Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Use of ultrasonography and positron emission tomography in the diagnosis and assessment of large-vessel vasculitis

Purpose of reviewUltrasonography and positron emission tomography have been increasingly studied and, in part, introduced in clinical practice to diagnose large-vessel vasculitides, such as temporal arteritis, Takayasu arteritis, large-vessel giant cell arteritis, and isolated aortitis. Recent findingsUltrasonography reveals characteristic homogenous, concentric wall thickening in vasculitis, often combined with stenoses and, less frequently, with acute occlusions. Thirteen studies describe sensitivities of 40 to 100% (median, 86%) for temporal artery vessel wall edema compared with histology, and of 35 to 86% (median, 70%) compared with clinical diagnosis. If wall edema, stenoses, and occlusions are included, sensitivities increase to 91 to 100% (median, 95%) compared with histology, and to 83 to 100% (median, 88%) compared with clinical diagnosis. Specificities for wall edema are 68 to 100% (median, 93%) compared with histology, and 78 to 100% (median, 97%) compared with clinical diagnosis. One should be aware of large-vessel giant cell arteritis in all patients with temporal arteritis and polymyalgia rheumatica. Ultrasonography reveals characteristic wall thickening, particularly of the distal subclavian, axillary, and proximal brachial arteries. Findings in Takayasu arteritis are similar, but the vessel wall swelling is usually brighter. Positron emission tomography reveals vasculitis in arteries with a diameter of more than 4 mm. Ultrasonography and positron emission tomography agreed completely in the anatomic distribution of changes in patients with large-vessel giant cell arteritis. It reveals asymptomatic large-vessel vasculitis in giant cell arteritis and Takayasu arteritis. Positron emission tomography is not suitable for the assessment of temporal arteries. SummaryUltrasonography and positron emission tomography are new, promising techniques to assess large-vessel vasculitides.
Time to bin the term ‘overuse’ injury: is ‘training load error’ a more accurate term?

We read the recent systematic review on the prevalence, incidence and risk factors for overuse injuries of the wrist in young athletes and agree with the conclusion that age and early specialisation (early training commencement) are risk factors for injury.1 The study highlighted training intensity as a risk factor for overuse injuries. Given changes in training loads precede the onset of injury in cricket,2 football (soccer)3 and Australian football,4 we consider that overuse injuries can be considered errors in training load prescription and labelled as such. Care should also be taken with broadly labelling training intensity as a risk factor as moderate training loads are protective against injury Gabbett's ‘training injury prevention paradox’. 5 ,6 High training loads may predispose to …
From Flies to Humans: Circadian Genes in the Neurogenetics of Addiction

Drug addiction is a persistent brain disease with severe and sometimes fatal consequences. Addictive drugs induce long-lasting neuroadaptations in the functioning of the nervous system and currently there is no efficient pharmacological treatment that can successfully prevent or reverse these changes. As a consequence, addicted individuals often suffer from recurrent relapses, sometimes triggered by environments, situations or stressors that have previously been associated with drug taking. Behavioral neuroscience uses animal models to understand the neurobiological mechanisms which cause and correlate with the development of addiction, and recently the emphasis is on animals that are genetically tractable, such as mice (Mus musculus) and fruit flies, (Drosophila melanogaster). In spite of many obvious differences between humans and Drosophila, similarities at the genetic level and in the basic neuronal physiology, make Drosophila an excellent model organism for the study of many complex human behaviors, including addiction. Discovery that circadian genes influence the development of behavioral sensitization to cocaine in Drosophila led to numerous studies about the role of circadian genes in the regulation of drug-induced behaviors in laboratory mammals and humans. Results show that circadian genes are involved in regulating the behavioral and molecular response to different classes of drugs of abuse. Furthermore, studies in humans show the interconnectivity between the regulation of circadian behavior, mental diseases and addiction, and suggest that behavioral interventions aimed at improving the quality of the circadian behavior will be important in prevention and treatment of addictive behaviors.
Diabetic foot and PAD: the endovascular approach

