Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of Corneal and Anterior Chamber Parameters following Myopic laser in situ keratomileusis and photorefractive keratectomy by Pentacam as A New Imaging Technique

Purpose: To compare changes in posterior corneal elevation, anterior chamber depth (ACD), anterior chamber volume (ACV) and corneal volume (CV) after laser in situ keratomileusis (LASIK ) and photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) for low to moderate myopia by pentacam imaging Methods: In this prospective comparative case series, 105 consecutive myopic eyes randomly scheduled for LASIK (n=59) or PRK (n=46) in Farabi Eye Hospital, underwent pentacam imaging. Posterior corneal elevation, ACD, ACV and CV changes before and 6 months after operation were evaluated. Results: Mean posterior displacement was 4.55±4.12 µm (range: -4 to +18 µm) and 3.9±4.5 µm (-4 to +21 µm) in LASIK and PRK treated eyes, respectively (P>0.05). The ACV, ACD and CV were decreased in both groups but the reduction of these parameters pre and postoperatively in each group and between two groups was not statistically significant (P>0.05). Conclusion: There was no significant difference in posterior corneal displacement, ACD, ACV and CV between LASIK and PRK treated eyes.
Changing educational inequalities in india in the context of affirmative action

Indian society suffers from substantial inequalities in education, employment, and income based on caste and ethnicity. Compensatory or positive discrimination policies reserve 15% of the seats in institutions of higher education and state and central government jobs for people of the lowest caste, the Scheduled Caste; 7.5% of the seats are reserved for the Scheduled Tribe. These programs have been strengthened by improved enforcement and increased funding in the 1990s. This positive discrimination has also generated popular backlash and on-the-ground sabotage of the programs. This paper examines the changes in educational attainment between various social groups for a period of nearly 20 years to see whether educational inequalities have declined over time. We use data from a large national sample survey of over 100,000 households for each of the four survey years—1983, 1987–1988, 1993–1994, and 1999–2000-andfocus on the educational attainment of children and young adults aged 6–29. Our results show a declining gap between dalits, adivasis, and others in the odds of completing primary school. Such improvement is not seen for Muslims, a minority group that does not benefit from affirmative action. We find little improvement in inequality at the college level. Further, we do not find evidence that upper-income groups, the so-called creamy layer of dalits and adivasis, disproportionately benefit from the affirmative action programs at the expense of their lower-income counterparts.
Tetrahydrobiopterin in nitric oxide synthesis: a novel biological role for pteridines.

Ever since the discovery that (6R)-5,6,7,8-tetrahydro-L-biopterin (BH4) is a cofactor of NOS, its function has been the object of intense research and occasional controversy. Only in the last couple of years a consensus has been reached on what constitutes the main role of BH4 in NO synthesis. In this review we aim to provide an outline of the various ways in which BH4 affects NOS catalysis. First we give a brief general description of the structure and catalytic mechanism of NOS, with special emphasis on those aspects of catalysis that are actively debated, and that directly or indirectly involve BH4. Foremost among those issues is uncoupled catalysis, i.e. the NOS-catalyzed oxidation of NADPH in the absence of substrate or pterin that does not result in NO production. We also shortly discuss the ongoing debate on whether NO is the actual reaction product of NOS catalysis, as well as the phenomenon of NO-mediated autoinhibition. We describe the function of BH4 in aromatic amino acid hydroxylation, and discuss the allosteric and structural effects that BH4 exerts on NOS. Next we turn our attention to what is now becoming accepted as the central function of BH4: its capacity to act as a 1-electron donor during reductive activation of the oxyferrous complex of the heme. Finally, we illustrate how BH4 might transform the NOS dimer into an efficient S-nitrosoglutathione synthase,and briefly touch on some more speculative aspects of the role of BH4 in NO synthesis.
Traumatic Superficial Temporal Artery Pseudoaneurysm in a Helmeted Lacrosse Player.

Introduction Superficial temporal artery pseudoaneurysms (STAP) are uncommon vascular lesions typically coinciding with blunt head trauma. Although hundreds of cases have been described (5,10), few have been reported in sports medicine journals. Diagnosis of STAP can be made clinically, presenting as painless masses at the site of injury. STAP can be confused with cysts, abscesses, hematomas, lipomas, and other dermal lesions (2) but can be primarily identified using duplex ultrasound (US) or computed tomography angiography (CTA). Point-of-care musculoskeletal US, a modality becoming more widely available in sports medicine clinics, provides safe and accurate diagnosis of STAP and can facilitate referral, treatment, and ultimately return to play for athletes (10). Timely diagnosis is critical as pseudoaneurysm rupture is the main cause of morbidity. We present the case of a 16-year-old high school lacrosse player who developed STAP after being struck by a lacrosse ball.
Signals, Systems & Inference [Bookshelf]

