Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mathematical morphologic segmentation dedicated to quantitative immunohistochemistry.

OBJECTIVE To develop automatic segmentation sequences for fully automated quantitative immunohistochemistry of cancer cell nuclei by image analysis. STUDY DESIGN The study focused on the automated delineation of cancer cell lobules and nuclei, taking breast carcinoma as an example. A hierarchic segmentation was developed, employing mainly the chaining of mathematical morphology operators. The proposed sequence was tested on 22 images of various situations, collected from 18 different cases of breast carcinoma. A quality control procedure was applied, comparing the automated method with manual outlining of cancer cell foci and with manual pricking of cancer cell nuclei. RESULTS Good concordance was found between automated and manual segmentation procedures (90% for cancer cell clumps, 97% for cancer cell nuclei on average), but the rate of false positive nuclei (small regions labeled as nuclei by the segmentation procedure) could be relatively high (11% on average, with a maximum of 35%) and can result in underestimation of the immunostaining ratio. CONCLUSION This study examined a preliminary approach to automated immunoquantification, limited to automated segmentation without any color characterization. The automated hierarchic segmentation presented here leads to good discrimination of cancer cell nuclei at the chosen magnification.
A metabolic and pharmacokinetic comparison of theophylline and aminophylline (theophylline ethylenediamine)

The metabolism and pharmacokinetics of intravenously administered theophylline and aminophylline (theophylline ethylenediamine) have been studied in 3 volunteers, using 14C‐labelled theophylline. Both compounds were metabolized extensively and 1, 3‐dimethyl‐uric acid, 1‐methyluric acid, 3‐methylxanthine and two unknown minor metabolites were excreted in the urine, in addition to theophylline. The elimination of theophylline, 1, 3‐dimethyluric acid, 1‐methyluric acid and the unknown metabolites followed first‐order kinetics, but that of 3‐methylxanthine followed Michaelis‐Menten kinetics. When given as aminophylline, theophylline was metabolized more rapidly and extensively than when given alone. The recovery of 14C in the urine was significantly higher after aminophylline than after theophylline. Abstention from intake of dietary methylxanthines for 7 days resulted in more rapid and extensive metabolism of aminophylline compared with results from the same subjects on their usual diets. The results indicate that, from a metabolic and pharmacokinetic viewpoint, aminophylline and theophylline are not equivalent.
Respiratory rate measurement: a comparison of methods

The value of monitoring respiratory rate as a key vital sign to detect early changes in the health status of critically ill patients has been well documented. However, although pulse oximetry has been a major advance in bedside monitoring, it has not been demonstrated to be an indicator of serious illness. Arterial blood oxygen saturation appears to be poorly understood by hospital staff and lacks specificity as a monitoring tool. Therefore, the primary objective of this study was to demonstrate an equivalence between the respiR8™ respiratory rate monitor and manual counting methods, defined as a difference within ±2 breaths per minute. Secondary objectives of this study were to assess the respiR8™ performance from the end-user perspective, analysing respiR8™ alarm activations, corresponding pulse rate and SpO2 readings (sub-group), and to assess repeatability of both manual and digital readings using a Bland-Altman analysis (describe).
Motion analysis and experiments of passive walking robot QUARTET II

In this paper, passive walking of the eight-legged robot QUARTET II that has simple straight legs, and is also constrained to have two degrees of freedom for the simplicity of its motion, is described. The legged robot can continue to walk down a slight slope steadily without any actuation if appropriate initial conditions are given. Since no control input, except for gravitational torque, is applied to the robot, more natural gaits compared with those of conventional actuated walking robots are expected. In walking simulation, trajectory stability and bifurcation that occurs along with the increase of slope angle and finally leads to chaotic gait are discussed. In walking experiment, some kind of trajectory stability and bifurcation can be observed.
Seropositivity combined with smoking is associated with increased prevalence of periodontitis in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

An association between periodontitis and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has been proposed based on observations of increased risk of periodontitis in patients with RA as well as the presence of antibodies to citrullinated protein antigens (ACPAs) and rheumatoid factor (RF) in serum and gingiva of patients with periodontitis.1–3 Additionally, smoking is one of the most important risk factors for both periodontitis and RA, and predispose for the development of seropositive RA.4–6 We have previously reported that smokers with RA have increased prevalence of periodontitis as compared with never smokers in the Swedish population-based case–control study EIRA (Epidemiological Investigation of Rheumatoid Arthritis). 7 The objective of the current study was to further investigate the effects of smoking on the risk of periodontitis in seropositive and seronegative (ACPA/RF) subsets of RA. Data on periodontal status (years 2008–2012) were retrieved from the Swedish Dental Health Registry (DHR) for 2327 patients with established RA (1469/852 ACPA-positive/ACPA-negative and 1505/822 RF-positive/RF-negative, respectively) included in the EIRA study (years 1996–2009) as previously described.7 Periodontal diagnosis was based on diagnostic codes for periodontitis, peri-implantitis and …
Sex differences in concussion symptoms of high school athletes.

