Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of histological subtypes of incident lung cancer among Eldorado uranium workers

Exposure to radon decay products (RDP) is one of the best-studied carcinogenic phenomena in radiation epidemiology [1]. Epidemiological studies, primarily of underground miners, show increases in lung cancer risk from exposure to RDP [1, 2]. Only a few studies have been published on the radiation risks of specific histological subtypes of lung cancer [3-6]. Radon exposure in uranium miners seems to be especially related to small cell and squamous cell lung cancer [4]. The latter one follows the pattern of distribution of radon decay products in the bronchial epithelium, from which it originates. Tobacco smoking has been shown to be more strongly associated with squamous cell and small cell carcinoma than with adenocarcinoma [4, 7, 8]. The manner of interaction between smoking and RDP exposures in causing lung cancer is a matter of debate [3, 9, 10]. This study assessed the relationship between RDP exposure and lung cancer incidence in a cohort of 16,770 Eldorado uranium workers from Canada first employed in 1932-1980 and followed up for cancer incidence through the Canadian Incidence DataBase (CIDB) during 1969-1999. The current analysis was based on substantially revised identifying information and RDP dosimetry for workers from the Beaverlodge and Port Radium uranium mines, and from a radium and uranium refinery and processing facility in Port Hope. In brief, the annual mean RDP exposure in working level months (WLM) was calculated by summing over the WL measurements available for each type of workplace, the proportion of workers in each occupation and the proportion of time spent in each type of workplace by workers in each occupation. Workplace RDP concentration measurements were supplemented by data on seasonal mine ventilation rates, building air volumes and air exchange rates. The current study also has information on individual γ-ray doses for all cohort subjects. Personal γ-ray doses were calculated from the average dose-rates and time on the job and expressed in millisieverts (mSv) for workers who did not wear a personal dosimeter. Each individual contributed person-years at risk from the later of the date of hire or the start date of follow-up, January 1 st , 1969. ‘Exit date’ was defined as December 31 st , 1999, the date of cancer diagnosis or death, or the last date known alive (defined as date of last employment or contact), whichever occurred earlier. The initial set of analyses was based on external comparisons of the cohort with the general Canadian population. Observed and expected values were used to estimate standardized incidence ratios (SIR) by means of indirect standardization. Expected values were derived from Canadian population cancer incidence (1969–1999) rates, adjusted for
Interferência do cloridrato de metilfenidato no desempenho de escolares com transtorno de déficit de atenção/hiperatividade

xii RESUMO O Transtorno de Deficit de Atencao/Hiperatividade e um transtorno do neurodesenvolvimento previsto no Codigo Internacional de Doencas e caracterizado por um quadro persistente de deficit de atencao e/ou de hiperatividade/impulsividade mais acentuado e grave do que o observado em outros individuos com o mesmo nivel de desenvolvimento. A presente tese foi construida no modelo de artigos cientificos que an alisou os resultados do desempenho academico de escolares do Colegio de Aplicacao da Universidade Federal de Goias, de 7 a 14 anos com e sem diagnostico de TDA/H. O estudo de carater prospectivo, observacional e comparativo teve a participacao inicial de 3 55 estudantes e investigou os resultados de desempenho escolar de 60 deles, antes e durante o tratamento com metilfenidato (MPH) e psicoterapia em comparacao com um grupo controle. Os estudantes foram acompanhados em seu desempenho escolar e em adesao supe rvisionada ao tratamento durante o periodo de oito meses. A revisao de literatura do tema investigado e apresentada no primeiro artigo, submetido a “Revista Ciencia & Saude Coletiva”, intitulado “Tratamento com Metilfenidato e o desempenho de escolares com Transtorno de Deficit de Atencao/Hiperatividade: revisao integrativa da literatura”. A revisao incluiu artigos cientificos publicados no periodo 2006 a 2013. Dos 629 artigos encontrados, 616 nao atenderam aos criterios de inclusao e 13 fizeram parte da am ostra. A maioria dos estudos evidenciou que o grupo de criancas com TDA/H, em tratamento com MPH, mostrou melhor desempenho escolar em relacao ao grupo com TDA/H sem historico de tratamento. E que os tratamentos com estimulantes trazem mais beneficios quan do adotados em longo prazo. O segundo artigo intitulado “Re/Avaliacao diagnostica de Transtorno de Deficit de Atencao/Hiperatividade em escolares” apresenta os resultados da reavaliacao clinica de 29 criancas, anteriormente, diagnosticadas com TDA/H ou cas os suspeitos. A re/avaliacao confirmou o diagnostico de 74% das criancas portadoras de diagnostico e 70% dos casos suspeitos. Ja o terceiro artigo intitulado: “A utilizacao do Metilfenidato por escolares com Transtorno de Deficit de Atencao/Hiperatividade e baixo desempenho escolar” apresenta os resultados principais desse estudo e constatou que o tratamento com Metilfenidato pelos escolares com TDA/H foi associado ao aumento das medias nos resultados da avaliacao escolar das disciplinas elementares. A medi cacao influenciou positivamente no desempenho dos estudantes, entretanto, mesmo em tratamento medicamentoso esses estudantes nao atingiram o nivel de desempenho dos escolares sem TDA/H com desempenho escolar tipico.
Open Ontology: A Self-Organizing Tool for Knowledge Acquisition in a Case Library

