections stained at SVUH, R = 0.62, p = 0.001. The consistent correlation between ΔDAS (Disease Activity Score) and ΔCD68sl expression across different studies (Pearson correlation = 0.895, p < 0.001) was confirmed. The standardized response mean values for ΔCD68sl, calculated from analyses at both AMC and SVUH, were consistently 0.5 or greater, indicating a moderate to high potential to detect change. Conclusion. The correlation between mean ΔDAS and mean ΔCD68sl expression was confirmed across 2 centers. Examination of serial biopsy samples can be used reliably to screen for interesting biological effects at the site of inflammation at an early stage of drug development.
An Ego Depletion Account of Aging Stereotypes' Effects on Health-Related Variables.

OBJECTIVES This study examined whether stereotypes may predict health outcomes independently from their internalization into the self. Specifically, we tested whether endorsement of negative age stereotypes in the physical activity (PA) domain is related to decreased subjective vitality among active older adults, illustrating ego depletion. METHOD This longitudinal study included 192 retired individuals aged 60-92 years who regularly participated in organized PA, and who completed the measures on three occasions (9-month period). RESULTS Multilevel growth models tested whether within-person variation in age stereotypes endorsement across waves predicted subjective vitality, after controlling for self-perceptions of aging and relevant covariates. Results showed that (a) within-person increases in endorsement of age stereotypes of self-efficacy (b = 0.17, p < .01) were associated with increases in subjective vitality, (b) between-person mean difference in endorsement of age stereotypes of PA benefits (b = 0.21, p < .05) positively predicted subjective vitality, and (c) subjective vitality mediated the relationship between endorsement of self-efficacy stereotype and self-rated health. DISCUSSION This study confirmed that endorsement of age stereotypes of PA predicted subjective vitality among active older adults. These results suggest that stereotypes may be related to health-related outcomes notably through ego depletion effects.
An Account of Global Factor Trade

A half-century of empirical work on the factor proportions theory has identified devise simple amendments that bring theory and data into reasonable congruence. Our study considers standard and novel hypotheses regarding the failures of the Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek formulation and is the first to examine these directly on the technology and absorption data of interest. We show how a few simple and plausible amendments, verified directly by this data, suffice for a striking confirmation of the HOV theory. Countries export the services of abundant factors and in approximately the right magnitude. HOV works.
Cerebral glucose metabolism in obsessive-compulsive hoarding.

OBJECTIVE Compulsive hoarding and saving symptoms, found in many patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), are part of a discrete clinical syndrome that includes indecisiveness, disorganization, perfectionism, procrastination, and avoidance and has been associated with poor response to medications and cognitive behavior therapy. The authors sought to identify cerebral metabolic patterns specifically associated with the compulsive hoarding syndrome using positron emission tomography (PET). METHOD [(18)F]Fluorodeoxyglucose PET scans were obtained for 45 adult subjects who met DSM-IV criteria for OCD (12 of whom had compulsive hoarding as their most prominent OCD symptom factor) and 17 normal comparison subjects. All subjects had been free of psychotropic medication for at least 4 weeks. Regional cerebral glucose metabolism was compared between the groups. RESULTS In relation to the comparison subjects, the patients with compulsive hoarding syndrome had significantly lower glucose metabolism in the posterior cingulate gyrus and cuneus, whereas the nonhoarding OCD patients had significantly higher glucose metabolism in the bilateral thalamus and caudate. In relation to nonhoarding OCD patients, compulsive hoarders had significantly lower metabolism in the dorsal anterior cingulate gyrus. Across all OCD patients, hoarding severity was negatively correlated with glucose metabolism in the dorsal anterior cingulate gyrus. CONCLUSIONS OCD patients with the compulsive hoarding syndrome had a different pattern of cerebral glucose metabolism than nonhoarding OCD patients and comparison subjects. Obsessive-compulsive hoarding may be a neurobiologically distinct subgroup or variant of OCD whose symptoms and poor response to anti-obsessional treatment are mediated by lower activity in the cingulate cortex.
Oxygen shunting in renal cortical and medullary capillaries.