Diabetic foot ulceration (DFU) is recognized as one of the most serious complications of diabetes. Active revascularisation plays a crucial role in achieving ulcer healing. Non‐surgical, minimally invasive, revascularisation options for DFU have expanded over the last decade and have become a prominent tool to prevent amputation. Endovascular treatment of arterial DFU lesions is mainly concentrated in the below‐the‐knee arteries. The outcome of both open surgery and endovascular treatment is broadly spoken the same for the endpoints ulcer healing and limb salvage and is between 78% and 85%. The choice between endovascular treatment and open surgery should always be the outcome of a team discussion. Local expertise plays an important role in these discussions. In many institutions, the endovascular approach has currently become the first choice treatment option. The revascularisation of below‐the‐knee vessels needs experienced hands, team discussion and the right set of devices. Centralisation in DFU centres is therefore probably the best guaranty for the best outcome. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Parkinson Diagnosis using Neural Network: aSurvey

Clinical decisions lead to unwanted biases, errors and excessive medical costs which affect the quality of services provided to patients. Accurate detection is highly essential for treatment planning which can minimize the fatal results. Accurate results can be obtained through Artificial Neural Network. Besides being accurate, these techniques must converge quickly in order to apply them for real time applications. Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a common disease of central nervous system among the elderly & its complex symptoms bring up some difficulties for the clinical diagnosis. PD is a progressive neurological disorder characterized by tremor, rigidity & slowness of movements. It is associated with progressive neuronal loss in the substantia nigra & other brain structures. This situation leads towards the need to develop a Decision Support System for PD. This paper presents a comparative analysis to illustrate merits of various available research techniques. The aim of the survey is to introduce for those new to the field, an overview for those working in the field & a reference for those searching for literature on a specific application.
Varieties of Capitalist Debates: How Institutions Shape Public Conflicts on Economic Liberalization in the U.K., France, and Germany

Well-known typologies in Comparative Political Economy, like the "Varieties of Capitalism" or the "Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism" are criticized for neglecting political conflict, because they selectively focus on institutional characteristics, most notably labor relations and welfare regimes.In doing so, they fall short of grasping the whole meaning of their categories. This analysis moves beyond institutionally de fined political-economic arrangements and studies the role of public debates for di fferent capitalist models.Using novel relational data from an extensive content analysis of newspapers from 2004 to 2006, political conflicts on economic liberalization in Britain, France, and Germany are explored. More speci fically, the paper assesses the structure of conflicts and the influence of various political actors on the debate about economic liberalization. The results reveal persistent national peculiarities with respect to political contention that can plausibly be attributed to the influence of long-term historical legacies and institutional complementaries as outlined by previous typologies.
CONTROL OF A STAPHYLOCOCCAL OUTBREAK IN A NURSERY, USE OF BACTERIAL INTERFERENCE.

An outbreak of pathogenic staphylococci was recognized in a newborn and premature service. When conventional control measures failed, the phenomenon of bacterial interference was exploited. Deliberate colonization of infants was carried out with a relatively nonpathogenic, coagulase-positive, penicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus (502A). The procedure was carried out in a simple manner and was effective in controlling the outbreak. No major pyogenic lesions attributable to the 502A strain were noted in either the full-term or premature infants. Acquisition of the interfering strain by the infants was prevented if antibiotic drugs were administered or if staphylococci had already been acquired. The ability to isolate all coagulase-positive staphylococci, including 502A, from the umbilical site of premature infants decreased with increasing age of the patients.
Implicit Incentives for Human Capital Acquisition

