Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antithrombotic treatment in real-life atrial fibrillation patients: a report from the Euro Heart Survey on Atrial Fibrillation.

AIMS To describe guideline adherence and application of different stroke risk stratification schemes regarding antithrombotic therapy in real-life atrial fibrillation (AF) patients and to assess which factors influence antithrombotic management decisions. METHODS AND RESULTS The Euro Heart Survey enrolled 5333 AF patients in 35 countries, in 2003 and 2004. Prescription of antithrombotic drugs, especially oral anticoagulation (OAC), was hardly tailored to the patient's stroke risk profile as indicated by the joint guidelines of the American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, and the European Society of Cardiology, ACCP guidelines, or CHADS(2) and Framingham risk scores. In multivariable analysis, only a limited number of the well-known stroke risk factors triggered OAC prescription. In contrast, less relevant factors, of which clinical type of AF and availability of an OAC monitoring outpatient clinic were the most marked, played a significant role in OAC prescription. Electrical cardioversions and catheter ablations clearly triggered OAC prescription, whereas pharmacological cardioversions even in the presence of stroke risk factors did not. CONCLUSION Antithrombotic therapy in AF is hardly tailored to the patient's stroke risk profile. Factors other than well-known stroke risk factors were significantly involved in antithrombotic management decisions. To facilitate this tailored treatment, guideline writers and physician educators should focus on providing one uniform and easy to use stroke risk stratification scheme.
A novel putative transporter maps to the osteosclerosis (oc) mutation and is not expressed in the oc mutant mouse.

The phenotype of mice homozygous for the osteosclerosis (oc) mutation includes osteopetrosis, and a variety of studies demonstrate that osteoclasts in these mice are present but nonfunctional. We have identified a novel gene that has homology to a family of 12-transmembrane domain proteins with transport functions and maps to proximal mouse chromosome 19, in a region to which the oc mutation has been previously assigned. The putative transporter is abundant in normal kidney, but its expression is markedly reduced in kidneys from oc/oc mice when tested using Northern and Western analyses. Southern analysis of this gene, which we call Roct (reduced in oc transporter), demonstrates that it is intact and unrearranged in oc/oc mice. In situ studies show that Roct is expressed in developing bone. We propose that the absence of Roct expression results in an osteopetrosis phenotype in mice.
Course in the Intensive Care Unit After ‘Preparatory’ Pulmonary Artery Banding and Aortopulmonary Shunt Placement for Transposition of the Great Arteries With Low Left Ventricular Pressure

BackgroundIn patients with transposition of the great arteries with low left ventricular pressure, pulmonary artery banding with aortopulmonary shunt placement has been advocated to “prepare” the left ventricle for systemic work before an arterial switch operation. Methods and ResultsIn 28 patients, this preparatory procedure was perfonned with one death. A successful arterial switch operation was performed at a median of 7 days later in 24 of 27 survivors; one child had a Senning performed, and two others died. During this interval period, the left ventricularto-right ventricular pressure ratio increased from 48±8% to 98±19%1, and left ventricular mass (indexed for body surface area) increased from 46±f17 to 72±23 g/m2. After the preparatory procedure, the initial postoperative period was frequently characterized by a low-output syndrome of variable length and severity. Prolonged mechanical ventilation, extended inotropic support, and/or a significant metabolic acidosis was present in 21 of 28 patients in the immediate postoperative period. ConclusionsThe low-output syndrome is most likely due to a combination of acute (fixed) right ventricular volume overload from the shunt and acute (transient) left ventricular dysfunction from the pulmonary artery band. This low-output syndrome should be anticipated following the preparatory procedure.
Distal Interstitial Epididymitis in Young Rats