The existence of shunting of oxygen from arterial to venous segments of the renal capillary bed was ascertained from densitometer tracings of renal venous blood after the injection into the renal artery of blood of high oxygen tension and containing optically labeled erythrocytes. The outer region of the renal cortex was functionally separated from the medulla plus inner cortex by means of regional hypothermia. There was observed no consistent exaggeration or attenuation of the diphasic character of the renal densitometer tracing characteristic of oxygen shunting by cooling either the superficial or deeper zones of the kidney. It is concluded that shunting of oxygen occurs in both the renal cortex and medulla, but the degree to which it occurs in each zone cannot be quantified from the present data.
Role of MicroRNA in Osteoarthritis

Although the potential effect of aberrant expression of catabolic and anabolic genes on the development of osteoarthritis (OA) is well-documented, the regulatory mechanism for the expression of these genes in articular chondrocytes remains to be elucidated. The recent advances in epigenetic studies have identified microRNA (miRNA) as one of the epigenetic mechanisms for the regulation of gene expression. This mini review highlights the role of miRNA in the regulation of gene expression in articular chondrocytes and its significance in the pathogenesis of OA, with a discussion on the potential of miRNA as a new biomarker and therapeutic target for OA. Further investigations are required to determine the specificity, sensitivity, and efficacy of miRNA for clinical applications.
Evolving role of Sorafenib in the management of hepatocellular carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common malignant diseases worldwide and comes third in cancer-related mortality. Although there is a broad spectrum of treatment options to choose from, only a few patients are eligible candidates to receive a curative therapy according to their stage of disease, and thus palliative treatment is implemented in the majority of the patients suffering from liver cancer. Sorafenib, a multikinase inhibitor, is the only currently approved agent for systemic therapy in patients with advanced stage HCC and early stage liver disease. It has been shown to improve the overall survival, but with various side effects, while its cost is not negligible. Sorafenib has been in the market for a decade and has set the stage for personalized targeted therapy. Its role during this time has ranged from monotherapy to neoadjuvant and adjuvant treatment with surgical resection, liver transplantation and chemoembolization or even in combination with other chemotherapeutic agents. In this review our aim is to highlight in depth the current position of Sorafenib in the armamentarium against HCC and how that has evolved over time in its use either as a single agent or in combination with other therapies.
Population structure of the ash dieback pathogen, Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, in relation to its mode of arrival in the UK

The ash dieback fungus, Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, a destructive, alien pathogen of common ash (Fraxinus excelsior), has spread across Europe over the past 25 years and was first observed in the UK in 2012. To investigate the relationship of the pathogen's population structure to its mode of arrival, isolates were obtained from locations in England and Wales, either where established natural populations of ash had been infected by wind‐dispersed ascospores or where the fungus had been introduced on imported planting stock. Population structure was determined by tests for vegetative compatibility (VC), mating type and single‐nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). VC heterogeneity was high at all locations, with 96% of isolate pairings being incompatible. Frequencies of the MAT1‐1‐1 and MAT1‐2‐1 idiomorphs were approximately equal, consistent with H. fraxineus being an obligate outbreeder. Most SNP variation occurred within study location and there was little genetic differentiation between the two types of location in the UK, or between pathogen populations in the UK and continental Europe. There was modest differentiation between UK subpopulations, consistent with genetic variation between source populations in continental Europe. However, there was no evidence of strong founder effects, indicating that numerous individuals of H. fraxineus initiated infection at each location, regardless of the route of pathogen transmission. The ssRNA virus HfMV1 was present at moderate to high frequencies in all UK subpopulations. The results imply that management of an introduced plant pathogen requires action against its spread at the continental level involving coordinated efforts by European countries.
SURVEY ON CHROMOSOME IMAGE ANALYSIS FOR ABNORMALITY DETECTION IN LEUKEMIAS

Development of an automated system for the chromosome classification and abnormality detection in the case of Leukemias has significant importance in the field of cytogenetics. Such systems can be effectively used to find the genetic disorders and used in treatment evaluation procedures, prognosis prediction and in follow up treatment with the help of karyotyping. This is possible because the leukemia’s are generally characterized by numerical and structural chromosomal abnormalities. During the last three decades, several developments in the field of automated chromosome analysis have been occurred. Different preprocessing, segmentation, feature extraction and classification methods are applied to develop an automatic karyotyping system. But still now, the classification and the abnormality detection of chromosomes are done in the laboratories with the help of human intervention which is time consuming and labor intensive. Further research is needed in this field to develop completely automated abnormality detection systems which are capable of effectively identify the abnormalities without the human intervention. Here we have done a survey on different methods of karyotyping existing so far that leads to efficient systems for abnormality detection.
A taxonomy of service discovery Systems