This paper is aimed to establish a sufficiently formalized, expandable metadata authoring tool of a case library based on ontology methodologies of AI. This tool cannot only self-organize facts of cases’ features, but can also guide users to arrange those facts into a formalized structure to facilitate design reasoning. Then knowledge experts, such as design instructors or project managers, can apply this tool to author and organize metadata of cases’ features in order to build knowledge templates for special situations. Beginners, such as students or assistants, can apply those templates to indicate and analyze facts of collected cases’ features and acquire essential knowledge in solving problems. Finally, through easily recognized semantic relations of metadata, facts of cases’ features can be self-organized, and the system can apply data mining techniques to detect and discover hidden knowledge patterns among facts of cases’ features.
The Culture of Animal Cells: A Manual of Basic Technique

The field of cell biology is changing so rapidly that cell textbooks often face obsolescence even before hitting the shelves. In response, some authors attempt to cope with explosion in cellular knowledge by including as many mechanisms and details as possible, which may satisfy the discriminating technical user who wants the most current findings. However, for the beginning student, the lucent and concise explanations of the general concepts in the second edition of The Cell: A Molecular Approach, published in 2000, offers a great course text for an introductory cell biology course. The strength of Cooper's text is found in its coherent voice that is often found in single-author books. In the field of cell biology, specialization is stressed so it is not uncommon to find textbooks written by multiple authors. Although the multiauthor approach offers an expert view on individual subjects, it sometimes lacks the interconnections that a single talented author may gracefully make. Compared to the first edition, the second edition of The Cell retains the organization, themes, and special features of the original, but it has been completely updated in major areas of scientific progress, including: genome analysis; chromatin and transcription; nuclear transport; protein sorting and trafficking; signal transduction; the cell cycle; and programmed cell death. However, when comparing the second edition of The Cell with books such as Lodish's Molecular Biology of the Cell, it becomes clear that advanced students, even those taking an introductory biology course, The Cell lacks the depth and detail that an exacting student may demand. The text's lack of depth may leave some students with unanswered questions. Perhaps the book may be best complemented with a good molecular biology textbook. The extra explanations can make up for the missing depth of Cooper's text. Finally, many other cell biology textbooks offer accompanying CD-ROMs that animate the processes that govern life. Specifically, the use of Flash-enabled animations that would bring to life The Cell's clear colorful and diagrams would be a definite welcome supplement to the next edition of The Cell. James Park Yale School of Medicine
Dynamic Time Warping for Automated Cell Cycle Labelling