A sporadic, diffuse, interstitial mixed cell epididymitis of unknown etiology was noted in the epididymal cauda and distal corpus of young control Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats. Rats from 2 different suppliers were examined as part of routine toxicology studies. The incidence of this finding was 5/5 (study 1), 2/7 (study 2), and 2/7 (study 3). Although 2 of these studies partially overlapped temporally, none of the affected animals from any study was maintained concurrently with affected animals from any of the other 2 studies, and infectious causes, control article toxicity, or autoimmune processes were considered unlikely etiologies. Inflammation similar to that noted in the epididymides of these young rats was not present in other tissues and was not noted in study cohorts sacrificed at ages older than approximately 11 weeks or in rats of similar age from other concurrent studies. Similar findings were noted sporadically in historical control data, and consequently an age-related finding of unknown etiology and occurring in sporadic clusters is reported in SD rats ≤11 weeks old.
[Hand function after surgery for flexor tendon injuries].

BACKGROUND Flexor tendon injuries are difficult to treat and the postoperative results have traditionally been poor. MATERIAL AND METHODS The article presents postoperative results (11-22 months) after surgical treatment of injured flexor tendons at Stavanger University Hospital. 32 injuries in 30 patients met the inclusion criteria; 23 of these patients responded to letters and telephone contacts. A physician and a hand therapist followed up 20 of the patients with a clinical examination and three were just interviewed by telephone. The results were evaluated according to joint movement, grip strength, occupational history and patient satisfaction. RESULTS 11 of 17 patients achieved excellent or good results according to Stricklands's classification of joint movement. 18 of 20 patients had a grip strength of more than 90% in the injured hand compared to that in the non-injured hand. 13 of 23 patients reported their hand function to be excellent or good; no one reported a negative occupational change after the operation. INTERPRETATION Treatment of flexor tendon surgery in the hand requires experienced surgeons and a well-organized post-operative rehabilitation protocol with dedicated hand and/or physical therapists. This study confirms that grip strength is less affected than joint movement after flexor tendon surgery.
The clinical landscape of critical care: nurses' decision-making.

BACKGROUND Many studies have tended to explore individual characteristics that impact on nurses' decision-making, despite significant acknowledgement that context is a major determinant in decision-making. The few studies that have examined environmental influences have tended not to study real decisions in the dynamic and complex clinical environment. AIMS To investigate environmental influences on nurses' real decisions in the critical care setting. METHOD Naturalistic observations and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 critical care nurses in private, public and rural hospitals. Observations and interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and coded for themes using content analysis. RESULTS All clinical decisions were strongly influenced by the context in which the decision was made. Three main environmental influences were identified: the patient situation, resource availability and interpersonal relationships. Time and risk guided all clinical decisions. Nurses established the state of the situation, the time constraints on decisions and the level of risk involved for both patient and nurse. CONCLUSIONS Decision-making is a manifestation of the landscape and although an increased understanding of the landscape is required, more important is the need to measure the impact of contextual variables on nurses' decision-making in order to improve health care outcomes.
Electrophysiologic analysis of aberrant regeneration after facial nerve paralysis

The blink reflex, ordinarily elicited only in the orbicularis oculi and not in other facial muscles, can be used to detect synkinetic movements objectively. In 26 of 29 patients tested at least 4 months after facial nerve degeneration, an aberrant blink reflex was recorded in the orbicularis oris on the affected side. Of the remaining three, one had injury to only a peripheral branch of the facial nerve and experienced a return of function with no evidence of synkinesis; in the other two, the affected side of the face was totally paralyzed in the absence of facial nerve regeneration. Synkinetic movements ultimately will occur in nearly all cases following facial nerve degeneration provided that the facial nerve regenerates from a proximal site.
PCL2 modulates gene regulatory networks controlling self-renewal and commitment in embryonic stem cells

