Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In Vivo Efficacy of ABT-255 against Drug-Sensitive and -Resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosisStrains

ABSTRACT Current therapy for pulmonary tuberculosis involves 6 months of treatment with isoniazid, pyrazinamide, rifampin, and ethambutol or streptomycin for reliable treatment efficacy. The long treatment period increases the probability of noncompliance, leading to the generation of multidrug-resistant isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. A treatment option that significantly shortened the course of therapy, or a new class of antibacterial effective against drug-resistant M. tuberculosis would be of value. ABT-255 is a novel 2-pyridone antibacterial agent which demonstrates in vitro potency and in vivo efficacy against drug-susceptible and drug-resistant M. tuberculosis strains. By the Alamar blue reduction technique, the MIC of ABT-255 against susceptible strains of M. tuberculosis ranged from 0.016 to 0.031 μg/ml. The MIC of ABT-255 against rifampin- or ethambutol-resistant M. tuberculosis isolates was 0.031 μg/ml. In a murine model of pulmonary tuberculosis, 4 weeks of oral ABT-255 therapy produced a 2- to 5-log10 reduction in viable drug-susceptible M. tuberculosis counts from lung tissue. Against drug-resistant strains of M. tuberculosis, ABT-255 produced a 2- to 3-log10 reduction in viable bacterial counts from lung tissue. ABT-255 is a promising new antibacterial agent with activity against M. tuberculosis.
Tracking and quantifying negative content on social media

by MANISH RANJAN (Under the guidance of Shannon Quinn) “Big Data” techniques have been lately instrumental in solving challenging problems in healthcare and have given rise to the development of “biosurveillance” frameworks. These frameworks are an application of big data processing paradigms which addresses the problem of identifying and predicting threats to public health. Existing biosurveillance platforms are limited in their applicability to task such as detecting adult content, detecting spams specifically. We present a biosurveillance framework that can not only detect “any” negative topics appearing on social media, but also topics co-emerging with negative topics. This framework can also identify at risk individuals by evaluating their shared negative content. In our proposed framework, we combine topic modeling with sentiment analysis to provide an estimate of toxic or abusive behavior, identifying a pool of potentially at-risk users. This framework is also capable of adjusting its learning over time. In a more mature phase our framework could be used by medical professionals to monitor and study users for their mental health disorders more closely and accurately.
Effect of surgical flap on IL-1β and TGF-β concentrations in the gingival crevicular fluid of patients with moderate to severe chronic periodontitis.

BACKGROUND Growth factors play a major part in wound healing in many tissues including the periodontium. Transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) is one of these factors present in the gingival crevicular fluid. In addition, it is considered as one of the most important anti-inflammatory cytokines. Interleukin-1β is a proinflammatory cytokine that presents itself in gingival inflammation and the GCF. Such factors might be of value as prognostic markers of wound healing activity and the therapeutic progress following flap surgery. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of surgical flap on the concentration of IL-1β and TGF-β in the GCF of patients with moderate to severe chronic periodontitis. METHODS The GCF samples were collected, using the Perio-Paper strip at phase 1 (pre-surgery), phase 2 (4th week post surgery) and phase 3 (12th week post surgery) from 20 sites of 10 patients undergoing flap surgery. After the elution, IL-1β and TGF-β concentrations were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). RESULTS The mean TGF-β and IL-1β concentration decreased from phase 1 to phase 3 (p<0.05). There were no significant statistical correlations between IL-1β and TGF-β1 concentrations in the 3 assessment phases. There was a significant statistical correlation between TGF-β1 concentrations and the Plaque Index (PI) in phase 2 (p<0.05). There was a significant statistical correlation (p<0.05) between IL-1β and TGF-β1 concentration and the probing pocket depth (PPD). CONCLUSION The flap surgery has a significant effect on decreasing IL-1β concentration. In the case of TGF-β1, probably the decrease in the concentration after treatment might be due to the removal of the inflammatory stimulants.
Brain literacy empowers educators to meet diverse learner needs