With the widespread use of time-lapse data to understand cellular function, there is a need for tools which facilitate high-throughput analysis of data. We present a system for automated segmentation and cell cycle phase labelling based on aligning temporal signals of simple features directly to a reference signal using Dynamic Time Warping (DTW). This is shown to result in a very accurate temporal labelling, significantly outperforming an approach based on independent frame classification. The method is evaluated on two datasets, acquired under different imaging conditions, and is found to perform well on both. We also describe a Hidden Markov Model implementation of the DTW which has comparable results.
Cancer Disparities by Race/Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status

This article highlights disparities in cancer incidence, mortality, and survival in relation to race/ethnicity, and census data on poverty in the county or census tract of residence. The incidence and survival data derive from the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program; mortality data are from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS); data on the prevalence of major cancer risk factors and cancer screening are from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) conducted by NCHS. For all cancer sites combined, residents of poorer counties (those with greater than or equal to 20% of the population below the poverty line) have 13% higher death rates from cancer in men and 3% higher rates in women compared with more affluent counties (less than 10% below the poverty line). Differences in cancer survival account for part of this disparity. Among both men and women, five‐year survival for all cancers combined is 10 percentage points lower among persons who live in poorer than in more affluent census tracts. Even when census tract poverty rate is accounted for, however, African American, American Indian/Alaskan Native, and Asian/Pacific Islander men and African American and American Indian/Alaskan Native women have lower five‐year survival than non‐Hispanic Whites. More detailed analyses of selected cancers show large variations in cancer survival by race and ethnicity. Opportunities to reduce cancer disparities exist in prevention (reductions in tobacco use, physical inactivity, and obesity), early detection (mammography, colorectal screening, Pap tests), treatment, and palliative care.
Processing and Presentation of Murine Cytomegalovirus pORFm164-Derived Peptide in Fibroblasts in the Face of All Viral Immunosubversive Early Gene Functions

ABSTRACT CD8 T cells are the principal effector cells in the resolution of acute murine cytomegalovirus (mCMV) infection in host organs. This undoubted antiviral and protective in vivo function of CD8 T cells appeared to be inconsistent with immunosubversive strategies of the virus effected by early (E)-phase genes m04, m06, and m152. The so-called immune evasion proteins gp34, gp48, and gp37/40, respectively, were found to interfere with peptide presentation at different steps in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I pathway of antigen processing and presentation in fibroblasts. Accordingly, they were proposed to prevent recognition and lysis of infected fibroblasts by cytolytic T lymphocytes (CTL) during the E phase of viral gene expression. We document here that the previously identified MHC class I Dd-restricted antigenic peptide 257AGPPRYSRI265 encoded by gene m164 is processed as well as presented for recognition by m164-specific CTL during the E and late phases of viral replication in the very same cells in which the immunosubversive viral proteins are effectual in preventing the presentation of processed immediate-early 1 (m123-exon 4) peptide 168YPHFMPTNL176. Thus, while immunosubversion is a reality, these mechanisms are apparently not as efficient as the term immune evasion implies. The pORFm164-derived peptide is the first noted peptide that constitutively escapes the immunosubversive viral functions. The most important consequence is that even the concerted action of all immunosubversive E-phase proteins eventually fails to prevent immune recognition in the E phase. The bottom-line message is that there exists no immune evasion of mCMV in fibroblasts.
The Effects of Charter Schools on Traditional Public School Students in North Carolina