Recent reports have better elucidated the components of the Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2) and its functional role in embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and their differentiated derivatives. The depletion of a newly described mammalian PRC2 associated protein, PCL2, leads to an increase in ESC self-renewal and a delay in differentiation, a phenotype similar to knockouts of the core PRC2 members. Genomic and cell biology data suggest that PCL2 is important in cell fate decisions and may play a role in recruitment of PRC2 to target genes and histone methylation. Importantly, depletion of PCL2 in ESCs leads to a decrease in 3meH3K27 at the proximal promoter regions of pluripotency transcription factors Tbx3, Klf4, Foxd3 and a concomitant increase in gene expression. These proteins subsequently activate expression of Oct4, Nanog and Sox2 through a feed-forward gene regulatory circuit, altering the core pluripotency network and driving cell fate decisions towards self-renewal. We propose a model whereby alteration of the epigenetic state of Tbx3, Klf4, and Foxd3 results in the enforced expression of the pluripotency network, preventing differentiation.
Molecular pathological epidemiology of colorectal neoplasia: an emerging transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary field

Colorectal cancer is a complex disease resulting from somatic genetic and epigenetic alterations, including locus-specific CpG island methylation and global DNA or LINE-1 hypomethylation. Global molecular characteristics such as microsatellite instability (MSI), CpG island methylator phenotype (CIMP), global DNA hypomethylation, and chromosomal instability cause alterations of gene function on a genome-wide scale. Activation of oncogenes including KRAS, BRAF and PIK3CA affects intracellular signalling pathways and has been associated with CIMP and MSI. Traditional epidemiology research has investigated various factors in relation to an overall risk of colon and/or rectal cancer. However, colorectal cancers comprise a heterogeneous group of diseases with different sets of genetic and epigenetic alterations. To better understand how a particular exposure influences the carcinogenic and pathologic process, somatic molecular changes and tumour biomarkers have been studied in relation to the exposure of interest. Moreover, an investigation of interactive effects of tumour molecular changes and the exposures of interest on tumour behaviour (prognosis or clinical outcome) can lead to a better understanding of tumour molecular changes, which may be prognostic or predictive tissue biomarkers. These new research efforts represent ‘molecular pathologic epidemiology’, which is a multidisciplinary field of investigations of the inter-relationship between exogenous and endogenous (eg, genetic) factors, tumoural molecular signatures and tumour progression. Furthermore, integrating genome-wide association studies (GWAS) with molecular pathological investigation is a promising area (GWAS-MPE approach). Examining the relationship between susceptibility alleles identified by GWAS and specific molecular alterations can help elucidate the function of these alleles and provide insights into whether susceptibility alleles are truly causal. Although there are challenges, molecular pathological epidemiology has unique strengths, and can provide insights into the pathogenic process and help optimise personalised prevention and therapy. In this review, we overview this relatively new field of research and discuss measures to overcome challenges and move this field forward.
Framework of Inclusive Growth Indicators 2014 4TH EDITION Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific special supplement

The Framework of Inclusive Growth Indicators 2014 (FIGI 2014) is the fourth edition of the special supplement of the Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific. The framework is composed of 35 indicators used as measures of income and nonincome dimensions of inclusive growth; the processes and inputs that are important to improve access to opportunities, social inclusion, social safety nets; and good governance and institutions.
L1-regularized reconstruction for traction force microscopy

Traction Force Microscopy (TFM) is a technique widely used to recover cellular tractions from the deformation they cause in their surrounding substrate. Traction recovery is an ill-posed inverse problem that benefits of a regularization scheme constraining the solution. Typically, Tikhonov regularization is used but it is well known that L1-regularization is a superior alternative to solve this type of problems. For that, recent approaches have started to explore what could be their contribution to increase the sensitivity and resolution in the estimation of the exerted tractions. In this manuscript, we adapt the L1-regularization of the curl and divergence to 2D TFM and compare the recovered tractions on simulated and real data with those obtained using Tikhonov and L1-norm regularization.
Multivariate time-variant identification of cardiovascular variability signals: a beat-to-beat spectral parameter estimation in vasovagal syncope

