Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PROGNOSTIC VALUE OF COMBINED IMMUNOHISTOCHEMICAL EXPRESSION OF BMI1 AND EZH2 IN ASTROCYTOMA

Background: Although current improvements in surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the still survival of astrocytoma’s patient is poor. It is assumed that the combined expression of BMI1 and EZH2 may be associated with malignant transformation of astrocytomas and also it may reveal the biological aggressiveness of this disease. Aim of work: assessment the value of the combined immunohistochemical expression of BMI1 and EZH2 and their correlation with the clinicopathological characters and prognosis in astrocytoma patient. Subjects & Methods: BMI1 and EZH2 expressions were evaluated using immunohistochemical staining in 70 patients 40 cases with astrocytomas and 30 cases of non-neoplastic brain tissue. The relationship between their expressions and clinicopathological factors were analyzed. Results: A significant difference (P 0.05). The spearman correlation analysis revealed a significant positive association betweenBMI1 and EZH2 expressions (r = 0.311; P=0.05) revealing direct relationship betweenBMI1 and EZH2. Conclusions: BMI1 and EZH2 were involved in astrocytoma malignant transformation and poor prognosis in astrocytoma particularly glioblastoma. Keywords: BMI1, EZH2, astrocytoma, PcG, glioblastoma and GSCs.
How, where, and when

Developments in technology, society, and medical practice have led to enormous changes in how doctors work, where they work, and also when they work. This week Adam Moreton looks at the history of efforts to reduce doctors’ working hours (http://careers.bmj.com/careers/advice/view-article.html? id=20019902). He shows that concessions to improve working conditions have not been given easily by the profession’s paymasters. Changes to doctors’ …
Correlation of the expression of metal tolerance protein genes with zinc accumulation and distribution in Malus halliana seedlings under zinc toxicity stress

Abstract The micronutrient zinc plays an essential role in the physiological and metabolic processes in plants; however, it becomes very toxic when present in elevated amounts. To evaluate the correlation of metal tolerance proteins (MTP) with Zn accumulation and distribution in Malus halliana seedlings under zinc toxicity stress, seedlings with 8 true leaves were exposed to different Zn concentrations (4, 25, 50, 100 μmol·L−1) in a hydroponic culture system. We found that excessive Zn stress leads to a decrease in plant growth indexes and the accumulation and distribution of Zn in Malus halliana. With increasing levels of Zn stress, the Zn concentration in roots was significantly higher than in stems and leaves. At 100 μmol·L−1 Zn, the Zn concentration in roots, stems and leaves increased by 45.88, 26.51 and 25.43-fold when compare to CK, respectively. The increase of bioaccumulation factor (BAF) and the decrease of translocation factor (TF) all indicated that Zn was accumulated in the roots. Correlation and hierarchical clustering analysis found that the expression of MTP genes is closely associated with Zn concentrations. The MTP2, MTP11 and MTPC2-like genes were significantly negatively correlated with Zn concentration in roots and were resistant to excessive Zn concentration and sequestration. The expression of MTP1 had organ-specificity that was significantly higher in stems and leaves than that in roots. The expression of MTPC4-like was significantly positively correlated with Zn concentration under the treatment of 4 μmol·L−1 Zn, but the correlation decreased under the high concentration of Zn stress, which indicated that the expression of MTP gene was affected by Zn concentration.
Antimicrobial prescribing pattern in a tertiary care teaching hospital: a pilot study

