Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sclerotherapy in venous malformation

Venous malformations are the result of an arrested development of the venous system during the embryogenesis. In the treatment of venous malformations the standard of care is a multidisciplinary approach including the use of traditional surgical therapy if applicable and endovascular treatment. Endovascular techniques include embolization therapy for instance with coils but also sclerotherapy with liquid or foamed sclerosants. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of foam sclerotherapy in venous malformations. Sclerotherapy of venous malformations has been performed in superficial and intramuscular malformations. In many cases ethanol has been used for the treatment. Since more than 10 years, less aggressive sclerosants like polidocanol and sodiumtetradecyl sulphate have been used to treat venous malformations. These substances can be used without anaesthesia and the rate of side-effects is much lower. Yamaki and Cabrera are the first who used foam sclerotherapy for the treatment of symptomatic venous malformations. Compared with liquid sclerotherapy foam sclerotherapy has the advantage of a better and longer lasting contact of the sclerosing agent with the vessel wall which leads to a more effective treatment and to a reduction of concentrations needed. In a recent European Guideline on Sclerotherapy foam sclerotherapy is recommended over liquid therapy for the treatment of venous malformations. Foam sclerotherapy is an effective treatment option for low flow extratruncular and truncular venous malformations. Foam is significantly more effective than liquid sclerotherapy and side-effects with polidocanol or sodiumtetradecyl sulphate foam are less compared with sclerotherapy with ethanol. With foam sclerotherapy a significant reduction of pain and volume of the venous malformations can be reached.
Reversible Jump MCMC Converging to Birth-and-Death MCMC and More General Continuous Time Samplers

At present, reversible jump methods are the most common tool for exploring variable dimension statistical models. Recently however, an alternative approach based on birth-and-death processes has been proposed by Stephens (2000)in the case of mixtures of distributions. We address the comparison of both methods by demonstrating that upon appropriate rescaling of time, the reversible jump chain converges to a limiting continuous time birth-and-death chain. We show in addition that the birth-and-death setting can be generalised to include other types of jumps like split/combine jumps in the spirit of Richardson and Green (1997). We illustrate these extensions in the case of hidden Markov models.
Toll-Like Receptor 4 Agonistic Antibody Promotes Host Defense against Chronic Pseudomonas aeruginosa Lung Infection in Mice

ABSTRACT Chronic lower respiratory tract infection with Pseudomonas aeruginosa is difficult to treat due to enhanced antibiotic resistance and decreased efficacy of drug delivery to destroyed lung tissue. To determine the potential for restorative immunomodulation therapies, we evaluated the effect of Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) stimulation on the host immune response to Pseudomonas infection in mice. We implanted sterile plastic tubes precoated with P. aeruginosa in the bronchi of mice, administered the TLR4/MD2 agonistic monoclonal antibody UT12 intraperitoneally every week, and subsequently analyzed the numbers of viable bacteria and inflammatory cells and the levels of cytokines. We also performed flow cytometry-based phagocytosis and opsonophagocytic killing assays in vitro using UT12-treated murine peritoneal neutrophils. UT12-treated mice showed significantly enhanced bacterial clearance, increased numbers of Ly6G+ neutrophils, and increased concentrations of macrophage inflammatory protein 2 (MIP-2) in the lungs (P < 0.05). Depletion of CD4+ T cells eliminated the ability of the UT12 treatment to improve bacterial clearance and promote neutrophil recruitment and MIP-2 production. Additionally, UT12-pretreated peritoneal neutrophils exhibited increased opsonophagocytic killing activity via activation of the serine protease pathway, specifically neutrophil elastase activity, in a TLR4-dependent manner. These data indicated that UT12 administration significantly augmented the innate immune response against chronic bacterial infection, in part by promoting neutrophil recruitment and bactericidal function.
A Drosophila model of insulin resistance associated with the human TRIB3 Q/R polymorphism

ABSTRACT Members of the Tribbles family of proteins are conserved pseudokinases with diverse roles in cell growth and proliferation. Both Drosophila Tribbles (Trbl) and vertebrate Trib3 proteins bind to the kinase Akt (Akt1) to block its phosphorylation activation and reduce downstream insulin-stimulated anabolism. A single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) variant in human TRIB3, which results in a glutamine (Q) to arginine (R) missense mutation in a conserved motif at position 84, confers stronger Akt binding, resulting in reduced Akt phosphorylation, and is associated with a predisposition to Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, diabetic nephropathy, chronic kidney disease and leukemogenesis. Here, we used a Drosophila model to understand the importance of the conserved R residue in several Trbl functions. In the fly fat body, misexpression of a site-directed Q mutation at position R141 resulted in weakened binding to Drosophila Akt (dAkt), leading to increased levels of phospho-dAkt, increased cell and tissue size, and increases in the levels of stored glycogen and triglycerides. Consistent with the functional conservation of this arginine in modulating Akt activity, mouse Trib3 R84 misexpressed in the fly fat body blocked dAkt phosphorylation with a strength similar to wild-type Trbl. Limited mutational analysis shows that the R141 site dictates the strength of Akt binding but does not affect other Trbl-dependent developmental processes, suggesting a specificity that could serve as a drug target for metabolic diseases. Summary: The insulin signaling inhibitor tribbles 3 (TRIB3) variant associated with Type II diabetes has parallel effects in a fly model system on Tribbles-regulated insulin signaling, growth and Akt activation.
Level of Empathy among Medical Students in Kuwait University, Kuwait