In this paper a bivariate, time-variant model able to continuously measure the mutual interactions between heart rate and systolic blood pressure variability signals is presented. A recursive identification of the model parameters makes it possible to estimate, on a beat-to-beat basis, spectral low-frequency (LF) and high-frequency (HF) power (LF/HF ratio) and cross-spectral (coherence and phase relationships between spectral peaks) indexes during nonstationary events. These indexes can be helpful in: 1) physiological study of autonomic nervous system mechanisms of cardiovascular control and 2) quantification and clinical evaluation of the neural and mechanical links between the two signals. In addition, an estimate of baroreceptive activation (/spl alpha/-gain) is continuously extracted. Before applying the model to cardiovascular signals, the reliability of the estimated parameters was tested on simulated signals. Subsequently, the model was applied to investigating vasovagal syncope episodes, aiming at the assessment of autonomic nervous system status and autonomic role in the dynamic phenomena which lead to syncope. The proposed model, which provides noninvasive beat-to-beat evaluation of the autonomic events, may be useful in the description of the syncopal episodes and in the comprehension of the complex physiological mechanisms of syncope.
Liposomal Daunorubicin (Daunoxome) in Combination with Cyclophosphamide, Vincristine and Prednisolone (COP-X) as Salvage Therapy in Poor-Prognosis Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma

We treated 33 patients with a variant of the standard 3 weekly CHOP regime, replacing doxorubicin with liposomal daunorubicin (DaunoXome, NeXstar Pharmaceuticals) 120 mg/m2 (COP-X). Eighteen subjects had relapsed / refractory aggressive NHL and 15 had indolent NHL/CLL. Median number of courses received was 4 (1–8). Thirty-two patients were evaluable for efficacy and 26 (81%) responded. 88% of patients with aggressive NHL responded; three (18%) patients achieved complete remission (CR), 12 (70%) achieved partial remission (PR), 1 (6%) patient had stable disease (SD) and 1 (6%) patient progressed through treatment. Median duration of response for patients with aggressive NHL was 3 months. The response rate in indolent NHL/CLL was 73%. Four (27%) patients achieved CR, 7 (46%) PR and 4 (27%) SD. At two years post treatment, 55% of the patients with indolent NHL/CLL remain progression-free, although 4 patients have proceeded to consolidation therapy. Twenty-seven out of 28 (96%) patients developed neutropenia of short duration following one or more of their treatments. Twenty-three patients developed an infection at some stage during therapy (all associated with neutropenia) and required hospitalisation. There were two toxic deaths (infection) both of which occurred in patients who were neutropenic before starting COP-X. Platelet toxicity was mild in patients with normal platelet counts at the commencement of therapy. Alopecia and mucositis were mild. No clinical evidence of myocardial failure was observed. We conclude that the substitution of DaunoXome for doxorubicin in the CHOP regimen to form COP-X provides excellent efficacy against non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Response durations were short but comparable to those reported with other regimes. COP-X was well tolerated with some suggestion of reduced non-haematological toxicity. The regimen should be considered as an alternative to CHOP with potentially less non-haematological toxicity, particularly cardiac; further studies are required to evaluate the regimen in this context.
Leveraging Structural Context Models and Ranking Score Fusion for Human Interaction Prediction

Predicting an interaction before it is fully executed is very important in applications, such as human-robot interaction and video surveillance. In a two-human interaction scenario, there are often contextual dependency structures between the global interaction context of the two humans and the local context of the different body parts of each human. In this paper, we propose to learn the structure of the interaction contexts and combine it with the spatial and temporal information of a video sequence to better predict the interaction class. The structural models, including the spatial and the temporal models, are learned with long short term memory (LSTM) networks to capture the dependency of the global and local contexts of each RGB frame and each optical flow image, respectively. LSTM networks are also capable of detecting the key information from global and local interaction contexts. Moreover, to effectively combine the structural models with the spatial and temporal models for interaction prediction, a ranking score fusion method is introduced to automatically compute the optimal weight of each model for score fusion. Experimental results on the BIT-Interaction Dataset and the UT-Interaction Dataset clearly demonstrate the benefits of the proposed method.
An 8 year follow-up of a specialist supported employment service for high-ability adults with autism or Asperger syndrome

