Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Treatment with tumor necrosis factor inhibitors and intravenous immunoglobulin improves live birth rates in women with recurrent spontaneous abortion.

PROBLEM The purpose of this study was to investigate whether treatment with tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitors combined with intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) increases live birth rates among women with recurrent spontaneous abortion (RSA) concurrently treated with anticoagulants (AC). METHOD OF STUDY Seventy-five pregnancies in patients with a history of RSA were retrospectively evaluated. The population was divided into three groups: group I: 21 patients treated with AC (anticoagulants), group II: 37 patients treated with AC and IVIG, and group III: 17 patients treated with AC, IVIG and the TNF inhibitor Etanercept (Enbrel) or Adalimumab (Humira). In groups II and III, IVIG was administered at least once during the cycle of conception and/or at least once after a positive pregnancy test. In group III, either Adalimumab or Etanercept was administered by subcutaneous injection according to standard protocols. Statistical analysis of pregnancy outcome was performed using Fisher's exact test. RESULTS Patient populations in the three treatment groups were similar in terms of age, past miscarriages, inherited thrombophilia and autoimmunity. The live birth rate was 19% (4/21) in group I, 54% (20/37) in group II, and 71% (12/17) in group III. There was significant improvement in pregnancy outcome in group II versus group I (P = 0.0127) and in group III versus group I (P = 0.0026). The live birth rate in group III compared to group II was not significantly different (P = 0.3723). Side effects of AC, IVIG and TNF inhibitor treatment were minimal in these patients, and no birth defects were identified in their offspring. CONCLUSION In women with RSA, addition of either IVIG or a TNF inhibitor + IVIG to the AC regimen appears to improve live birth rates compared to the treatment with AC alone. The positive effect of IVIG and TNF inhibitor therapy on pregnancy outcome merits further study in prospective clinical trials.
Dynamic Integration

Positive self- and emotional development is often measured by optimization of happiness, but a second aspect of positive development—the ability to tolerate tension and negativity in the interest of maintaining objective representations—needs to be integrated with this hedonic emphasis. The integration of these two aspects, optimization and differentiation, reflects a dynamic balance. Such integration is possible when emotional activation or arousal is moderate, but is impaired at very high levels of activation. From youth to middle adulthood, the capacity for integration increases, but later in life, limitations or poor regulation strategies foster compensatory processes that compromise integration.
Managing and controlling service encounter time in public services [Gérer et contrôler le temps de l'interface prestataire - usager dans les services publics]

Time is a central resource in the service encounter because of the co-production of the service. We seek to understand how management of the service encounter time can help to improve the performance of public services. A theoretical framework for service encounter time management is proposed, incorporating both the provider's and bene! ciary's points of view and combining the management control and marketing perspectives. Four modes of time management for the service encounter are identified in a comprehensive analysis framework. "is framework is then used to distinguish four modes of time management control.
Mortality, Well-Being, and Control

Elderly nursing home residents were interviewed in order to determine the best predictors of psychological well-being. Results indicated that the most positive well-being was likely to be reported by those who perceived themselves as relatively healthy, had little education, had high perceived control, and perceived little change in control from pre-to postrelocation. Social worker's assessments of residents' health were unrelated to well-being. A follow-up of residents' mortality was conducted 30 months after the initial study. Well-being at Time I emerged as the most powerful discriminator of those who were living and those who had died; only perceived change in religiosity also differentiated between the two groups. Residents who had died had higher well-being scores at Time I than residents who were living. The implications for perceived control are discussed.
Latent-Variable Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire

Latent-variable confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the dimensional structure of adolescent temperament from a sample of 436 adolescents. The ninedimensional model proposed by A. Thomas and S. Chess in 1977 was extended by including a bidimensional structure of Mood (including both positive and negative affectivity) and a dimension of Ego Control tapping resiliency and flexibility. All 11 dimensions were statistically reliable and a superiorfit was obtained with a correlated, rather than an orthogonal, model. Results indicated that the factors of Threshold, Intensity, and Distractibility may not be developmentally consistent nor conceptually homogeneous. Moreover, modelfit statistics underscored that a single nomothetic model could not adequately account for the variability underlying the temperamental styles of these adolescents. Separate primary models reflecting temperamental "systems" of Cognitive-Diligence, Sociability/Resilience, and Wgor/Mobility also were tested. Findings suggest that extension of temperament assessment from infancy and childhood to adolescence is developmentally appropriate, although further elucidation of temperamental styles consistent with adult personality is warranted.
Tackling Obesity in Children Through Physical Activity: A Perspective From the United Kingdom

Childhood obesity has become an emotive and serious problem in Europe. In the UK, it has generated a great deal of interest by the media, health professionals, food companies, scientists, and more recently, the government. Upward trends have been recorded in most countries, levels are interestingly variable, and the origins of this variation have not been explained. The role of physical activity and sedentary habits in childhood obesity is not clear. This is partly due to measurement problems. Accelerometry is offering some clearer insight into patterns and levels of activity that may be influential in the determination of children's long term energy balance. Examples of this research are presented.
An overview of the femtocell concept

The femtocell concept aims to combine fixed-line broadband access with cellular telephony using the deployment of ultra-low-cost, low-power third generation (3G) base stations in the subscribers' homes or premises. It enables operators to address new markets and introduce new high-speed services and disruptive pricing strategies to capture wireline voice minutes and to grow revenues. One of the main design challenges of the femtocell is that the hierarchical architecture and manual cell planning processes used in macrocell networks do not scale to support millions of femtocells. In this paper, a user-deployed femtocell solution based on the base station router (BSR) flat Internet Protocol (IP) cellular architecture is presented that addresses these problems, and several aspects of the proposed solution are discussed. The overall concept and key requirements are presented in detail. The auto-configuration and self-optimization process from purchase by the end user to the integration into an existing macrocellular network is described. Then the theoretical performance of a co-channel femtocell deployment is analyzed and its impact on the macrocell underlay is assessed. Finally, a financial analysis of a femtocellular home base station deployment in a macrocellular network is presented. It is shown that in urban areas, the deployment of publicly accessible home base stations with slightly increased coverage can significantly reduce the operator's annual network costs (up to 70 percent in the investigated scenario) compared to a pure macrocellular network.
Which device should be considered the best for lung isolation: double-lumen endotracheal tube versus bronchial blockers

Purpose of review This review is a clinical comparison between double-lumen endotracheal tubes and bronchial blockers to determine which device is considered the best for lung isolation. Recent findings Double-lumen endotracheal tubes and bronchial blockers have been found to be clinically equivalent in terms of performance in providing lung collapse for patients with normal airways. In the last five years, however, numerous reports have indicated a preference for the use of bronchial blockers in patients with airway abnormalities. For nonthoracic anesthesiologists who have limited experience in thoracic anesthesia cases, none of the devices (double-lumen tubes or bronchial blockers) have been shown to provide any advantage while in use due to a high incidence of unrecognized malpositions. Overall, each device provides advantages depending upon the case, such as absolute lung separation with a double-lumen endotracheal tube or the use of a bronchial blocker in a difficult airway for a patient requiring lung isolation. Summary Double-lumen endotracheal tubes and bronchial blockers should be part of the armamentarium of every anesthesiologist involved in lung isolation techniques and every device should be tailored to specific case needs.
Neural Basis for a Powerful Static Motion Illusion