Courses with the title “Sig­ nals and Systems” or so­ me thing similar started appearing in the curricula of elec­ trical engineering departments during the early 1980s. Prior to that, mathematical methods such as Fourier series, Fourier and Laplace transforms, and their time­domain counterparts, such as convolution and the impulse response, were scattered across multiple courses within the same curriculum. Often these courses used in­ consistent and contradictory notation and assumptions, thus leaving the students more confused than ever. The introduc­ tion of a single signals and systems course that covers all of these topics in a unified fashion was a great step forward because it provided students with a solid foundation before proceeding on to specialized courses in communications, control, signal processing, or circuits. Indeed, the book by Oppenheim and Willsky [1] was a pioneer in this sense when its first edition appeared in 1982. Signals, Systems & Inference builds on the philosophy of a unified signals and systems framework by incorporating probability into the mix. This is reflected in the inclusion of the phrase “inference” in the title, along with the now­ traditional “signals and systems. ” The book is not a com­ petitor to other books with a more traditional coverage of the signals and systems area. Rather, the text presupposes that the students have already had such a course, in addi­ tion to an introductory course in probability. In the preface, the authors state that the book is based on a course that is populated by advanced undergraduate engineering stu­ dents as well as undergraduate and graduate students from applied science. Thus, whereas a traditional signals and systems course is usually taught in the third year, a course based on this text would naturally fit into the fourth year.
Settlement of benthic marine invertebrates

Settlement and recruitment of benthic marine invertebrates are complex processes, determined by the interaction of biotic and abiotic factors which operate at different temporal and spatial scales. This review analyses the settlement process, attempting to integrate aspects related to different levels of organization (i.e. ecological-physiological-molecular). This is important because many factors that act at any of these levels and at different times can explain by themselves the patterns of settlement andlor recruitment of a large number of species. From an ecological perspective, progress has been made in the identification of causal factors of vanations in larval availability for settlement. Many physical and ethological factors that act during settlement have, however, not received much attention. Likewise, since the great majority of settlement studies have been carried out at restricted spatial scales, fewer works consider different biological and physical factors acting at different scales simultaneously. Settlement patterns are frequently inferred from recruitment. In this sense, a density-independent action of post-settlement mortality has been cons~dered as prerequisite for thls type of inference. This has, however, recently been challenged on the basis that settler-recruit and mortality-settler density relationships change in time. At the physiological-molecular level, different settlement-inducing chemical cues have been identified. Those cues have, however, not yet been characterized to understand better the signal transduction mechanisms involved in larval responses. It is likely that the nervous system is involved. The use of artificial inducers would be useful in studying settlement induction, until more effective natural inducers are isolated and characterized Although few studies have analysed the acquisition of competence, stages of larval development have been related to changes in protein patterns or enzymatic levels of the nervous system. An inopportune exposure of larvae to inducers may delay settlement and may even have a negative impact on growth and subsequent survival of juveniles.
The value of clinical judgement analysis for improving the quality of doctors’ prescribing decisions

Background Many initiatives are taken to improve prescribing decisions. Educational strategies for doctors have been effective in at least 50% of cases. Some reflection on one's own performance seems to be a common feature of the most effective strategies. So far, such reflections have mainly focused on the observed outcomes of the doctors' decisions, i.e. on what doctors do in practice. Studies in other fields have shown that another form of feedback based on the analysis of judgements may be useful as well.
Interferon beta-1a in primary progressive MS: an exploratory, randomized, controlled trial.

BACKGROUND Patients with primary progressive MS have atypical clinical and MRI characteristics and have been excluded from most therapeutic trials. The authors report a randomized, controlled trial restricted to primary progressive MS. METHODS Fifty subjects were randomized to weekly IM interferon beta-1a 30 microg, 60 microg, or placebo for 2 years. The primary endpoint was time to sustained progression in disability. Secondary outcomes included the timed 10-meter walk, nine-hole peg test, and on MRI, T2 and T1 brain lesion loads and brain and spinal cord atrophy. RESULTS The 30- microg dose of interferon beta-1a was well tolerated, but the 60- microg dose caused severe flulike reactions and raised liver enzymes. No treatment effect was seen on the primary endpoint. Subjects on interferon beta-1a 30 microg had a lower rate of accumulation of T2 lesion load than controls (p = 0.025); subjects on 60 microg had a greater rate of ventricular enlargement than controls (p = 0.025). CONCLUSIONS This study has demonstrated that interferon beta-1a 30 microg was well tolerated, identified useful outcome measures, but showed no efficacy on the primary outcome measure or on most of the secondary outcome measures.
Proposed score for occlusal-supporting ability