Background: The emergence of antimicrobial resistance is a worldwide challenge threatening to negate the gains made by discovery of antimicrobial agents (AMAs). Antimicrobial Stewardship Program (ASP) is an important strategy for ensuring appropriate use of AMAs and controlling emergence of antibiotic resistance. Implementation of ASP must start with assessment of the current state of antimicrobial use. This study was therefore conducted to assess the prevalent prescribing patterns in a tertiary care hospital and identify gaps which warrant corrective intervention. Methods: This prospective pilot study presents analysis of the first 30 Patients from the medicine ward prescribed at least one antimicrobial agent during the two months of study period. Relevant data was collected in AMA record form. Appropriateness of AMAs was analyzed regarding selection as well as administration protocol as per the hospital antibiotic policy. Results: Out of the 60 AMAs prescribed to these patients, most commonly prescribed were cephalosporins (63.3%), anti-amoebics (26.6%) and macrolides (23.3%). Common diseases involved were urinary tract infection, acute gastroenteritis, sepsis and lower respiratory tract infections. Use of AMAs was found to be appropriate for the indication in 42 %, dose in 97%, duration 60 %, route 93% and frequency 90 %. Conclusions: This gap between the appropriate and the actual practice use of AMAs indicates an urgent need of rigorous implementation of ASP in order to avoid emergence of resistance and to conserve the sensitivity to the available AMAs.
Efeito da oclusão visual no equilíbrio dinâmico em plataforma instável de idosas e de adultas jovens

Aging causes the detriment of sensory information that reflects the quality of postural control. The use of light touch has been suggested as a strategy to reduce postural sway even in the absence of vision. However, the effects of this strategy in unstable situations on the support base are unclear. The aim of this study was to analyze the effects of visual occlusion and light touch on the balance of elderly and young adult women on an unstable platform. Twenty elderly women (69.4±6.7 years) and twenty young adult women (20.6±3.2years) performed three attempts at the task which consisted of maintaining balance on an unstable platform on a bipedal base for twenty seconds, with medial-lateral perturbation, in four conditions. The Mann-Whitney U test showed that the elderly women presented worse balance compared to the young adult women in all conditions (p<0.05). The Friedman and Wilcoxon tests demonstrated worse balance with visual occlusion in both groups (p<0.05). On the other hand, there was an improvement in balance using light touch for both vision and no vision conditions (p<0.05). Both groups were able to use the haptic sensory information through light touch to assist in balance maintenance.
Adaptive Feature Engineering Modeling for Ultrasound Image Classification for Decision Support

Ultrasonography is considered a relatively safe option for the diagnosis of benign and malignant cancer lesions due to the low-energy sound waves used. However, the visual interpretation of the ultrasound images is time-consuming and usually has high false alerts due to speckle noise. Improved methods of collection image-based data have been proposed to reduce noise in the images; however, this has proved not to solve the problem due to the complex nature of images and the exponential growth of biomedical datasets. Secondly, the target class in real-world biomedical datasets, that is the focus of interest of a biopsy, is usually significantly underrepresented compared to the non-target class. This makes it difficult to train standard classification models like Support Vector Machine (SVM), Decision Trees, and Nearest Neighbor techniques on biomedical datasets because they assume an equal class distribution or an equal misclassification cost. Resampling techniques by either oversampling the minority class or under-sampling the majority class have been proposed to mitigate the class imbalance problem but with minimal success. We propose a method of resolving the class imbalance problem with the design of a novel data-adaptive feature engineering model for extracting, selecting, and transforming textural features into a feature space that is inherently relevant to the application domain.
The impact of proton pump inhibitors on the intestinal microbiota in chronic hepatitis C patients