Most people see movement in Figure 1, although the image is static. Motion is seen from black → blue → white → yellow → black. Many hypotheses for the illusory motion have been proposed, although none have been tested physiologically. We found that the illusion works well even if it is achromatic: yellow is replaced with light gray, and blue is replaced with dark gray. We show that the critical feature for inducing illusory motion is the luminance relationship of the static elements. Illusory motion is seen from black → dark gray → white → light gray → black. In psychophysical experiments, we found that all four pairs of adjacent elements when presented alone each produced illusory motion consistent with the original illusion, a result not expected from any current models. We also show that direction-selective neurons in macaque visual cortex gave directional responses to the same static element pairs, also in a direction consistent with the illusory motion. This is the first demonstration of directional responses by single neurons to static displays and supports a model in which low-level, first-order motion detectors interpret contrast-dependent differences in response timing as motion. We demonstrate that this illusion is a static version of four-stroke apparent motion.
Semantic Business Process Management: Scaling Up the Management of Business Processes

Business process management (BPM) aims at supporting the whole life-cycle necessary to deploy and maintain business processes in organisations. Despite its success however, BPM suffers from a lack of automation that would support a smooth transition between the business world and the IT world. We argue that semantic BPM, that is, the enhancement of BPM with semantic Web services technologies, provides further scalability to BPM by increasing the level of automation that can be achieved. We describe the particular SBPM approach developed within the SUPER project and we illustrate how it contributes to enhancing existing BPM solutions in order to achieve more flexible, dynamic and manageable business processes.
Mcidas and GemC1 are key regulators for the generation of multiciliated ependymal cells in the adult neurogenic niche

Multiciliated cells are abundant in the epithelial surface of different tissues, including cells lining the walls of the lateral ventricles in the brain and the airway epithelium. Their main role is to control fluid flow and defects in their differentiation are implicated in many human disorders, such as hydrocephalus, accompanied by defects in adult neurogenesis and mucociliary disorder in the airway system. Here we show that Mcidas, which is mutated in human mucociliary clearance disorder, and GemC1 (Gmnc or Lynkeas), previously implicated in cell cycle progression, are key regulators of multiciliated ependymal cell generation in the mouse brain. Overexpression and knockdown experiments show that Mcidas and GemC1 are sufficient and necessary for cell fate commitment and differentiation of radial glial cells to multiciliated ependymal cells. Furthermore, we show that GemC1 and Mcidas operate in hierarchical order, upstream of Foxj1 and c-Myb transcription factors, which are known regulators of ependymal cell generation, and that Notch signaling inhibits GemC1 and Mcidas function. Our results suggest that Mcidas and GemC1 are key players in the generation of multiciliated ependymal cells of the adult neurogenic niche. Summary: In the adult mouse brain, Mcidas and GemC1 act upstream of the transcriptional regulators Foxj1 and c-Myb to promote differentiation of ependymal cells from radial glia.
Evidence for disulfide bonds in SR Protein Kinase 1 (SRPK1) that are required for activity and nuclear localization

Serine/arginine protein kinases (SRPKs) phosphorylate Arg/Ser dipeptide-containing proteins that play crucial roles in a broad spectrum of basic cellular processes. The existence of a large internal spacer sequence that separates the bipartite kinase catalytic core is a unique structural feature of SRPKs. Previous structural studies on a catalytically active fragment of SRPK1, which lacks the main part of the spacer domain, revealed that SRPK1 remains in an active state without any post-translational modifications or specific intra-protein interactions, while the spacer domain is depicted as a loop structure, outside the kinase core. Using systematic mutagenesis we now provide evidence that replacement of any individual cysteine residue in the spacer, apart from Cys414, or in its proximal flaking ends of the two kinase catalytic domains has an impact on kinase activity. Furthermore, the cysteine residues are critical for nuclear translocation of SRPK1 in response to genotoxic stress and SRPK1-dependent splicing of a reporter gene. While replacement of Cys207, Cys502 and Cys539 of the catalytic domains is predicted to distort the kinase active structure, our findings suggest that Cys356, Cys386, Cys427 and Cys455 of the spacer domain and Cys188 of the first catalytic domain are engaged in disulfide bridging. We propose that such a network of intramolecular disulfide bonds mediates the bending of the spacer region thus allowing the proximal positioning of the two catalytic subunits which is a prerequisite for SRPK1 activity.
[Validation of a clinical prediction tool to evaluate severity in children with wheezing].