In our previous studies, we developed the normal periodontal ligament index (nPLI) and residual periodontal ligament index (rPLI) to estimate residual periodontal ligament support for individual teeth during treatment planning for partially edentulous patients. To illustrate the applicability of the nPLI and rPLI, an occlusal-supporting ability (OSA) score calculated using these indices for the remaining teeth corresponding to Eichner’s subclasses of partial edentulism was charted by numerically assessing the average occlusal support. This OSA score based on the nPLI and rPLI is proposed as a suitable tool for epidemiologic research on the progression of tooth loss and the survival of prostheses. The Ethics Committee for Epidemiologic Study of Hiroshima University approved the study protocol (No. 331).
Peptide Vaccines for Cancer

The revelation that immune cytolytic and helper T-cells recognize intracellularly degraded peptides processed via the proteosome apparatus, inserted into the endoplasmic reticulum and transported to the surface for association with major histocompatibility locus (MHC) molecules on specialized antigen-presenting cells has revolutionized the cancer vaccine field. Understanding the science of antigen processing and presentation has provided new reagents, delivery systems, and new investigative leads for the generation of immune responses against cancer. The cloning of tumor antigen genes has proceeded rapidly in melanoma, due to the ease with which melanoma-specific T-cells can be propagated in vitro, but breast, cervix, and lung cancer are not far behind. The cloning and identification of tumor antigens recognized by T-cells and data from initial clinical trials with peptides vaccines derived from those antigens are presented.
Cadmium resistance in an oligochaete and its effect on cadmium trophic transfer to an omnivorous shrimp

It has been demonstrated that the deposit-feeding oligochaete Limnodrilus hoffmeisteri inhabiting Foundry Cove (FC), a severely cadmium (Cd)-contaminated cove located on the Hudson River, New York, USA, has evolved resistance to Cd. In this study we investigate how this resistance influences Cd trophic transfer from this oligochaete to the grass shri.mp Palaernonetes p u g ~ o . Cadmium-resistant worms collected from FC and nonresistant worms collected from an adjacent unpolluted site were investigated for differences in Cd tolerance, accumulation, subcellular distribution and bioavailability to shrimp. FC worms were more tolerant of Cd, surviving twice as long as worms from the unpolluted site during a toxicity bioassay The 7 d concentration factor of Cd-resistant worms was 4 times greater than that of nonresistant worms (2020 vs 577). There were also differences between worm populations with respect to subc~llular Cd distributions. Cd-resistant worms produced metallothionein-like proteins (MT) as well as metal-nch granules (MRG) for Cd storage and detoxification; nonresistant worms only produced MT These differences in subcellular Cd distributions led to large differences in Cd bioavailability to shrimp; shrimp fed Cd-resistant worms absorbed 21 % of the ingested Cd, while those fed nonresistant worms absorbed roughly 4 times that amount (-757:,). These absorption efficiencies were in good agreement with the proportions of Cd bound to the worm's most biologically available subcellular fractions (i e , the cytosol and organelles). Although Cd-resistant worms predominantly stored the toxic metal In biologically unavailable MRG, their increased accumulation of Cd would still result in substantial trophic transfer to shrimp because of the storage of Cd in the biologically available fractions. This work demonstrates that the evolution of Cd resistance can have profound implications for Cd bioavailability and cycling within aquatic ecosystems.
Problems in the supervision and assessment of student nurses: Can clinical placement be improved?

Abstract The assessment and supervision of student nurses during clinical placement remains a complex activity. The student needs to be assessed thoroughly to identify his or her strengths and weaknesses. Further, this assessment should be conducted in circumstances which allow the student to be at his or her best. There are many which continue to impact upon clinical supervisors although documented over the last five to ten years. This paper addresses how assessment and student supervision are still influenced by extraneous factors. Its major suggestion is for universities to place a greater emphasis on all aspects of the clinical placement component within nursing courses.
Angiogenic proteins as aid in the diagnosis and prediction of preeclampsia

Abstract Preeclampsia/eclampsia remains a major cause of maternal and fetal morbidity worldwide. It also remains a leading cause of iatrogenic prematurity as delivery is currently the only way to successfully treat the disorder. The mechanisms that initiate preeclampsia in humans have been remarkably elusive, but some parts of the puzzle have begun to come together. Recently, it has been suggested that its major phenotypes, such as hypertension, proteinuria and endothelial dysfunction, are due to circulating anti-angiogenic proteins such as soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase-1 and soluble endoglin. Abnormalities in these circulating angiogenic proteins are not only present during clinical preeclampsia, but also antedate clinical symptoms by at least 5–6 weeks. The availability of automated platforms for the measurement of these angiogenic proteins has allowed clinicians to evaluate the role of these biomarkers as an aid in the diagnosis and prediction of preeclampsia. This review will highlight the recent clinical studies that have evaluated the utility of these biomarkers in preeclampsia and its related complications.
Improved topic classification and keyword discovery using an HMM-based speech recognizer trained without supervision