Abstract Objectives: Proton pump inhibitors (PPI), a class of drugs commonly used, are known to be associated with changes in the intestinal microbiota. Published studies were done in heterogeneous cohorts which could hamper conclusions drawn as effects of diseases were not taken into consideration. We aimed to elucidate differences in the intestinal microbiota being associated to the use of PPI in a cohort study of patients with chronic hepatitis C. Material and Methods: The 16S rDNA gene was analyzed in stool samples of patients with and without PPI use. Patients with concomitant medication influencing the microbiota were excluded. Results were compared with the clinical course of hepatitis C patients with decompensated liver cirrhosis. Results: No differences in alpha diversity could be observed, while the microbial community structure differed significantly, especially in patients with liver cirrhosis. The relative abundance of Streptococcus spp. , Enterobacter spp. and Haemophilus spp. was significantly increased in patients with PPI use irrespectively of the stage of liver disease. Finally, in patients with decompensated liver cirrhosis due to chronic HCV infection only in these using PPI bacterial phylotypes were isolated. Conclusions: PPI use was associated with significant alterations in the microbial community in patients with chronic hepatitis C, which were even pronounced in patients with liver cirrhosis. In patients with decompensated liver cirrhosis due to chronic HCV infection, the use of PPI may promote infections either directly or indirectly through changes in the microbial community structure. Future studies should further investigate long-term impact on the microbiota and the clinical outcome.
A Taxonomy of Techniques for SLO Failure Prediction in Software Systems

Failure prediction is an important aspect of self-aware computing systems. Therefore, a multitude of different approaches has been proposed in the literature over the past few years. In this work, we propose a taxonomy for organizing works focusing on the prediction of Service Level Objective (SLO) failures. Our taxonomy classifies related work along the dimensions of the prediction target (e.g., anomaly detection, performance prediction, or failure prediction), the time horizon (e.g., detection or prediction, online or offline application), and the applied modeling type (e.g., time series forecasting, machine learning, or queueing theory). The classification is derived based on a systematic mapping of relevant papers in the area. Additionally, we give an overview of different techniques in each sub-group and address remaining challenges in order to guide future research.
The Antarctica Treaty System and the promotion of international scientific cooperation: an evaluation of the regime

espanolEl Sistema del Tratado Antartico (STA) entro en vigor para encerrar litigios y promover la cooperacion cientifica. Criticado originalmente, el regimen gano reconocimiento internacional pero siguen habiendo dudas sobre su capacidad de avanzar en la cooperacion internacional. Este articulo evalua, mediante analisis bibliometrico y tecnica contrafatica, si el STA ha logrado promover la cooperacion cientifica internacional. Utilizando como indicador las tasas internacionales de coautoria de articulos cientificos, se realizo un estudio de caso. Los resultados muestran que la coautoria internacional en la revista estudiada fue superior a la encontrada en ciencia y tecnologia. A pesar de las limitaciones inherentes a un estudio de caso, llegamos a la conclusion de que el STA fue eficaz en promover la cooperacion cientifica internacional. EnglishThe Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) came into force intending to end litigation and promote scientific cooperation. The regime was originally criticized but managed to gain international recognition. There remains, however, a doubt about its effectiveness in advancing international cooperation. This paper aims to evaluate, through bibliometric analysis and counterfactual tecnique, the effectiveness of the ATS in promoting international scientific cooperation. Using international co-authorship rates of scientific articles as an indicator, a case study was conducted in a scientific journal. The results show that international co-authorship in the journal was superior to the one of science and technology. Despite the inherent limitations of a case study, we concluded that ATS was effective in fulfilling the purpose of promoting international scientific cooperation.
An Improved Hybrid Prefiltered Open-Loop Algorithm for Three-Phase Grid Synchronization

In this article, a robust three-phase grid synchronization technique has been proposed for rapid detection of fundamental frequency, phase, and amplitude. The widely accepted phase locked-loop (PLL) algorithms possess complex architectures and require tedious tuning process for attaining a good stability margin. In order to surpass the shortfalls of PLL algorithms, a computationally efficient, stable, and open-loop scheme has been reported in this article. A novel two consecutive samples based frequency estimator is developed for fast detection of the fundamental frequency. Moreover, an efficient hybrid prefiltering approach is implemented based on the demodulation of the grid voltage signal. Additionally, the combination of a delayed signal cancellation operator and a band-pass filter allowed rapid rejection of dc-offset and harmonics, respectively. In the event of a grid voltage imbalance, the instantaneous symmetrical component method is a rescuer for the rejection of the fundamental negative sequence component without any delay. Subsequently, overall transient response time of the scheme is observed to be improved. On the other hand, the fundamental positive sequence component facilitates the estimation of amplitude and phase angle information. Importantly, the dynamic performance of the proposed scheme has been experimentally validated in presence of various grid disturbances.
Early nutrition matters. Clinical studies on the effects of nutritional intake in the early postnatal period of Very Low Birth Weight Infants