Service discovery is a platform for network entities, whether hardware or software, to spontaneously self-configure and self-heal in a volatile environment. An in-depth understanding of the fundamentals of service discovery is essential for system architects to effectively execute pervasive and autonomous context-aware applications. We offer this understanding by clarifying some fundamental concepts and issues in service discovery; the evolution of service discovery in the context of distributed systems, the basic architectures and their variance and the different functionalities that contribute towards satisfying the self-configuring and self-healing properties of service discovery. We then proceed to show how service discovery fits into a system, by characterizing operational aspects. Subsequently, we describe how existing state of the art performs service discovery, in relation to the operational aspects and functionalities, and identify areas for future work.
Incremental Exercise, Plasma Concentrations of Catecholamines, Reaction Time, and Motor Time during Performance of a Noncompatible Choice Response Time Task

The primary purpose was to examine the effect of incremental exercise on a noncompatible response time task. Participants (N = 9) undertook a 4-choice noncompatible response time task under 3 conditions, following rest and during exercise at 70% and 100% of their maximum power output. Reaction and movement times were the dependent variables. Maximum power output had been previously established on an incremental test to exhaustion. A repeated-measures multivariate analysis of variance yielded a significant effect of exercise intensity on the task, but observation of the separate univariate repeated-measures analyses of variance showed that only movement time was significantly affected. Post hoc Tukey tests indicated movement time during maximal intensity exercise was significantly faster than in the other two conditions. The secondary purpose of the study was to assess whether increases in plasma concentrations of adrenaline and nor-adrenaline during exercise and power output would act as predictor variables of reaction and movement times during exercise. Catecholamine concentrations were based on venous blood samples taken during the maximum power output test. None of the variables were significant predictors of reaction time. Only power output was a significant predictor of movement time (R2 = .24). There was little support for the notion that peripheral concentrations of catecholamines directly induce a central nervous system response.
Colocalization of synapsin and actin during synaptic vesicle recycling

It has been hypothesized that in the mature nerve terminal, interactions between synapsin and actin regulate the clustering of synaptic vesicles and the availability of vesicles for release during synaptic activity. Here, we have used immunogold electron microscopy to examine the subcellular localization of actin and synapsin in the giant synapse in lamprey at different states of synaptic activity. In agreement with earlier observations, in synapses at rest, synapsin immunoreactivity was preferentially localized to a portion of the vesicle cluster distal to the active zone. During synaptic activity, however, synapsin was detected in the pool of vesicles proximal to the active zone. In addition, actin and synapsin were found colocalized in a dynamic filamentous cytomatrix at the sites of synaptic vesicle recycling, endocytic zones. Synapsin immunolabeling was not associated with clathrin-coated intermediates but was found on vesicles that appeared to be recycling back to the cluster. Disruption of synapsin function by microinjection of antisynapsin antibodies resulted in a prominent reduction of the cytomatrix at endocytic zones of active synapses. Our data suggest that in addition to its known function in clustering of vesicles in the reserve pool, synapsin migrates from the synaptic vesicle cluster and participates in the organization of the actin-rich cytomatrix in the endocytic zone during synaptic activity.
Nonblocking Algorithms and Preemption-Safe Locking on Multiprogrammed Shared Memory Multiprocessors

Most multiprocessors are multiprogrammed to achieve acceptable response time and to increase their utilization. Unfortunately, inopportune preemption may significantly degrade the performance of synchronized parallel applications. To address this problem, researchers have developed two principal strategies for a concurrent, atomic update of shared data structures: (1)preemption-safe lockingand (2)nonblocking(lock-free)algorithms. Preemption-safe locking requires kernel support. Nonblocking algorithms generally require a universal atomic primitive such ascompare-and-swaporload-linked/store-conditionaland are widely regarded as inefficient. We evaluate the performance of preemption-safe lock-based and nonblocking implementations of important data structures? queues, stacks, heaps, and counters? including nonblocking and lock-based queue algorithms of our own, in microbenchmarks and real applications on a 12-processor SGI Challenge multiprocessor. Our results indicate that our nonblocking queue consistently outperforms the best known alternatives and that data-structure-specific nonblocking algorithms, which exist for queues, stacks, and counters, can work extremely well. Not only do they outperform preemption-safe lock-based algorithms on multiprogrammed machines, they also outperform ordinary locks on dedicated machines. At the same time, since general-purpose nonblocking techniques do not yet appear to be practical, preemption-safe locks remain the preferred alternative for complex data structures: they outperform conventional locks by significant margins on multiprogrammed systems.
Yellow tea is more potent than other types of tea in suppressing liver toxicity induced by carbon tetrachloride in rats

The present study compared the effects of six Chinese teas categorized by their production process: green, white, yellow, oolong, black and pu‐erh teas, on carbon tetrachloride (CCl4)‐induced liver injury. Wistar rats were given ad libitum the Chinese teas prepared according to the home‐style methods for 1 week, and then intraperitoneally injected with CCl4 (1 mg/kg body weight) or olive oil as a vehicle. The yellow tea significantly ameliorated the increase in the activity of the alanine‐ and aspartate‐aminotransferases in plasma. Thus, the drinking of yellow tea may contribute to protection against liver injury. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
First Lessons: Charter Schools as Learning Communities. CPRE Policy Briefs, RB-22.