In our previous publication [1], we presented a new approach to HMM training, viz., training without supervision. We used an HMM trained without supervision for transcribing audio into self-organized units (SOUs) for the purpose of topic classiﬁcation. In this paper we report improvements made to the system, including the use of context dependent acoustic models and lattice based features that together reduce the topic veriﬁcation equal error rate from 12% to 7%. In addition to discussing the effectiveness of the SOU approach, we describe how we analyzed some selected SOU n-grams and found that they were highly correlated with keywords, demonstrating the ability of the SOU technology to discover topic relevant keywords.
ZnO nanoparticles assist the refolding of denatured green fluorescent protein

Proteins are essential for cellular and biological processes. Proteins are synthesized and fold into the native structure to become active. The inability of a protein molecule to remain in its native conformation is called as protein misfolding, and this is due to several environmental factors. Protein misfolding and aggregation handle several human diseases. Protein misfolding is believed to be one of the causes of several disorders such as cancer, degenerative diseases, and metabolic pathologies. The zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticle was significantly promoted refolding of thermally denatured green fluorescent protein (GFP). In the present study, ZnO nanoparticles interaction with GFP was investigated by ultraviolet‐visible spectrophotometer, fluorescence spectrophotometer, and dynamic light scattering. Results suggest that the ZnO nanoparticles significantly assist the refolding of denatured GFP. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The evolution of recombination and genomic structures: a modeling approach

Meiotic recombination plays several critical roles in molecular evolution. First, recombina- tion represents a key step in the production and transmission of gametes during meiosis. Second, recombination facilitates the impact of natural selection by shuffling genomic sequences. Furthermore, the action of certain repair mechanisms during recombination affects the frequencies of alleles in populations via biased gene conversion. Lately, the numerous advancements in the study of recombination have unraveled the complexity of this process regarding both its mechanisms and evolution. The main aim of this thesis is to analyze the relationships between the different causes, characteristics, and effects of recombination from an evolutionary perspective. First, we developed a model based on the control mechanisms of meiosis and inter-crossover interference. We further used this model to compare the recombination strategies in multiple vertebrates and invertebrates, as well as between sexes. Second, we studied the impact of the sex-specific localization of recombination hotspots on the evolution of the GC content for several vertebrates. Last, we built a population genetics model to analyze the impact of recombination on the frequency of deleterious mutation in the human population.
Entailment in Semantic Web World

Text Entailment is the concept of determining whether the message conveyed by one sentence is exactly captured by another sentence or not. There have been various approaches discovered to determine the entailment between a pair of sentences. We present a system using RDF (Resource Description Framework) approach that uses online free data available for recognizing textual entailment. There are situations where an entity name in one sentence can be different from the entity name of another sentence, but they may actually belong to each other. We develop an approach for identifying entailment between two sentences using named entity resolution with the help of RDF, verb entailment and coreference resolution. We present our results on the Recognizing Textual Entailment dataset (RTE-1 to RTE-3) and show that where our approach stands amongst the approaches already developed in this direction.
A variable structure controller for a class of uncertain systems with unknown uncertainty bounding function

In designing variable structure controllers when the upper bounding function for the matched system uncertainty is not known, the controller design remains to be a challenge. The main purpose of this paper is to solve this problem for a class of uncertain systems with matched uncertainties. To this end, a variable structure controller is proposed whose novelty lies in the form of the controller structure and also the mechanism introduced to update the controller's gain. Unlike most existing variable structure controllers, the new design does not require the upper bounding function for the uncertainty to be exactly known (for the bounded uncertainty case, the knowledge of the upper bound is not needed). It is proved that asymptotic stability of closed-loop systems can be guaranteed globally. One drawback for this controller is that the controller gain may go unbounded if the noises or other system uncertainties are not considered and are present. The other drawback is the well known controller chattering problem. To deal with these drawbacks, we modify the controller's gain update law and replace its discontinuous term with a continuous approximation, and hence propose a modified variable structure controller. With the modified variable structure controller, all the closed-loop signals are guaranteed to be bounded and the states can be driven to an arbitrarily small neighborhood of the origin. The price paid for this is the loss of asymptotic stability. Inspired by the equivalent control concept, a method for estimating the uncertainty is also derived when the modified variable structure controller is applied. Simulation examples are given to show the effectiveness of the controller and uncertainty estimation scheme
Formal Interpretation of Assertion-Based Features on AMS Designs

The paper proposes the adoption of formal methods for modeling of analog functions. It explains how assertions can be overlaid onto the range of values of individual features in an analog function, and proceeds toward building a mathematical (hybrid automata) model to represent and analyze them. An LDO regulator and a battery charger are used as examples.