Objectives: To evaluate the level of empathy among medical students in Kuwait University Medical School and its association with sociodemographic factors, stress levels and personality. Subjects and Methods: A cross-sectional survey of 264 medical students was conducted in the Faculty of Medicine, Kuwait University. Empathy levels were measured using the Jefferson Scale, personality was assessed using the Zuckerman-Kuhlman Personality Scale and the Perceived Stress Scale was used to measure stress levels. Factors associated with empathy were evaluated using t test/ANOVA for categorical variables and correlation for continuous predictors. Results: Mean empathy score was 104.6 ± 16.3. Empathy scores were significantly associated with gender, year of study, mother's level of education, household income, satisfactory relationship with the mother and stress levels. Male medical students in their clinical years also had significantly lower empathy levels. However, factors such as grade point average, desired specialty, marital status of parents, father's educational level and relationship with father were not significantly (p > 0.05) associated with levels of empathy. Stress scores were significantly and positively associated with empathy (r = 0.13; p = 0.041). Conclusion: Medical students in Kuwait University had low empathy level and this may be a cause for concern; as such we suggest a possible inclusion of emphasis on empathy in the curriculum.
BER Analysis of Decision-Feedback Multiple-Symbol Detection in Noncoherent MIMO Ultrawideband Systems

In this paper, we investigate noncoherent multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) ultrawideband (UWB) systems where the signal is encoded by differential space-time block code (DSTBC). DSTBC enables noncoherent MIMO UWB systems to achieve diversity gain. However, the traditional noncoherent symbol-by-symbol differential detection (DD) for DSTBC-UWB suffers from performance degradation compared with coherent detection. We introduce a noncoherent multiple-symbol detection (MSD) scheme to enhance the performance of DSTBC-UWB systems. Although the MSD scheme can boost the performance more as the observation window size becomes larger, the complexity of the exhaustive search for MSD also exponentially increases in terms of the window size. To decrease the computational complexity, the concept of decision feedback (DF) is introduced to the MSD for DSTBC-UWB in this paper. The resultant DF-MSD yields reasonable complexity and solid performance improvement. We provide the bit-error-rate analysis for the proposed DF-MSD. Both theoretical analysis and simulation results validate the proposed scheme.
SUPER-RESOLUTION FOR FACE RECOGNITION BASED ON CORRELATED FEATURES AND NONLINEAR MAPPINGS

For the problem of low recognition rate on low resolution face images, a super-resolution method for face recognition based on correlated features and nonlinear mappings is proposed in this paper. � Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) is applied to establish the correlated subspaces between the features of high and low resolution face images, and radial base functions (RBFs) are employed to construct the nonlinear mappings between the features in the correlated subspaces. Finally, the super-resolved correlated feature in the high resolution space of a testing low resolution image is obtained for recognition. Compared with other methods, our method is robust to pose and expression variations and achieves higher recognition rate.
Rapid response of breast cancer to neoadjuvant intramammary testosterone-anastrozole therapy: neoadjuvant hormone therapy in breast cancer

ObjectiveExperimental and clinical data support the inhibitory effect of testosterone on breast tissue and breast cancer. However, testosterone is aromatized to estradiol, which exerts the opposite effect. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of testosterone, combined with the aromatase inhibitor anastrozole, on a hormone receptor positive, infiltrating ductal carcinoma in the neoadjuvant setting. MethodsTo determine clinical response, we obtained serial ultrasonic measurements and mammograms before and after therapy. Three combination implants—each containing 60 mg of testosterone and 4 mg of anastrozole—were placed anterior, superior, and inferior to a 2.4-cm tumor in the left breast. Three additional testosterone-anastrozole implants were again placed peritumorally 48 days later. ResultsBy day 46, there was a sevenfold reduction in tumor volume, as measured on ultrasound. By week 13, we documented a 12-fold reduction in tumor volume, demonstrating a rapid logarithmic response to intramammary testosterone-anastrozole implant therapy, equating to a daily response rate of 2.78% and a tumor half-life of 23 days. Therapeutic systemic levels of testosterone were achieved without elevation of estradiol, further demonstrating the efficacy of anastrozole combined with testosterone. ConclusionsThis novel therapy, delivered in the neoadjuvant setting, has the potential to identify early responders and to evaluate the effectiveness of therapy in vivo. This may prove to be a new approach to both local and systemic therapies for breast cancer in subgroups of patients. In addition, it can be used to reduce tumor volume, allowing for less surgical intervention and better cosmetic oncoplastic results.
Mining frequent itemsets over tuple-evolving data streams