Twenty-eight states, over the past six years, have authorized the creation of charter schools as an alternative form of public education. Charter schools are seen as opportunities to create highperforming learning communities, with improved student performance and other positive results as the goals of these new institutions. The creation of high-performing learning communities is central to the success of charter schools, but we need to know if these schools, as currently constituted under their enabling legislation, are capable of creating such learning communities. We want to know what elements help to build or to obstruct these learning communities. To answer these questions, Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) researchers became acquainted with the founders, teachers and administrators in 17 charter schools in Boston, Los Angeles and Minneapolis/St. Paul. Charter schools provide, within the public education system, a new governance structure that is freed from most district and state regulations. Charter schools are intended to increase consumer choice within the public education system. And, most importantly, charter schools are meant to encourage innovation in teaching and learning practices in order to improve student performance. A 1995 survey of charter school founders, conducted by the Education Commission of the States, reported that “better teaching and learning for all kids,” “running a school according to certain principles and/or philosophy,” and “innovation” were the top three reasons for starting a charter school. Disciplines Curriculum and Social Inquiry | Educational Leadership | Education Policy | Teacher Education and Professional Development Comments View on the CPRE website. This policy brief is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn. edu/cpre_policybriefs/9
Non-invasive heart rate measuring smartphone applications using on-board cameras: A short survey

The rapid improvement in smartphone technology has produced many medical applications [1]. Cellular phones now offer several advantages over desktop or laptop computers in tele-monitoring applications like individual's fitness, instant diagnosing and systems for monitoring an individual's medical conditions. Heart rate is one of the most important vital signs of human body. Although cellular phones in combination with other sensing devices (like ECG meters) are able to capture heart rates, there exist a myriad of applications that use only smart phone and its associated accessories (such as on-board camera) to detect heart rates within acceptable accuracy limit. Theoretically, any body part can be used to measure heart rate, although fingertips are commonly used. The fundamental technique of measuring heart rate through smartphone applications is based on image or video processing. In this short survey, we discuss the basic mechanism of heart rate measurement using only smartphone cameras and compare the performance of some notable state-of-the-art smartphone applications available for such purpose. Our experiments show that most of the applications are able to capture heart rate with acceptable accuracy under various body conditions such as normal and waking up after sleep.
Binding to histo-blood group antigen-expressing bacteria protects human norovirus from acute heat stress

This study aims to investigate if histo-blood group antigen (HBGA) expressing bacteria have any protective role on human norovirus (NoV) from acute heat stress. Eleven bacterial strains were included, belonging to Escherichia coli, Enterobacter cloacae, Enterobacter aerogenes, Clostridium difficile, Bifidobacterium adolescentis, and B. longum. HBGA expression of the bacteria as well as binding of human NoV virus-like particles (VLPs, GI.1, and GII.4 strains) to the bacteria were detected by flow cytometry. NoV VLPs pre-incubated with HBGA expressing or non-HBGA expressing bacteria were heated and detected by both direct ELISA and porcine gastric mucin-binding assay. The NoV-binding abilities of the bacteria correlated well with their HBGA expression profiles. Two HBGA expressing E. coli (LMG8223 and LFMFP861, both GI.1 and GII.4 binders) and one non-HBGA expressing E. coli (ATCC8739, neither GI.1 nor GII.4 binder) were selected for the heat treatment test with NoV VLPs. Compared with the same cell numbers of non-HBGA expressing E. coli, the presence of HBGA-expressing E. coli could always maintain higher antigen integrity, as well as mucin-binding ability of NoV VLPs of both GI.1 and GII.4 after heat-treatment at 90°C for 2 min. These results indicate that HBGA-expressing bacteria may protect NoVs during the food processing treatments, thereby facilitating their transmission.
Peripheral pulse measurement after ischemic stroke: A feasibility study

I read the article by Kallmunzer et al.1 with interest. However, I did not follow how measuring the pulse helps detect atrial fibrillation (AF). It may be helpful to include the details of the education provided to the professionals or patients who did self-measurement. Was the pulse rhythm irregularity measured …