INTRODUCTION Acute lower respiratory infection in children usually causes Bronchial Obstructive Syndrome, which could include hipoxemia. Although pulse oximetry (SaO2) is the gold standard to evaluate hipoxemia, it is usually estimated from a clinical score not yet validated. We aimed to validate the respiratory distress score used in Argentina and to compare its performance with the one used in Chile. METHODS We included 200 children aged under 2 years, with Bronchial Obstructive Syndrome. On admission SaO2 and, Argentinean and Chilean scores components (respiratory rate, heart rate, wheezing, chest indrawing, cyanosis) were assessed. We evaluated the score components ability to predict hipoxemia (SaO2 < or = 95 and SaO2 < or = 91) by logistic regression. Correlation between Argentinean score and SaO2 was estimated. The best threshold of both scores to predict hipoxemia was calculated by ROC curve. Sensitivity, specificity, predictive values and likelihood ratios of both scores to predict hipoxemia were calculated. RESULTS Chest indrawing was an independent predictor of hipoxemia (SaO2 < or = 95 and SaO2 < or = 91) (OR: 3.1 IC95%:1.6-5.9 and OR: 13.8 IC95%:1.8-105.4, respectively). The Argentinean score showed acceptable correlation with SaO2 (Spearman: -0,492; p< 0,0001). On SaO2 < or = 91 the Argentinean score showed the best diagnostic performance (auc= 0.904). An Argentinean score > or = 5 was the best threshold to predict hipoxemia (Sensitivity= 100%, specificity= 54.3%). The Chilean score was also evaluated, showing a performance slightly worst than the Argentinean. CONCLUSION An Argentinean score > or = 5 points was sensitive enough to predict hipoxemia (SaO2 < or = 91). This score only allowed identifying children who does not benefit from supplementary oxygen.
Upper limb robot-assisted therapy: A new option for children with hemiplegia

Although a number of research studies have examined the effects of robot-assisted movement therapy for adults with motor impairments following stroke, use of this technology for children with neurologically-based movement disorders is just beginning. Conventional rehabilitation methods are i nsufficient in meeting children's needs for intensive motor learning experiences. Therapy for children with moderate to severe upper limb motor impairments is particularly challenging, because of their reluctance to engage in challenging and repetitive upper limb exercise and frequent developmental disregard for using the paretic arm during functional tasks. In an effort to adapt robot-assisted movement therapy for children with moderate to severe hemiplegia due to cerebral palsy (CP), we developed robotic therapy that was engaging and cognitively challenging for children, and that provided intensive s ensorimotor practice during goal directed reaching activities. This is a review of how we adapted robotic therapy for children with hemiplegia, our selection of outcome measures, and a brief summary of study findings. Our initial work suggests that robot-assisted t herapy can be readily adapted and has good potential for improving motor performance of children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy.
Secure information flow and pointer con .nement in a java-like language

We consider a sequential object-oriented language with pointers and mutable state, private fields and class-based visibility, dynamic binding and inheritance, recursive classes, casts and type tests, and recursive methods. Programs are annotated with security levels, constrainedby security typing rules. A noninterference theorem shows how the rules ensure pointer confinement and secure information flow.
Demonstrating critical evaluation skills using Bloom's taxonomy

Developing critical evaluation skills is regarded by many health-care professionals as being of primary importance. However, many educators seem to have only a vague understanding of what critical evaluation is and how it can be taught. Consequently, students have a limited ability to critically evaluate and often misinterpret assessment questions. This article aims to address this problem by defining and describing critical evaluation using Bloom's taxonomy of the cognitive domain. It then provides a useful example of an appropriate response at each level of the taxonomy to a question on coronary heart disease. Students can use this example as a guide to help them understand what is required from examination papers.
Saul: Towards Declarative Learning Based Programming