In many data streaming applications today, tuples inside the streams may get revised over time. This type of data stream brings new issues and challenges to the data mining tasks. We present a theoretical analysis for mining frequent itemsets from sliding windows over such data. We define conditions that determine whether an infrequent itemset will become frequent when some existing tuples inside the streams have been updated. We design simple but effective structures for managing both the evolving tuples and the candidate frequent itemsets. Moreover, we provide a novel verification method that efficiently computes the counts of candidate itemsets. Experiments on real-world datasets show the efficiency and effectiveness of our proposed method.
Factor analysis of environmental impact of manure utilization

Modern livestock farms feature a large number of animals and subsequent significant environmental load. The biggest negative impact is on the atmosphere and on water bodies, with manure being the major pollution source. The proper choice of an effective low-cost manure handling technology with low nutrient loss ensures the environmentally sound operation of these farms. Manure utilization is understood as a set of activities, including manure processing, manure storage (if necessary) and soil application of produced organic fertilizers. It is important to deal with manure utilization as an integral whole, rather than to improve a separate process that has a minor contribution to the decrease of the overall negative impact of manure. The article considers the nitrogen loss during manure utilization depending on such factors as type of manure processing, manure storage conditions, soil application practices, moisture content of raw manure, nitrogen-carbon ratio in the raw manure, and quality of the staff. To identify the dependence of nitrogen loss from these factors a method of logical-linguistic modelling was applied, by which the expert data were formalized in a mathematical model. In view of the differences of processes, which take place during the storage and processing of liquid and solid manure, two models were considered for liquid manure with the moisture content > 92 % and solid manure with the moisture content ≤ 92 %. The analysis of the coefficients of the obtained equations showed the significance of each factor and their mutual dependence. Most significant factors were the type of manure processing and the soil application method. The simulation study results were compared with the values obtained by measurements on operating farms, with the maximum inaccuracy being 5.35 %. The obtained equations may be used for express calculation of nitrogen loss and to forecast the variations of nitrogen loss under different manure handling technologies.
Dissecting cellular activity from single genes to single mRNAs

Fluorescent proteins have revolutionized cellular biology, introducing a time component in the spatial analysis of biological processes. However, it has been only recently that transcribed nucleic acids could be detected in live cells (Bertrand et al., 1998). Singlemolecule detection of the constituents of gene expression is currently transforming our vision of molecular biology, allowing the focus to shift from cellular populations to single cells and eventually to the quantum units of single genes, the single mRNAs. Ultimately, we will be able to describe the dynamics of genes within live cells and analyze the synthesis and motion of single mRNAs traveling toward their translation sites.
Proceedings of Fast '03: 2nd Usenix Conference on File and Storage Technologies 2nd Usenix Conference on File and Storage Technologies Block-level Security for Network-attached Disks

We propose a practical and efficient method for adding security to network-attached disks (NADs). In contrast to previous work, our design requires no changes to the data layout on disk, minimal changes to existing NADs, and only small changes to the standard protocol for ac-cessing remote block-based devices. Thus, existing NAD file systems and storage-management software could incorporate our scheme very easily. Our design enforces security using the well-known idea of self-describing capabilities , with two novel features that limit the need for memory on secure NADs: a scheme to manage revoca-tions based on capability groups, and a replay-detection method using Bloom filters. We have implemented a prototype NAD file system, called Snapdragon, that incorporates our ideas. We evaluated Snapdragon's performance and scalability. The overhead of access control is small: latency for reads and writes increases by less than 0.5 ms (5%), while band-width decreases by up to 16%. The aggregate throughput scales linearly with the number of NADs (up to 7 in our experiments).
Economic and Technical Evaluation of Solar-Assisted Water Pump Stations for Mining Applications: A Case of Study

Nowadays, energy and water are some of the most important issues facing the mining industry. Many mines are located in desert areas, and they need to pump water from isolated wells or from the ocean. Therefore, in order to satisfy the water demand, many high-power water pump stations are required. The operation of these systems is expensive due to the high energy cost. This paper presents a case of study of a solar photovoltaic (PV) system to assist the operation of a water pump station of a mineral processing operation in Chile. An economical analysis is carried out with respect to different design variables and the percentage of the total power required for operating the system in the less favorable conditions (degree of assistance). It is demonstrated that the maximum net present value is obtained for the maximum assistance, i.e., supplying the full energy in the less favorable conditions. However, the internal rate of return will be maximized at the point where the system only supplies the energy to satisfy the full demand at the most favorable conditions. Finally, the study shows that from an economical point of view, PV technology is an attractive alternative to support the mining operation at present time.
Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology the Toxicity of Cadmium and Resulting Hazards for Human Health