ABSTRACT The potential of educational neuroscience in teacher training and continuing professional development has been debated extensively, yet knowledge translation is largely absent in this field. Without objective methods for translating and disseminating educational neuroscience evidence, the impact of training on educators and the children they serve will remain limited. This position paper addresses this critical teacher education need by providing a rationale for why brain literacy training is vital as teachers learn to meet the needs of diverse learners. The authors offer three important factors for consideration regarding the utility of educational neuroscience for educators and allied school practitioners. First, the foundations and history of professional educator development in educational neuroscience will be considered. Second, a brief review of the empirical learning science literature within the context of science-based education will be considered. Third, a rationale for including a more intensive brain literacy training for educators is provided by comparing the impact traditional teaching practices and brain literate strategies have on curriculum and instruction, and how standard practices may actually undermine student brain development. Finally, three recommendations for developing educator brain literacy are offered to guide future policy, research, and practice decisions.
Learning distributed representations for large-scale dynamic social networks

Learning distributed representations of symbolic data were introduced by Hinton[1], and first developed in modeling networks for learning the node vectors by Perozzi et al (2014). In this work, we proposed Dnps, a novel nodes embedding approach for acquiring distributed representations of large-scale dynamic social networks. Dnps is suitable for many types of social networks: dynamic/static, directed/undirected, and weighted/unweighted. Recently, several works of nodes embedding were proposed. However, they were designed for static networks, such as language networks. To address this problem, first, we develop a damping based positive sampling (DpS) algorithm to learn the hierarchical structure of social networks. Then, we devise a local search based DpS algorithm to obtain incremental information of network evolution. Finally, we show Dnps's potentials on future link prediction task for three real-life large-scale dynamic social networks. The results show that Dnps consistently outperforms all baseline methods and exhibits an improvement of 12%, 6%, 4% on Digg, Flickr and YouTube over the second-highest level, respectively. Moreover, Dnps is also scalable. For example, Dnps can speed up the training process in 2 ∼ 36 times compared with benchmarks on Flickr network. The source codes of the project is available online1.
Fundamental numerical and experimental evaluation of attitude recovery control for a quad tilt rotor UAV against disturbance

This paper presents attitude recovery control for a quad tilt rotor UAV. The quad tilt rotor UAV has ability of flying with completely independent 3 DOF position and 3 DOF attitude control by changing the thrust directions. This type of UAV is expected to perform better response to the disturbance by virtue of the mechanism of changing the thrust directions compared to the conventional multi-rotor UAV. This paper proposes disturbance detection method using IMU sensor and develops attitude recovery control against impact disturbance. The numerical simulation and fundamental flight experiments were carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method compared to the conventional PID control.
The Type V Transforming Growth Factor β Receptor Is the Putative Insulin-like Growth Factor-binding Protein 3 Receptor*

Insulin-like growth factor-binding protein 3 (IGFBP-3) has been shown to inhibit cell growth by IGF-dependent and -independent mechanisms. The putative cell-surface IGFBP-3 receptor that mediates the IGF-independent growth inhibition has not been identified. Here we show that recombinant human IGFBP-3 inhibits125I-transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1 binding to the type V TGF-β receptor (M r 400,000) in mink lung epithelial cells. We also demonstrate that the ∼400-kDa125I-IGFBP-3 affinity-labeled putative IGFBP-3 receptor is immunoprecipitated by specific antiserum to the type V TGF-β receptor. The 125I-IGFBP-3 affinity labeling of the putative receptor and IGFBP-3-induced growth inhibition as measured by DNA synthesis in these cells is blocked by a TGF-β1peptide antagonist. The 125I-IGFBP-3 affinity-labeled putative receptor can only be detected in cells expressing the type V TGF-β receptor, but not in cells lacking the type V TGF-β receptor. These results indicate that the type V TGF-β receptor is the putative IGFBP-3 receptor and that IGFBP-3 is a functional ligand for the type V TGF-β receptor.
Herding, Faith-Based Investments and the Global Financial Crisis: Empirical Evidence From Static and Dynamic Models