CONTEXT More than 1.6 million sport-related concussions occur every year in the United States, affecting greater than 5% of all high school athletes who participate in contact sports. As more females participate in sports, understanding possible differences in concussion symptoms between sexes becomes more important. OBJECTIVE To compare symptoms, symptom resolution time, and time to return to sport between males and females with sport-related concussions. DESIGN Descriptive epidemiology study. SETTING Data were collected from 100 high schools via High School RIO (Reporting Information Online). PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS Athletes from participating schools who sustained concussions while involved in interscholastic sports practice or competition in 9 sports (boys' football, soccer, basketball, wrestling, and baseball and girls' soccer, volleyball, basketball, and softball) during the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school years. A total of 812 sport concussions were reported (610 males, 202 females). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S) Reported symptoms, symptom resolution time, and return-to-play time. RESULTS No difference was found between the number of symptoms reported (P = .30). However, a difference was seen in the types of symptoms reported. In year 1, males reported amnesia (exact P = .03) and confusion/disorientation (exact P = .04) more frequently than did females. In year 2, males reported more amnesia (exact P = .002) and confusion/disorientation (exact P = .002) than did females, whereas females reported more drowsiness (exact P = .02) and sensitivity to noise (exact P = .002) than did males. No differences were observed for symptom resolution time (P = .40) or return-to-play time (P = .43) between sexes. CONCLUSIONS The types of symptoms reported differed between sexes after sport-related concussion, but symptom resolution time and return-to-play timelines were similar.
Recent Earth Oblateness Variations: Unraveling Climate and Postglacial Rebound Effects

Earth's dynamic oblateness (J 2) has been decreasing due to postglacial rebound (PGR). However, J 2 began to increase in 1997, indicating a pronounced global-scale mass redistribution within Earth's system. We have determined that the observed increases in J 2 are caused primarily by a recent surge in subpolar glacial melting and by mass shifts in the Southern, Pacific, and Indian oceans. When these effects are removed, the residual trend in J 2 (–2.9 x 10−11 year−1) becomes consistent with previous estimates of PGR from satellite and eclipse data. The climatic significance of these rapid shifts in glacial and oceanic mass, however, remains to be investigated.
Sexual dimorphism and development of the human cochlea. Computer 3-D measurement.

The length of the cochlear turns was measured in 9 pairs of temporal bones from age-matched male and female individuals (1 day to 76 years old), using a computer-aided three-dimensional reconstruction and measurement method. The mean cochlear length was significantly longer (Two-way analysis of variance, F = 31.87, d.f. = 1, p less than 0.01) in males (37.1 +/- 1.6 mm) than in females (32.3 +/- 1.8 mm), whereas it did not vary with postnatal age in either sex. Sexually dimorphic cochlear length may pose a new issue in auditory physiology in man. The lack of postnatal elongation also indicates that length of the cochlea becomes close to its maximum during fetal life.
Disorders in sexual desire and sexual arousal in women, a 2010 state of the art

In this contribution, female sexual desire and arousal disorders are viewed from the perspective of incentive motivation and information processing models of sexual response. The effects of hormones, somatic disease, and medication on sexual arousability are discussed, as well as the influence of psychological factors, such as stimulus meaning, mood and cognition, and relational context on female sexual desire and arousal. Specific topics to attend to during the anamnesis of sexual desire and arousal problems, and empirically evaluated psychological and pharmacological treatments for these problems are discussed.
Dynamic Clustering and Cooperative Scheduling for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication in Bidirectional Road Scenarios

Efficient data dissemination is critical for enabling emerging applications in vehicular ad hoc networks. As a typical traffic scenario, the bidirectional road scenario of highways bring unique challenges on well exploiting the benefit of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication for data sharing among vehicles driving in opposite directions. This paper is dedicated to investigating the characteristics of data services in such a scenario and exploring new opportunities for enhancing overall system performance. Specifically, we present a system architecture to enable the road-side unit assisted data scheduling via vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. Then, we give a theoretical analysis on the opportunity of successful data sharing among vehicles driving in opposite directions based on the analysis of signal-to-interference-noise-ratio of V2V communication. On this basis, we propose a clustering mechanism based on the design of a time division policy and the derivation of the optimal cluster length. In addition, a cluster association strategy is designed to enable vehicles to dynamically join or leave a cluster based on their real-time velocities. Furthermore, a two-phase backoff mechanism is designed for distributed data sharing based on V2V communication, and a cooperative scheduling algorithm is proposed for selecting sender vehicles as well as the corresponding data items for broadcasting. Finally, we build the simulation model and give a comprehensive simulation study, which demonstrates that the proposed solutions can effectively improve the overall system performance.
Typing of HLA Class I by Polymerase Chain Reaction-Sequence Specific Oligonucleotide Primer (PCR-SSOP) Technique in Iranian Cord Blood Donors