Cadmium (Cd) has been in industrial use for a long period of time. Its serious toxicity moved into scientific focus during the middle of the last century. In this review, we discuss historic and recent developments of toxicological and epidemiological questions, including exposition sources, resorption pathways and organ damage processes.
THE EXTENDED ENVIRONMENT OF M17: A STAR FORMATION HISTORY

M17 is one of the youngest and most massive nearby star-formation regions in the Galaxy. It features a bright H ii region erupting as a blister from the side of a giant molecular cloud (GMC). Combining photometry from the Spitzer Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire (GLIMPSE) with complementary infrared (IR) surveys, we identify candidate young stellar objects (YSOs) throughout a 1. °5 × 1° field that includes the M17 complex. The long sightline through the Galaxy behind M17 creates significant contamination in our YSO sample from unassociated sources with similar IR colors. Removing contaminants, we produce a highly reliable catalog of 96 candidate YSOs with a high probability of association with the M17 complex. We fit model spectral energy distributions to these sources and constrain their physical properties. Extrapolating the mass function of 62 intermediate-mass YSOs (M⋆ > 3 M☉), we estimate that >1000 stars are in the process of forming in the extended outer regions of M17. The remaining 34 candidate YSOs are found in a 0.17 deg2 field containing the well-studied M17 H ii region and photodissociation region (PDR), where bright diffuse mid-IR emission drastically reduces the sensitivity of the GLIMPSE point-source detections. By inspecting IR survey images from IRAS and GLIMPSE, we find that M17 lies on the rim of a large shell structure ∼0. °5 in diameter (∼20 pc at 2.1 kpc). We present maps of 12CO and 13CO (J = 2 → 1) emission observed with the Heinrich Hertz Telescope. The CO emission shows that the shell is a coherent, kinematic structure associated with M17, centered at v = 19 km s−1. The shell is an extended bubble outlining the PDR of a faint, diffuse H ii region several Myr old. We identify a group of candidate ionizing stars within the bubble. YSOs in our catalog are concentrated around the bubble rim, providing evidence that massive star formation has been triggered by the expansion of the bubble. The formation of the massive cluster ionizing the M17 H ii region itself may have been similarly triggered. We conclude that the star formation history in the extended environment of M17 has been punctuated by successive waves of massive star formation propagating through a GMC complex.
Shoreline Evolution And Protection Strategies Along The Tuscany Coastline, Italy

Natural and human-induced influences on short term shoreline change and long term coastal evolution can be variable over a wide range of different temporal and spatial scales. The importance of assessing, either quantitatively or qualitatively, these causes or factors in coastal processes is paramount to the design and implementation of integrated coastal zone management strategies. This is especially true as contemporary erosion threatens to become a major environmental hazard in the absence of unified coastal defence strategies for protecting long stretches of coast as a whole ( and , 2002). In many cases defence designs have been implemented without any a priori knowledge of the 'local' or 'regional' processes operating in the area. The identification of time-averaged littoral processes can greatly impact management decisions. Identifying the major points of sediment input into the coastal unit and related littoral cell dynamics is vital to understanding the potential impact and performance of any defence strategies. Each littoral cell contains a coherent trend of littoral transportation and sedimentation, including sources and sinks and transport paths ( ., 2002). In many cases it is predicted that existing knowledge of these coastal units would greatly affect management and planning decisions. This paper details the results of recent coastal process studies along the Tuscany coastline in Italy, and elucidates the influence of human interventions along the coast on littoral dynamics and subsequent shoreline evolution. These areas have experienced severe contemporary beach erosion since the latter part of the last century. The longshore component of the littoral sediment budget has been dramatically affected by building of coastal infrastructure such as harbours, and changes in land use in the river basins. Mitigation techniques have traditionally relied on engineered coastal defences such as groins, breakwaters and seawalls. In many cases these structures exacerbate the problem both locally (increase in energy from reflected waves expedite the removal of sediment) and regionally (the removal of nearshore alongshore sediment from the sediment budget). Further, these structures usually result in the loss of dry beach area in the immediate vicinity. The shoreline configuration of these areas has been altered to a state where the length of engineering structures equals (or, in many cases, exceeds) the length of protected shoreline. The incremental costs of construction of new structures in downdrift areas and the annual maintenance costs to ensure structure stability and integrity retract from the cost-benefits of implementing these schemes. More so, although these constructions support short term objectives of protection, they fail to rectify the initial problem of shoreline erosion vis a vis the imbalance between the supply of sediment input and the volume of sediment being removed. ELASMAR WHITE