Few supported employment programmes have been specifically designed for people with autism, especially those who are more able. This study examines the outcome of a supported employment service (NAS Prospects) for adults with autism or Asperger syndrome (IQ 60+) over an 8 year period. Approximately 68 percent of clients found employment. Of the 192 jobs, the majority were permanent contracts and most involved administrative, technical or computing work. Assessment of current clients indicates that IQ, language skills and educational attainments are high. However, work has also been found for those of lower abilities. Individuals supported by Prospects show a rise in salaries, contribute more tax and claim fewer benefits. Satisfaction with the scheme is high among clients, employers and support workers. Although the programme continues to incur a financial deficit, this has decreased. Moreover, there are many non-financial benefits, which are difficult to quantify. The importance of specialist employment support of this kind is discussed.
A modified TRIMP to quantify the in-season training load of team sport players

Abstract The aims of the study were to modify the training impulse (TRIMP) method of quantifying training load for use with intermittent team sports, and to examine the relationship between this modified TRIMP (TRIMPMOD) and changes in the physiological profile of team sport players during a competitive season. Eight male field hockey players, participating in the English Premier Division, took part in the study (mean±s: age 26±4 years, body mass 80.8±5.2 kg, stature 1.82±0.04 m). Participants performed three treadmill exercise tests at the start of the competitive season and mid-season: a submaximal test to establish the treadmill speed at a blood lactate concentration of 4 mmol · l−1; a maximal incremental test to determine maximal oxygen uptake ([Vdot]O2max) and peak running speed; and an all-out constant-load test to determine time to exhaustion. Heart rate was recorded during all training sessions and match-play, from which TRIMPMOD was calculated. Mean weekly TRIMPMOD was correlated with the change in [Vdot]O2max and treadmill speed at a blood lactate concentration of 4 mmol · l−1 from the start of to mid-season (P<0.05). The results suggest that TRIMPMOD is a means of quantifying training load in team sports and can be used to prescribe training for the maintenance or improvement of aerobic fitness during the competitive season.
Use of a Fragment of Glycoprotein G-2 Produced in the Baculovirus Expression System for Detecting Herpes Simplex Virus Type 2-Specific Antibodies

ABSTRACT Fragments of glycoprotein G (gG-2281-594His), comprising residues 281 to 594 of herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2), glycoprotein G of HSV-1 (gG-1t26-189His), and glycoprotein D of HSV-1 (gD-11-313), were expressed in the baculovirus expression system to develop an assay for the detection of HSV-1 and HSV-2 type-specific antibodies. The expression of the gG-1t26-189His and gG-2281-594His fragments was analyzed by Western blotting using monoclonal antibodies LP10 and AP1, respectively. The molecular masses of the major products of gG-1t26-189His and the fragment of gG-2281-594His were 36 to 39 kDa and 64 to 72 kDa, respectively. Human sera positive for HSV-1 reacted with gG-1t26-189His, sera positive for HSV-2 reacted with the gG-2281-594His fragment, and sera positive for both types reacted with gG-1t26-189His and gG-2281-594His in Western blotting. The human sera recognized polypeptides of gG-2281-594His with molecular masses of 57 to 67 and 120 to 150 kDa and additional faint bands of 21, 29, and 45 kDa. The recombinant gG-1t26-189His and the recombinant gG-2281-594His fragment were used as type-specific antigens for the detection of HSV-1- and HSV-2-specific antibody responses in human sera, respectively. As type-common antigens, an extract of HSV-1-infected Vero cells and recombinant gD-11-313 were used. An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to detect type-specific antibodies was developed, and the sensitivity and specificity were evaluated by comparison with commercial tests by using sera obtained from different sources. The sensitivity and specificity were 91.5 and 95.5%, respectively, compared to the Gull assay. The gG-2281-594His fragment can be obtained in relatively large quantities at low cost.