Background: HLA compatibility between transplant donor and recipient is one of the major determinants of transplant outcome. Objective: To determine HLA class I by PCR- Sequence-Specific Oligonucleotid e Probe (PCR-SSOP) in cord blood donors. Methods: Genomic DNA of 142 cord blood samples registered at the Cord Blood Bank of Iran at Hematology, Oncology, and Bone Marrow Transplantation Research Center, was prepared and HLA class I was determined by the PCR-SSOP. Results: A total of 284 HLA-A alleles was identified of which A*02 and A*24 were the most common. Among 284 HLA-B and HLA-C alleles, B*35, B*51, Cw*4 and Cw*12 were the most frequent alleles in the studied population. Conclusion: Amplification of HLA loci with PCR-SSOP has proved to be a reliable method for HLA-A, -B and -C genotyping.
The novel human SHOX allelic variant database

Short stature due to SHOX deficiency represents the most commonly known form of growth failure, with a frequency greater than 1:1,000 in the Caucasian population. As many different mutations can cause SHOX haploinsufficiency, a comprehensive collection of gene variants represents an essential tool to distinguish between functional variants and polymorphisms. We have created a novel and widely extended SHOX database using the “LOVD in a box‐solution. ” This database contains not only a larger amount of mutation data (140 novel mutations were added), but also reports on phenotypic consequences, mode of inheritance, and ethnic origin, as well as on functional consequences of mutations investigated. In addition, the database now includes non‐disease‐related polymorphisms to enable researchers to evaluate their diagnostic findings. The database (Available at: http://hyg‐serv‐01.hyg.uni‐heidelberg.de/lovd/index.php? select_db=SHOX; Last accessed: 12 April 2007) contains all presently known 199 intragenic mutations (SNPs as well as small deletions and insertions), 126 of which are unique. The remote user is able to search the data and to submit new mutations into the database. Furthermore, it includes general information about the SHOX gene via links to other resources such as MIM, GDB, HGMD, and HAPMAP, as well as websites of Short Stature Associations. Hum Mutat 28(10), 933–938, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Emerging resistance to newer antimicrobial agents among Shigella isolated from Finnish foreign travellers

SUMMARY In Finland, most cases of shigellosis are related to travel abroad. Antimicrobial drug resistance of 1814 Shigella strains isolated from Finnish patients during 1990–2005 was studied using discs of 12 antimicrobial agents. Since 2000, the E-test has been performed to determine ciprofloxacin minimum inhibitory concentrations of nalidixic acid-resistant isolates. The proportion of multi-resistant strains (resistant to ⩾4 antimicrobials) was highest among isolates from China and India, but is increasing significantly in other parts of Asia. Resistance to nalidixic acid has become common among the strains from the Far East, and the first isolates also resistant to ciprofloxacin were detected during 2004–2005. All the ciprofloxacin-resistant isolates belonged to the S. flexneri 2a serotype. All the nalidixic acid-resistant S. flexneri strains had reduced susceptibility to ciprofloxacin, whereas 23% of the nalidixic acid-resistant S. sonnei strains were still completely susceptible to ciprofloxacin.
Incremental author name disambiguation by exploiting domain‐specific heuristics

The vast majority of the current author name disambiguation solutions are designed to disambiguate a whole digital library (DL) at once considering the entire repository. However, these solutions besides being very expensive and having scalability problems, also may not benefit from eventual manual corrections, as they may be lost whenever the process of disambiguating the entire repository is required. In the real world, in which repositories are updated on a daily basis, incremental solutions that disambiguate only the newly introduced citation records, are likely to produce improved results in the long run. However, the problem of incremental author name disambiguation has been largely neglected in the literature. In this article we present a new author name disambiguation method, specially designed for the incremental scenario. In our experiments, our new method largely outperforms recent incremental proposals reported in the literature as well as the current state‐of‐the‐art non‐incremental method.
Laboratory, clinical, and epidemiological aspects of coagulase-negative staphylococci

Coagulase-negative staphylococci, particularly Staphylococcus epidermidis, are increasingly important causes of nosocomial infection. Microbiologists and clinicians no longer can afford to disregard clinical isolates of coagulase-negative staphylococci as contaminants. Accurate species identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing, in a clinically relevant time frame, are important aids in the diagnosis and management of serious coagulase-negative staphylococcal infections. Emphasis in the clinical laboratory should be placed on the routine identification of S. epidermidis and Staphylococcus saprophyticus, with identification of other species of coagulase-negative staphylococci as clinically indicated. The application of newer techniques, such as plasmid analysis and tests for slime production and adherence, contribute to our understanding of the epidemiology and pathogenesis of coagulase-negative staphylococci and may also be helpful in establishing the diagnosis of infection.
Dissociation of intermolecular disulfide bonds in P22 tailspike protein intermediates in the presence of SDS