ABSTRACT The purpose for this article is to explore the existence of herding behavior in the context of Shariah-based ethical investments. To this end the authors have employed the highly liquid constituent stocks of the U.S. Dow Jones Islamic Index for the period January 2007 to December 2014. The methodology encompasses both static and dynamic models that capture potential time-varying patterns or asymmetric behavior of herding. Summarizing the results, the authors document significant antiherding behavior that is robust across different formulations and testing procedures. Most interestingly, they observe an asymmetric behavior of the antiherding phenomenon. Results from the dynamic analysis reveal that antiherding tends to be more intense during turbulent periods. The findings may entail useful implications for investors who wish to diversify their portfolios using faith-based investments.
Alzheimer's Disease Diagnosis Using Landmark-Based Features From Longitudinal Structural MR Images

Structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been proven to be an effective tool for Alzheimer's disease (AD) diagnosis. While conventional MRI-based AD diagnosis typically uses images acquired at a single time point, a longitudinal study is more sensitive in detecting early pathological changes of AD, making it more favorable for accurate diagnosis. In general, there are two challenges faced in MRI-based diagnosis. First, extracting features from structural MR images requires time-consuming nonlinear registration and tissue segmentation, whereas the longitudinal study with involvement of more scans further exacerbates the computational costs. Moreover, the inconsistent longitudinal scans (i.e., different scanning time points and also the total number of scans) hinder extraction of unified feature representations in longitudinal studies. In this paper, we propose a landmark-based feature extraction method for AD diagnosis using longitudinal structural MR images, which does not require nonlinear registration or tissue segmentation in the application stage and is also robust to inconsistencies among longitudinal scans. Specifically, first, the discriminative landmarks are automatically discovered from the whole brain using training images, and then efficiently localized using a fast landmark detection method for testing images, without the involvement of any nonlinear registration and tissue segmentation; and second, high-level statistical spatial features and contextual longitudinal features are further extracted based on those detected landmarks, which can characterize spatial structural abnormalities and longitudinal landmark variations. Using these spatial and longitudinal features, a linear support vector machine is finally adopted to distinguish AD subjects or mild cognitive impairment (MCI) subjects from healthy controls (HCs). Experimental results on the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative database demonstrate the superior performance and efficiency of the proposed method, with classification accuracies of 88.30% for AD versus HC and 79.02% for MCI versus HC, respectively.
Short‐term UV Exposure of Sunbathers at a Mediterranean Sea Site

The aim of this study was to investigate whether systematic differences in solar UV exposure on a specific anatomical site (chest) exist among three groups of Italian sunbathers: healthy subjects (suntanned and non‐suntanned individuals) and subjects affected by abnormally high sensitivity to solar exposure. A second aim of the study was to search for a possible relation among biological markers of individual response to UV exposure (such as skin colorimetric parameters, skin temperature and changes in free radical amounts [FR] in the blood) and photosensitivity. FR in the blood were analyzed because of their possible influence on UV carcinogenesis. Measurements of ambient doses (i.e. incident erythemally weighted irradiance on a horizontal surface over a specified period of time) and erythemally effective UV dose received by an anatomical site (here called personal dose or exposure on a specific anatomical site) were investigated. Personal doses received by the chest were determined using polysulfone dosimetry. Exposure Ratio (ER), defined as the ratio between the personal dose and the corresponding ambient dose during the same exposure period, was then calculated. Measuring of skin color in the Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage L* (luminance), a* (redness), b* (yellowness) system and skin temperature were also carried out on the inner upper arm (nonexposed skin site) and on the chest. It was found that the median value of ER was 0.20 (min: 0.09 and max: 0.34) for suntanned individuals, it was 0.17 (min: 0.13 and max: 0.42) for non‐suntanned individuals and it was 0.19 (min: 0.14 and max: 0.34) for photosensitive individuals. There were no significant differences across the groups in their median ER scores. In addition, the statistical analysis showed that L* on the exposed site before exposure demonstrated consistently higher median scores after exposure in all groups. The b* value after exposure was significantly lower than before exposure in all participants, while no significant differences for a* were observed before or after exposure between or within the groups. Our findings suggest that photodermatoses are not significantly related to ER and to the changes in biological markers due to too short‐term UV exposure.
MicroRNAs and bacterial infection