The aim for treatment of preterm infants is to achieve growth comparable to the intra-uterine situation and functional outcome comparable to term born peers. It is known that most preterm born infants remain smaller, have impaired functional development and are at risk for impaired bone mineralization. Adequate nutritional intake is an important determinant of postnatal development. Two studies evaluated the effects of different nutritional intake provided during the first two weeks of life to very low birth weight infants looking at short- and long-term outcome of growth, neurodevelopment and bone mineralization. Increase of protein intake improved the short-term growth and was positively associated with mental scores in girls and motor development in boys at two years of age. Bone content was positively associated with human milk, however optimal enrichment of human milk needs further study. Former preterm born children at age 9 to 10 years were able to achieve length and bone mineralization comparable to Dutch children of the same age.
SMOKING, ALCOHOL AND THE RISK OF DUPUYTREN’S CONTRACTURE

We investigated the association of Dupuytren's contracture with smoking and with alcohol by a case-control study in which 222 patients having an operation for this condition were matched for age, operation date and gender with control patients having other orthopaedic operations. Fifty of the cases were also each matched with four community controls. Data were collected by postal questionnaire. Dupuytren's contracture needing operation was strongly associated with current cigarette smoking (adjusted odds ratio 2.8 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.5 to 5.2)). The mean lifetime cigarette consumption was 16.7 pack-years for the cases compared with 12.0 pack-years for the controls (p = 0.016). Dupuytren's contracture was also associated with an Alcohol Use Disorders Test score greater than 7 (adjusted odds ratio 1.9 (95% CI 1.02 to 3.57)). Mean weekly alcohol consumption was 7.3 units for cases and 5.4 units for controls (p = 0.016). The excess risk associated with alcohol did not appear to be due to a confounding effect of smoking, or vice versa. Smoking increases the risk of developing Dupuytren's contracture and may contribute to its prevalence in alcoholics, who tend to smoke heavily.
Impacts of Extratropical Weather Perturbations on Tropical Cyclone Activity: Idealized Sensitivity Experiments With a Regional Atmospheric Model

Extratropical weather perturbations have been linked to Atlantic tropical cyclones (TCs) activity in observations. However, modeling studies of the extratropical impact are scarce and disagree about its importance and climate implications. Using a nonhydrostatic regional atmospheric model, we explore the extratropical impact by artificially suppressing extratropical weather perturbations at the tropical‐extratropical interface. Our 22‐year simulations of August–October suggest that the extratropical suppression adds ~3.7 Atlantic TCs per season on average, although the response varies among individual years. The TC response mainly appears within 30–40°N, where tropical cyclogenesis frequency quadruples compared to control simulations. This increased cyclogenesis, accompanied by a strong increase of midtropospheric relative humidity, arises as the perturbation suppression reduces the extratropical interference of TC development. The suppression of extratropical perturbations is highly idealized but may suggest mechanisms by which extratropical atmospheric variability potentially influences TC activity in past or future altered climate states.
Symptom Perception From a Predictive Processing Perspective