The importance of human capital in building and maintaining competitive advantage is undisputed, and ensuring that employees invest in their human capital has thus become of utmost importance to firms. Despite this, management control research has not dedicated much attention to the personnel control mechanisms that aim at upgrading the effective ability of employees, i.e., training and assignment of employees. In this study, we investigate the complementary roles of training and promotions in the active management of employees’ human capital acquisition. In particular, based on a simple theoretical framework, we predict that promotion opportunities create implicit incentives to invest in job-specific human capital. To test this prediction, we develop an identification strategy to estimate the causal effect of promotion opportunities on the acquisition of job-specific human capital. Using panel data of a retail bank, we provide evidence that, in contrast to bonus-based incentives, which focus on the current job, promotion is an ideal mechanism to incentivize the acquisition of human capital that is relevant for the next job, especially when these skills are not yet relevant in the current job.
Polyamine Conjugation as a Promising Strategy To Target Amyloid Aggregation in the Framework of Alzheimer’s Disease

Spermine conjugates 2–6, carrying variously decorated 3,5-dibenzylidenepiperidin-4-one as bioactive motives, were designed to direct antiaggregating properties into mitochondria, using a polyamine functionality as the vehicle tool. The study confirmed mitochondrial import of the catechol derivative 2, which displayed effective antiaggregating activity and neuroprotective effects against Aβ-induced toxicity. Notably, a key functional role for the polyamine motif in Aβ molecular recognition was also unraveled. This experimental readout, which was supported by in silico studies, gives important new insight into the polyamine’s action. Hence, we propose polyamine conjugation as a promising strategy for the development of neuroprotectant leads that may contribute to decipher the complex picture of Aβ toxicity.
Aging and heparin-related bleeding.

BACKGROUND Many studies have suggested that elderly patients are at increased risk of bleeding during heparin therapy. OBJECTIVE To establish whether the risk of bleeding in the elderly results from concomitant risk factors or is associated with the aging process itself. METHODS One hundred ninety-nine patients who presented with proximal deep vein thrombosis were treated with a standard intravenous heparin protocol in a double-blind, randomized, prospective study. Bleeding complications were monitored. Activated partial thromboplastin times and heparin levels were assessed 4 to 6 hours after a standard intravenous heparin bolus and infusion. Heparin doses and heparin levels were also assessed after stable therapeutic heparin infusion rates were established. RESULTS There was an increase in total and major bleeding complications with aging (P < .05) that was not accounted for by standard risk factors for bleeding. Aging was associated with an increase in heparin levels (r = .239, P = .003) and a tendency for an increase in activated partial thromboplastin time (r = .134, P = .07) after standard heparin doses. Aging was also associated with lower heparin dose requirements (r = .267, P = .003) after therapeutic activated partial thromboplastin times were achieved. CONCLUSION Aging is a risk for heparin-related bleeding that may be explicable by age-related changes in the pharmacologic characteristics of heparin.
Programas trainee e expatriação como fatores propulsores de ascensão na carreira

O planejamento e desenvolvimento da carreira nao ocorrem isoladamente dos fatores ambientais e pessoais, envolvendo tambem as ambicoes profissionais do individuo, assim como as propostas da empresa. Destacam-se, neste meio, dois projetos empresariais como forma de desenvolvimento e movimentacao dos profissionais: os programas trainee e a expatriacao. Estes envolvem grande investimento, tanto por parte da empresa, como do profissional, que mobiliza os seus esforcos em busca de aprendizagem e reconhecimento pelo seu trabalho. Este estudo busca analisar o programa trainee e o processo de expatriacao em duas empresas brasileiras a fim de entender como esses influenciaram na carreira dos entrevistados.
Cross-modal equivalence in early infancy: Auditory–visual intensity matching.