MicroRNAs, small non‐coding RNAs expressed by eukaryotic cells, play pivotal roles in shaping cell differentiation and organism development. Deregulated microRNA expression is associated with several types of diseases including cancers, immune disorders and infection. Acting at the post‐transcriptional level, miRNAs have expanded our understanding of the control of gene expression in regulatory networks involved in the adaptation to environmental situations such as biotic stress. It is increasingly clear that miRNAs are an important part of the host response to microbes. This review presents the current state of knowledge about the role of miRNAs in the response to both bacterial pathogens and commensal bacteria in human cells or animal experimental models. Some microRNAs, including miR‐146, miR‐155, miR‐125, let‐7 and miR‐21, are commonly affected during bacterial infection and contribute to immune responses protecting the organism against overwhelmed inflammation. Cell‐specific relationships between miRNAs and their targets are also engaged in the alterations induced by virulent bacteria in the proliferation/differentiation/apoptosis pathways of their host cells. In a separate role, miRNA modulation also represents a mechanism through which commensal bacteria impact the regulation of the barrier function and intestinal homeostasis.
Long-Term Follow-Up of External Dacryocystorhinostomy and the Factors Affecting Its Success

Aim: To evaluate the long-term follow-up results of external dacryocystorhinostomy (Ex-DCR) and to assess the role of some factors in its success. Patients and Methods: Between January 1990 and November 2002, 437 nasolacrimal systems of 387 patients were operated on and included in the study. The success rates were determined on the basis of the last examinations of the patients, and the correlations between success rates and factors such as age, gender, the duration of obstruction, history of acute dacryocystitis, the side of obstruction, and the postoperative follow-up period were calculated. Results: The mean follow-up period was 5.9 ± 2.5 years. Fifty cases (12.9%) were operated bilaterally. The initial success rate was 91.5% and the last success rate was 98.4% after reoperations. We found meaningful correlations between success and duration of obstruction, age of the patient, and the duration of postoperative follow-up (r = 0.18, 0.17 and −0.14, p = 0.036, 0.001 and 0.002, respectively). Discussion: In comparison to newly developed surgical techniques for the treatment of nasolacrimal duct obstruction, Ex-DCR still appears to offer higher success rates, even after long-term follow-up. In addition to being a cost-effective procedure, it requires no sophisticated instruments. In our opinion, the high success rates may be explained by the nature of the operation, which creates a fistula between the sac and the nasal mucosa.
A wideband circularly polarized monopole antenna array

In this paper, a wideband circularly polarized (CP) antenna array employing four monopoles is proposed. The feed network has a wideband 4-way power divider and is constructed using matermaterial transmission line (MM TL). The signals from adjacent output ports of the 4-way power divider have a phase difference of 90° and are used to feed the four monopole elements. Results show that the CP antenna can achieve a very wide impedance bandwidth of 1.01~3.58 GHz (111.98%) axial-ratio bandwidth of 1.27~3.38 GHz (90.75%).
Appendiceal goblet cell carcinoid and mucinous neoplasms are closely associated tumors: Lessons from their coexistence in primary tumors and concurrence in peritoneal dissemination

Goblet cell carcinoid (GCC) and appendiceal mucinous neoplasms (AMNs) are considered as different appendiceal tumors. Coexistence of both tumors was occasionally noted. We further observed the concurrence in both primary tumors and their peritoneal dissemination, that is, peritoneal carcinomatosis (PC) including pseudomyxoma peritonei (PMP).
Association of PIK3CA Mutation Status before and after Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy with Response to Chemotherapy in Women with Breast Cancer