Bodily symptoms are highly prevalent in psychopathology, and in some specific disorders, such as somatic symptom disorder, they are a central feature. In general, the mechanisms underlying these symptoms are poorly understood. However, also in well-known physical diseases there seems to be a variable relationship between physiological dysfunction and self-reported symptoms challenging traditional assumptions of a biomedical disease model. Recently, a new, predictive processing conceptualization of how the brain works has been used to understand this variable relationship. According to this predictive processing view, the experience of a symptom results from an integration of both interoceptive sensations as well as from predictions about these sensations from the brain. In the present paper, we introduce the predictive processing perspective on perception (predictive coding) and action (active inference), and apply it to asthma in order to understand when and why asthma symptoms are sometimes strongly, moderately or weakly related to physiological disease parameters. Our predictive processing view of symptom perception contributes to understanding under which conditions misperceptions and maladaptive action selection may arise. There is a variable relationship between physiological dysfunction and self-reported symptoms. We conceptualize symptom perception (and misperception) within a predictive processing perspective. In this view, symptom perception integrates sensations and predictions about these sensations. Failures of such integration can produce misperceptions and maladaptive action selection. We use the perception (and misperception) of asthma symptoms as an example. There is a variable relationship between physiological dysfunction and self-reported symptoms. We conceptualize symptom perception (and misperception) within a predictive processing perspective. In this view, symptom perception integrates sensations and predictions about these sensations. Failures of such integration can produce misperceptions and maladaptive action selection. We use the perception (and misperception) of asthma symptoms as an example.
Subarachnoid hematoma after spinal anesthesia - A case report -

Spinal subarachnoid hematoma is a very rare complication of spinal anesthesia. This complication can, and is, often overlooked and dismissed as a fatal neurological con-sequence of (what amounts to) delayed diagnosis. In this case, a 59-year-old female patient with no specific medical history underwent right knee arthroscopy under spinal anesthesia. The arthroscopic surgery concluded without complications but, on the first postoperative day, the patient complained of lower back pain, headache, nausea, vomiting. On the fifth postoperative day, magnetic resonance imaging was taken and it revealed evidence of a subarachnoid hematoma involving the L3 and L4 vertebral lev-els. Hematoma evacuation was performed, and the patient recovered without sequelae. Here, we report this case that lumbar spinal subarachnoid hematoma was found five days after spinal anesthesia which was done in a patient without coagulopathy.
Timber Security Practices, Vulnerabilities, and Challenges in the Southern United States

Abstract A single timber theft incident can cost family forest landowners thousands of dollars. Preventing illegal timber harvesting is also an important component of sustainability. A survey of consulting foresters and interviews with investigators, prosecutors, and forest industry were conducted to document timber theft detections, resolutions, and security measures. Complete questionnaires were received from 430 foresters from 11 southern states (37% response rate). Interviews were conducted with five investigators, two prosecuting attorneys, and 10 forest industry representatives. Almost half (47%) of consulting foresters had encountered at least one timber theft incident in the previous 3 years, but losses represented <1% of timber harvest value. State forestry agencies investigated approximately 100 cases per year, while local law enforcement rarely investigated these cases. Timber theft cases were most often resolved outside of court with very few cases prosecuted. Vigilance by foresters and law enforcement is necessary to prevent timber theft.
Clinico-radiological predictors of positive rigid bronchoscopy findings in children with suspected tracheobronchial foreign body aspiration

Background: Tracheobronchial foreign body aspiration (TFBA) is common in young children and is associated with potentially significant morbidity, and sometimes mortality. Although rigid bronchoscopy (RB) is often needed for definitive diagnosis, it can be associated with intra-operative and long-term risks. Methods: Hospital records of patients under 18 years of age who underwent RB for suspected TFBA between November 2010 and May 2016 were retrospectively reviewed. Data extracted include age, gender and date of TFBA. Specific pre-operative clinical and radiological findings were compared with findings at RB. Results: Of 43 children admitted with suspected TFBA, 72% were aged under 3 years. 79.1% had a FB identified at RB. Clinical history of inhalation, auscultation and radiographic abnormalities [hyperinflation, collapse, suspected foreign body (FB)] were not significantly different for children with, compared to those without, TFBA at RB. Conclusions: Although RB remains the definitive management for suspected TFBA, the potential risks and non-specific clinical and radiological findings mean other imaging techniques such as low dose multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) should be explored.