Each chain of the native trimeric P22 tailspike protein has eight cysteines that are reduced and buried in its hydrophobic core. However, disulfide bonds have been observed in the folding pathway and they are believed to play a critical role in the registration of the three chains. Interestingly, in the presence of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) only monomeric chains, rather than disulfide‐linked oligomers, have been observed from a mixture of folding intermediates. Here we show that when the oligomeric folding intermediates were separated from the monomer by native gel electrophoresis, the reduction of intermolecular disulfide bonds did not occur in the subsequent second‐dimension SDS–gel electrophoresis. This result suggests that when tailspike monomer is present in free solution with SDS, the partially unfolded tailspike monomer can facilitate the reduction of disulfide bonds in the tailspike oligomers.
Desiderata for Controlled Medical Vocabularies in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract Builders of medical informatics applications need controlled medical vocabularies to support their applications and it is to their advantage to use available standards. In order to do so, however, these standards need to address the requirements of their intended users. Overthe past decade, medical informatics researchers have begun to articulate some of these requirements. This paper brings together some of the common themes which have been described, including: vocabulary content, concept orientation, concept permanence, nonsemantic concept identifiers, polyhierarchy, formal definitions, rejection of “not elsewhere classified” terms, multiple granularities, mUltiple consistent views, context representation, graceful evolution, and recognized redundancy. Standards developers are beginning to recognize and address these desiderata and adapt their offerings to meet them.
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Changes in blood flow and metabolism in locally advanced breast cancer treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

UNLABELLED Locally advanced breast cancer (LABC) is commonly treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by definitive surgery. The factors influencing the response of LABC to presurgical chemotherapy are incompletely understood. To characterize in vivo tumor biology in patients with LABC, we performed serial measurements of blood flow and glucose metabolism in LABC patients over the course of neoadjuvant chemotherapy and compared measurements with response. METHODS Thirty-five patients with newly diagnosed LABC underwent (18)F-FDG and (15)O-water PET imaging before therapy and after 2 mo of chemotherapy. Tumor metabolism was estimated from graphical analysis of dynamic (18)F-FDG studies and was expressed as the metabolic rate of (18)F-FDG (MRFDG). Blood flow was estimated from dynamic images after bolus (15)O-water injection using a 1-compartment model. Metabolism and blood flow data were analyzed with and without partial-volume corrections to account for changes in tumor size over the course of therapy. Changes in tumor blood flow and metabolism were compared with response to chemotherapy and with patient survival. RESULTS For all patients, the mean MRFDG after 2 mo of chemotherapy decreased by 54% and the mean blood flow by 21%. Responders showed a greater decline in MRFDG than did nonresponders; however, the difference was of borderline significance (P = 0.05) after correction for partial-volume effects. Patients who responded had a decline in tumor blood flow, whereas nonresponders had an average increase (-32% vs. +48%, P < 0.005); the difference between responders and nonresponders remained significant after partial-volume correction (P < 0.01). There was also a statistically significant association between the pathologic degree of response and the percentage change in blood flow at 2 mo with and without partial-volume correction; this was not the case for MRFDG. The change in blood flow after 2 mo of therapy predicted disease-free and overall survival. CONCLUSION Although both resistant and responsive LABC tumors have an average decline in MRFDG over the course of chemotherapy, resistant tumors have an average increase in blood flow. Patients whose tumors fail to have a decline in blood flow after 2 mo of therapy have poorer disease-free and overall survival. Further investigations are needed to elucidate the tumor biology underlying these findings.
ALKALOIDS FROM SANGUINARIA CANADENSIS AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON GROWTH OF PHYMATOTRICHUM OMNIVORUM.

Sanguinaria canadensis L. is reported by Taubenhaus and Ezekiel (6) to be highly resistant to the Phymatotrichum root rot. It has long been of interest on account of its alkaloidal content. Dana (1) isolated the alkaloid, sanguinarine, from this species in 1827. Since that time chelerythrine, protopine, and ? and ? -homochelidonine have been isolated from the rhizome and roots (5). For these reasons this plant seems an exceptionally good object for investigation in connection with the theory of alkaloids as a possible factor in the resistance of some plants to Phymatotrichum omnivorum (Shear) Duggar (3, 4). In the work reported here certain alkaloids were isolated from crude extracts of roots and rhizomes of S. canadensis and incorporated in various concentrations into the substrates ordinarily used for the pure culture of P. omnivorum. The effect of these substances on the growth and development of the fungus are discussed.