We present Saul, a new probabilistic programming language designed to address some of the shortcomings of programming languages that aim at advancing and simplifying the development of AI systems. Such languages need to interact with messy, naturally occurring data, to allow a programmer to specify what needs to be done at an appropriate level of abstraction rather than at the data level, to be developed on a solid theory that supports moving to and reasoning at this level of abstraction and, finally, to support flexible integration of these learning and inference models within an application program. Saul is an object-functional programming language written in Scala that facilitates these by (1) allowing a programmer to learn, name and manipulate named abstractions over relational data; (2) supporting seamless incorporation of trainable (probabilistic or discriminative) components into the program, and (3) providing a level of inference over trainable models to support composition and make decisions that respect domain and application constraints. Saul is developed over a declaratively defined relational data model, can use piecewise learned factor graphs with declaratively specified learning and inference objectives, and it supports inference over probabilistic models augmented with declarative knowledge-based constraints. We describe the key constructs of Saul and exemplify its use in developing applications that require relational feature engineering and structured output prediction.
Sonoelastographic evaluation with the determination of compressibility ratio for symmetrical prostatic regions in the diagnosis of clinically significant prostate cancer

Aim Sonoelastography is a technique that assesses tissue hardness/compressibility. Utility and sensitivity of the method in prostate cancer diagnostics were assessed compared to the current gold standard in prostate cancer diagnostics i.e. systematic biopsy. Material and methods The study involved 84 patients suspected of prostate cancer based on elevated PSA levels or abnormal per rectal examination findings. Sonoelastography was used to evaluate the prostate gland. In the case of regions with hardness two-fold greater than that of symmetric prostate area (strain ratio >2), targeted biopsy was used; which was followed by an ultrasound-guided 8- or 10-core systematic biopsy (regardless of sonoelastography-indicated sites) as a reference point. Results The mean age of patients was 69 years. PSA serum levels ranged between 1.02 and 885 ng/dl. The mean prostate volume was 62 ml (19–149 ml). Prostate cancer was found in 39 out of 84 individuals. Statistically significant differences in strain ratios between cancers and benign lesions were shown. Sonoelastography guided biopsy revealed 30 lesions – overall sensitivity 77% (sensitivity of the method – 81%). Sonoelastographic sensitivity increased depending on cancer stage according to the Gleason grading system: 6–60%, 7–75%, 8–83%, 9/10–100%. The estimated sensitivity of systematic biopsy was 92%. Conclusions Sonoelastography shows higher diagnostic sensitivity in prostate cancer diagnostics compared to conventional imaging techniques, i.e. grey-scale TRUS, Doppler ultrasound. It allows to reduce the number of collected tissue cores, and thus limit the incidence of complications as well as the costs involved. Sonoelastography using the determination of compressibility ratio for symmetrical prostatic regions may prove useful in the detection of clinically significant prostate cancer.
Eden, Earth Day, and Ecology: Landscape Restoration as Metaphor and Mission

Abstract This paper sketches the religious roots of landscape restoration, showing how it morphed from a theological to an environmental agenda, while retaining the fervour of a sacred mission. In the aftermath of Lynn White, Jr.’s ‘Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’ (1967) and the Earth Day reform mission (1970), convergent redemptive philosophies realigned ecotheology and landscape restoration along Franciscan lines, shedding commandments to subdue and conquer for injunctions to live in harmony with nature. Previously condemned as the antithesis of Eden, wilderness was transformed from dreaded chaos into a redemptive realm that led ecological restorers to idealise and worship supposedly virgin scenes. Instead of getting civilised, wild landscapes were treasured as locales of spiritual and bodily renewal. Favoured locales defiled by human occupance and imprint were restored to simulated wildness. Perceived analogies with archaeology, art, architecture and medicine further shape the aims and conventions of landscape restoration, widening enduring and unavoidable gulfs between restoration intention and performance, precept and practice.