Considering the growth of the North Carolina charter sector to 6% of all public schools by 2016 and the shift to serving higher achieving students, it is important to examine charter effects on traditional public school students, and how these effects vary based on the relative achievement of charter and traditional public schools. Using panel data covering all public school students in North Carolina from 1997 to 2016, I study the effects of charter schools on traditional public school student math and reading test scores. I control for time invariant determinants of selection and trends using student-school spell effects and linear school time trends, and show that some remaining time varying determinants do not bias effects. Results show that students in schools competing with higher achieving charters experience small gains in test scores while those competing with lower achieving charters see zero to small negative effects. This suggests that divergent results across previous studies could be due to differences in relative charter school achievement across states and time, and that aggregate positive competitive effects require the opening and growth of higher achieving charter schools. ∗Department of Economics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I am grateful to my advisor, Jane Cooley Fruehwirth, and my committee members: Doug Lauen, Klara Peter, Helen Tauchen, and Valentin Verdier. I am also thankful for comments from participants of the UNC Applied Microeconomics Dissertation Workshop.
Aspergillus citrinoterreus, a New Species of Section Terrei Isolated from Samples of Patients with Nonhematological Predisposing Conditions

ABSTRACT The use of molecular identification techniques has revealed an increasing number of new species within Aspergillus section Terrei. We phenotyped a set of 26 clinical isolates that showed genetic differences from Aspergillus terreus sensu stricto by analyzing sequences from PCR-amplified β-tubulin and calmodulin genes and the internal transcribed spacer region. Since the isolates were phylogenetically and morphologically different from all of the members of Aspergillus section Terrei, they are described here as a new species, Aspergillus citrinoterreus, so named because it produces a diffusible yellowish pigment in agar. A. citrinoterreus isolates were significantly more susceptible to itraconazole, voriconazole, and posaconazole than A. terreus sensu stricto isolates were; in contrast, the amphotericin B MICs for both species were high. A. citrinoterreus was found in clinical samples from patients with proven or probable invasive aspergillosis and colonized patients, none of whom had hematological malignancies as predisposing conditions. However, they did have other underlying conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cirrhosis, and cancer or had received a solid organ transplants and presented not only with invasive pulmonary aspergillosis but also with mediastinitis. A. citrinoterreus isolates were detected for the first time in 2002. In all cases of invasive aspergillosis, A. citrinoterreus was found to be a copathogen, mostly with A. fumigatus.
Expert Systems With Applications

Bankruptcy prediction is a very important research trend: although statistical methods are mainly used in literature, techniques based on Artiﬁcial Intelligence are interesting from many points of view. Among them, Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) could be useful to cluster enterprises according to opportune similarity metrics as well as suggest proper actions to take for avoiding bankruptcy in border-line situations. In this paper, we present a new and still under development CBR approach to this problem, that seems to return better results than previous attempts. The approach is based on different kinds of similarity metrics and is focused on the implementation of innovative revise algorithms. In particular, the paper shows how the revise step is crucial to improve the accuracy of the bankruptcy prediction model.
An online dynamic equivalent method for large scale photovoltaic plant electromechanical transient simulation

In order to improve the modeling accuracy of the interconnected large-scale photovoltaic power plant for electromechanical transient simulation, as well as to improve the efficiency of online security and stability analysis, an online dynamic equivalent method of interconnected photovoltaic plant was proposed. Take the inverters as the aggregation object, calculate the inverter clustering indexes and cluster the inverters, judge the validity of equivalent scheme through comparing the system dynamic response with the corresponding reference response. In order to improve efficiency, the parameter sensitivities of inverters and reference response curves were calculated and the data base was established offline, while the real data can be matched to the closest value based on real-time condition online. Thus, the precision of equivalent model of the interconnected photovoltaic plant is enough for electromechanical transient stability simulation. The example of real power grid confirmed the validity of the proposed method.
Efficient FDTD Simulation of Active Photonic Devices With Multiple Temporal Resolutions

A computational method to reduce computational time for finite-difference time-domain simulations of active photonic devices by using different temporal resolutions for the update of Maxwell's equations and active-medium (AM) equations are presented. A larger temporal resolution for the update of AM equations is used due to their slower evolution in comparison to the electromagnetic fields. Slow varying envelope approximation in the carrier rate equations are avoided. The method is easy to implement and is validated through numerical examples of semiconductor microdisk lasers. A speed enhancement of between two to threefold can be obtained without loss in accuracy.
Is a large fibroid a high-risk factor for uterine artery embolization?