It has been proposed that young infants are attentive to quantitative variations in stimulation to the exclusion of qualitative ones. To the extent that this is so, young infants should ignore differences between lights and sounds and should instead respond to auditory and visual stimuli as more or less similar depending on their intensity. To examine this hypothesis, a cardia c habituation/dishabituation method with a test for stimulus generalization was employed . Three-weekold infants were repeatedly presented with white-light followed by white-noise stimuli of different intensities. A U-shaped relationship between magnitude of cardiac response and loudness was found. In view of previous findings that without prior visual stimulation a monotonic increase in cardiac response to the same range of auditory stimuli results, this finding of a significant quadratic relationship with loudness suggests that the infants were responding to the auditory stimuli in terms of their similarity to the previously presented visual stimulus. A separate group of infants presented with a more intense visual stimulus exhibited a shift in the intensity at which a minimal cardiac response occurred. Results of a study with adults did not show any systematic relationship between cardiac response and loudness, indicating that unlike infants, adults do not spontaneously make cross-modal matches of intensity. Our perception of the world is based to a
A GAAS/ALGAAS/INGAAS PSEUDOMORPHIC HEMT STRUCTURE FOR HIGH SPEED DIGITAL CIRCUITS

Abstract A double heterojunction GaAs/AlGaAs/InGaAs pseudomorphic depletion mode HEMT has been developed at the gate length of 80nm. The device properties are tested for different biasing potentials at the input and output side. The device is found to exhibit a cut off frequency of 80Ghz.Further, the logic suitability of the device is supported by developing the basic gates used for digital communication i.e., Inverter, Nand and Nor. Thus, enhancement in digital communication can be obtained with the use of HEMTs which provide high speed, low noise applications. Furthermore, with the implementation of universal gates using HEMTs, any digital circuit can be easily implemented. The paper reports a complete method from developing of the structure in Visual TCAD (VTCAD) to further implementing a circuit using the developed structure.
Renal biopsy findings and clinicopathologic correlations in rheumatoid arthritis.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate renal biopsy findings and clinicopathologic correlations in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS Retrospective study of renal biopsy specimens from 110 RA patients in whom the clinical renal disease was probably due to RA itself and/or to antirheumatic therapy. RESULTS The most common histopathologic finding was mesangial glomerulonephritis (GN) (n = 40), followed by amyloidosis (n = 33), membranous GN (n = 19), focal proliferative GN (n = 4), minimal-change nephropathy (n = 3), and acute interstitial nephritis (n = 1). Amyloidosis was the most common finding in patients with the nephrotic syndrome. In patients with isolated proteinuria, amyloidosis, membranous GN, and mesangial GN were almost equally common. Although mesangial GN was found in almost two-thirds of the RA patients with hematuria (with or without proteinuria), there still remained a 1 in 5 chance that the biopsy would reveal membranous GN or amyloidosis. Membranous GN was closely related to gold or D-penicillamine therapies, whereas mesangial GN probably related to RA itself. CONCLUSION The renal morphologic lesion in RA patients with isolated proteinuria and those with hematuria cannot be accurately predicted on the basis of clinical symptoms and signs. Biopsy is thus useful in differential diagnosis, assessment of prognosis, and decision-making with regard to treatment.
Evaluation of the βLacta Test, a Rapid Test Detecting Resistance to Third-Generation Cephalosporins in Clinical Strains of Enterobacteriaceae

ABSTRACT For decades, third-generation cephalosporins (3GC) have been major drugs used to treat infections due to Enterobacteriaceae; growing resistance to these antibiotics makes the rapid detection of such resistance important. The βLacta test is a chromogenic test developed for detecting 3GC-resistant isolates from cultures on solid media within 15 min. A multicenter prospective study conducted in 5 French and Belgian hospitals evaluated the performance of this test on clinical isolates. Based on antibiotic susceptibility testing, strains resistant or intermediate to cefotaxime or ceftazidime were classified as 3GC resistant, and molecular characterization of this resistance was performed. The rates of 3GC resistance were 13.9% (332/2,387) globally, 9.4% in Escherichia coli (132/1,403), 25.6% in Klebsiella pneumoniae (84/328), 30.3% in species naturally producing inducible AmpC beta-lactamases (109/360), and 5.6% in Klebsiella oxytoca and Citrobacter koseri (7/124). The sensitivities and specificities of the βLacta test were, respectively, 87.7% and 99.6% overall, 96% and 100% for E. coli and K. pneumoniae, and 67.4% and 99.6% for species naturally producing inducible AmpC beta-lactamase. False-negative results were mainly related to 3GC-resistant strains producing AmpC beta-lactamase. Interestingly, the test was positive for all 3GC-resistant extended-spectrum beta-lactamase-producing isolates (n = 241). The positive predictive value was 97% and remained at ≥96% for prevalences of 3GC resistance ranging between 10 and 30%. The negative predictive values were 99% for E. coli and K. pneumoniae and 89% for the species producing inducible AmpC beta-lactamase. In conclusion, the βLacta test was found to be easy to use and efficient for the prediction of resistance to third-generation cephalosporins, particularly in extended-spectrum beta-lactamase-producing strains.
Empirical Modelling of Vegetation Abundance from Airborne Hyperspectral Data for Upland Peatland Restoration Monitoring