Purpose: The association between PIK3CA mutations and response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in women with primary breast cancer is not fully elucidated. Experimental Design: PIK3CA mutations in breast cancer tissues that were taken prior to the initiation of neoadjuvant chemotherapy were identified in 729 operable primary breast cancer patients who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Among these, the PIK3CA mutations were also reassessed in tumor tissues procured following operation in 102 patients after completion of neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Results: A total of 206 out of 729 (28.3%) patients had PIK3CA mutations, and 19.5% of patients (142/729) in this cohort achieved a pathologic complete response (pCR) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Patients with PIK3CA mutations exhibited a lower pCR rate than did those with wild-type (14.6% vs. 21.4%, P = 0.035). No significant differences in disease-free survival (DFS) or distant disease-free survival (DDFS) were observed between PIK3CA mutant and wild-type in the entire study population. Among the 102 patients with PIK3CA mutation statuses available before and after neoadjuvant chemotherapy, 24 patients (23.5%) had PIK3CA mutations before neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Of these 24 patients, 15 patients retained their initial PIK3CA mutations and 9 patients lost their initial mutations after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Patients who retained the initial mutations after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (n = 15) had a worse DDFS than the remaining patients (n = 87) in this subgroup [unadjusted HR, 2.34; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.98–5.62; P = 0.050]. Conclusions: Patients with PIK3CA mutations are less likely to respond to neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Patients who retain their initial PIK3CA mutations after neoadjuvant chemotherapy have an unfavorable survival. Clin Cancer Res; 21(19); 4365–72. ©2015 AACR.
Development of a validation and qualification process for the manufacturing of medical devices : a case study based on cross-sector benchmarking

The validation stage plays a critical role in the development and production of medical devices; it ensures new medical devices meet all the functional, reliability and quality requirements of both customer and regulatory authorities. This paper presents a case study concerning validation and qualification process for medical devices in a UK-based medical device manufacturer. The work aims to develop an efficient and highly reliable procedure for the validation of medical devices. A benchmarking study has been performed to identify the best practices in product validation. The existing practices within the case study manufacturer have been reviewed to identify opportunities for validation improvement. New practices have been proposed for the case study manufacturer, and guidelines for implementing the proposed validation procedures have also been developed.
Association of risk factors with acute myocardial infarction in Middle Eastern countries: the INTERHEART Middle East study

Background and objectives Mortality from cardiovascular disease in the Middle East (ME) is projected to increase substantially by 2020. There are no large studies on the impact of risk factors for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in the region. This is a report on the association of nine risk factors with AMI in the ME. Methods and results As part of the INTERHEART (IH) study, we enrolled 1364 cases of first AMI and 1525 matching controls from eight ME countries. The age at first AMI was 51.2 ± 10.3 years, which is the youngest, and with the largest proportion of patients <40 years in the entire IH population. The overall population attributable risk (PAR) of the nine risk factors to AMI was higher in the ME (97.5%) than worldwide (90.4%). Elevated apolipoprotein (Apo)B/ApoA1 had the strongest association with AMI, with odds ratio (OR) of 3.43 and PAR of 57.1%, followed by smoking (OR 3.63 and PAR 45.6%). ApoB/ApoA1 had greater association than the conventional low-density lipoprotein (LDL)/high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol ratio. Both diabetes (OR 3.42, PAR 16.4%) and hypertension (OR 1.89, PAR 10.7%) had greater association with AMI in women than men. Abdominal obesity (OR 2.12, PAR 26.1%) and depression (OR 1.97, PAR 45.3%), but not conventional BMI, were significantly associated with AMI (p < 0.0001). Conclusion This is the largest prospective population study of risk factors associated with AMI in the ME. AMI occurs at younger age in the ME than all other regions. The PAR for the nine risk factors was higher in the ME (97.5%) than the rest of the world. These findings should guide serious prevention strategies.