OBJECTIVE The objective of our study was to determine whether tumor size, specifically uterine fibroids of 10 cm or larger, predisposes a patient to an unacceptably high risk at uterine artery embolization. MATERIALS AND METHODS One hundred fifty-two consecutive women underwent embolization for uterine fibroids. Complications and outcomes were analyzed using questionnaires and serial MRI between women with one or more uterine fibroids of 10 cm or larger diameter (mean, 12.4 cm; range, 10-19 cm) (n = 47, group 1) and women with each uterine fibroid of less than 10 cm diameter (mean, 6.8 cm; range, 2-9.5 cm) (n = 105, group 2). RESULTS Thirty complications (19.7%, 30/152), which occurred in 27 women (17.8%, 27/152), were noted. However, 25 of 30 complications were minor, requiring no or nominal therapy. They occurred in 19.1% (9/47) of group 1 and in 15.2% (16/105) of group 2 women (p = 0.637). Major complications requiring major therapy, unplanned increased level of care, or unanticipated prolonged hospitalization (> 48 hr) or including permanent adverse sequelae were noted in 6.4% (3/47) of group 1 and in 1.9% (2/105) of group 2 women (p = 0.172). Of these five women, four underwent surgery because of sloughing fibroids. Permanent adverse sequelae were observed in one woman of group 1, who has had sexual dysfunction after embolization. No deaths occurred in either group. There was no significant difference in most outcomes or in intervals until the complete disappearance of postprocedural pain and full recovery between the two groups. CONCLUSION We found no increased risk to patients undergoing uterine artery embolization for fibroids on the basis of tumor size. Successful outcomes can be obtained for such lesions.
Collaborative interactive visualization: exploratory concept

Dealing with an ever increasing amount of data is a challenge that military intelligence analysts or team of analysts face day to day. Increased individual and collective comprehension goes through collaboration between people. Better is the collaboration, better will be the comprehension. Nowadays, various technologies support and enhance collaboration by allowing people to connect and collaborate in settings as varied as across mobile devices, over networked computers, display walls, tabletop surfaces, to name just a few. A powerful collaboration system includes traditional and multimodal visualization features to achieve effective human communication. Interactive visualization strengthens collaboration because this approach is conducive to incrementally building a mental assessment of the data meaning. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the envisioned collaboration architecture and the interactive visualization concepts underlying the Sensemaking Support System prototype developed to support analysts in the context of the Joint Intelligence Collection and Analysis Capability project at DRDC Valcartier. It presents the current version of the architecture, discusses future capabilities to help analyst(s) in the accomplishment of their tasks and finally recommends collaboration and visualization technologies allowing to go a step further both as individual and as a team.
Alternative Splicing Generates Putative Soluble CD83 Proteins That Inhibit T Cell Proliferation1

CD83 is expressed on mature dendritic cells and activated lymphocytes and has been implicated to play an important role during T cell development in the thymus. In contrast, not much is known about the function of CD83 in the periphery. Soluble forms of CD83 have been detected in the serum, but neither the function nor the mechanism of how these soluble forms of CD83 are generated are fully understood. In this study, we report the identification of four different transcripts of CD83 in unstimulated PBMCs. Sequence analysis demonstrated that the longest form codes for transmembrane CD83 (CD83-TM), whereas the smaller transcripts are splice variants of full-length CD83, coding for putative soluble CD83 proteins. Stimulation of PBMCs with PHA, TNF-α, or LPS leads to the up-regulation of the full-length CD83 transcript and to a strong down-regulation of two of the three smaller transcripts. The smallest CD83 splice product can be translated efficiently into protein, and recombinant soluble CD83 shows a strong inhibitory effect on T cell proliferation in MLRs. Our results suggest that the constitutive production of soluble forms of CD83 under steady-state conditions may have an important function in regulating immune homeostasis.