Peatlands are important terrestrial carbon stores. Restoration of degraded peatlands to restore ecosystem services is a major area of conservation effort. Monitoring is crucial to judge the success of this restoration. Remote sensing is a potential tool to provide landscape-scale information on the habitat condition. Using an empirical modelling approach, this paper aims to use airborne hyperspectral image data with ground vegetation survey data to model vegetation abundance for a degraded upland blanket bog in the United Kingdom (UK), which is undergoing restoration. A predictive model for vegetation abundance of Plant Functional Types (PFT) was produced using a Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR) and applied to the whole restoration site. A sensitivity test on the relationships between spectral data and vegetation abundance at PFT and single species level confirmed that PFT was the correct scale for analysis. The PLSR modelling allows selection of variables based upon the weighted regression coefficient of the individual spectral bands, showing which bands have the most influence on the model. These results suggest that the SWIR has less value for monitoring peatland vegetation from hyperspectral images than initially predicted. RMSE values for the validation data range between 10% and 16% cover, indicating that the models can be used as an operational tool, considering the subjective nature of existing vegetation survey results. These predicted coverage images are the first quantitative landscape scale monitoring results to be produced for the site. High resolution hyperspectral mapping of PFTs has the potential to assess recovery of peatland systems at landscape scale for the first time.
Random Insertional Mutagenesis of Leptospira interrogans, the Agent of Leptospirosis, Using a mariner Transposon

ABSTRACT The recent availability of the complete genome sequences of Leptospira interrogans, the agent of leptospirosis, has allowed the identification of several putative virulence factors. However, to our knowledge, attempts to carry out gene transfer in pathogenic Leptospira spp. have failed so far. In this study, we show that the Himar1 mariner transposon permits random mutagenesis in the pathogen L. interrogans. We have identified genes that have been interrupted by Himar1 insertion in 35 L. interrogans mutants. This approach of transposon mutagenesis will be useful for understanding the spirochetal physiology and the pathogenic mechanisms of Leptospira, which remain largely unknown.
Feature selection and classification of protein–protein complexes based on their binding affinities using machine learning approaches

Protein–protein interactions are intrinsic to virtually every cellular process. Predicting the binding affinity of protein–protein complexes is one of the challenging problems in computational and molecular biology. In this work, we related sequence features of protein–protein complexes with their binding affinities using machine learning approaches. We set up a database of 185 protein–protein complexes for which the interacting pairs are heterodimers and their experimental binding affinities are available. On the other hand, we have developed a set of 610 features from the sequences of protein complexes and utilized Ranker search method, which is the combination of Attribute evaluator and Ranker method for selecting specific features. We have analyzed several machine learning algorithms to discriminate protein‐protein complexes into high and low affinity groups based on their Kd values. Our results showed a 10‐fold cross‐validation accuracy of 76.1% with the combination of nine features using support vector machines. Further, we observed accuracy of 83.3% on an independent test set of 30 complexes. We suggest that our method would serve as an effective tool for identifying the interacting partners in protein–protein interaction networks and human–pathogen interactions based on the strength of interactions. Proteins 2014; 82:2088–2096. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.