Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Innate immune activation in neutrophilic asthma.

We would appreciate the opportunity to comment on the very interesting recently published paper by Simpson and colleagues,1 putatively describing innate immune activation in a “neutrophilic variant” of asthma, in inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) treated patients. We feel that the paper is especially important and effective in highlighting the heterogeneity of airway cellular infiltrates in asthma, especially after exposure to corticosteroid. We endorse the proposal that neutrophils are involved pathogenically, even in stable asthma. This is likely to be the case even when neutrophils are not grossly elevated in number, and indeed they may be at least as relevant as eosinophils …
False activation of the cardiac catheterization laboratory for primary PCI.

OBJECTIVES We sought to evaluate trends in door-to-balloon (D2B) times and false activation rates for the cardiac catheterization laboratory (CCL) in patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) with acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). In patients with STEMI, national efforts have focused on reducing D2B times for primary percutaneous coronary intervention (P-PCI). This emphasis on time-to-treatment may increase the rate of false CCL activations and unnecessary healthcare utilization. STUDY DESIGN Retrospective quality improvement chart review. METHODS We examined all emergent CCL activations for P-PCI between 2007 and 2011 at the University of Michigan Hospital. False activation was defined as emergent CCL activation when the patient did not require CCL care or emergent cardiology evaluation in the ED. Pre-hospital or ED false activation rates and mean D2B time were retrospectively determined by chart review. RESULTS The CCL was activated 717 times for suspected STEMI. The number of CCL activations increased from 96 in 2007 to 190 in 2011. False CCL activations accounted for 28% of all prehospital and 29% of all ED activations. The false activation rate increased from 15% of all cases in 2007 to 40% of all cases in 2011. The median D2B time decreased from 67 minutes in 2007 to 55 minutes in 2011. CONCLUSIONS Over a 5-year period with a strong emphasis on reducing D2B times, there has been an increased CCL false activation rate for P-PCI.
Simulating tumour vasculature at multiple scales

The vasculature plays an important role in tumour development and treatment, acting as a conduit for nutrients, waste products and therapeutics. Simulating transport and network structure evolution in malformed tumour networks is a challenging multi-scale problem. Current approaches for modelling the vasculature at distinct size scales are described here, followed by a discussion of current efforts in developing integrated multi-scale modelling approaches for simulating the growth and treatment of vascular tumours.
Transduction of cytosine deaminase gene makes rat glioma cells highly sensitive to 5‐fluorocytosine

To investigate the potential use of E. coli cytosine deaminase (CD) gene instead of the commonly used HSV‐TK gene in the gene therapy of brain tumors, we constructed a retrovirus vector carrying the CD gene. We then transduced a rat glioma cell line C6 with CD gene by the retrovirus vector. Transduction of the CD gene made C6 cells become highly sensitive to the anti‐fungi drug 5‐fluorocytosine (5FC). IC50 for 5FC was 6,000 μM in CD‐negative cells, while it was 3 μM in Cd ‐positive cells. Mixed cellular assay showed that CD‐positive cells had a strong “bystander effect” on CD‐negative cells when exposed to 5FC. Significant anti‐tumor effects were observed in nude mice bearing s.c. tumors derived from CD‐positive cells when these animals were given 250 mg/kg 5FC twice a day for 20 consecutive days. A marked decrease in tumor weight occurred when a mixture containing 50% CD‐positive and 50% CD‐negative C6 cells was injected s.c. , followed by 5FC treatment, suggesting the bystander effect in vivo. Concerning the pharmacokinetics of 5FC, especially its high oral bio‐availability and good penetration into cerebrospinal fluid, we suppose that the combination of CD‐gene transfer and 5FC oral administration may have potential use in the gene therapy of brain tumors. Int. J. Cancer 71:675‐679, 1997. © 1997 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Simulation-trace-based component performance prediction

Large software systems are composed of interdependent distributed components, some developed in-house, some commercially available, and others developed by the customer. The system architecture, that is, the components comprising the system and their interconnections, typically varies for each design. Performance prediction is important for such software, including helping designers to select better designs and helping them to adjust the software architecture for better performance. To predict the overall system performance, we must have performance data for each component. Performance modelling for reused components was reported elsewhere. This paper presents a technology and its accompanying tool suite to obtain performance models of new components in a formal software architectural design specification given in a communicating extended finite state machine (CEFSM) model. Performance data for such new components are not available and must be collected through simulation. Our technique includes three steps: component specification instrumentation; simulation; and component stochastic performance model derivation from simulation trace. We applied our technology to a telecom application to predict the performance of its new components. Combined with the performance models of reused components from previous work, we were able to predict performance of the entire architectural design.
How many nosocomial infections are missed if identification is restricted to patients with either microbiology reports or antibiotic administration?

OBJECTIVE To investigate how many nosocomial infections would be missed if surveillance activities were restricted to patients having either microbiology reports or antibiotic administration. DESIGN Analysis of data from a large prevalence study on nosocomial infections (Nosocomial Infections in Germany-Surveillance and Prevention). SETTING A total of 14,966 patients were investigated in medical, surgical, obstetric-gynecologic, and intensive-care units of 72 German hospitals representatively selected according to size. Five hundred eighteen patients (3.5%) had at least one nosocomial infection. Microbiology reports were available for 56.6% of these patients on the prevalence day, and 86.3% received antibiotics. RESULTS Only 31 nosocomially infected patients (6%) would have been missed by using either microbiology reports or antibiotic treatment as an indicator. These indicators of nosocomial infections had a high diagnostic sensitivity for nosocomial pneumonia (98.8%), urinary tract infections (96.3%), and primary bloodstream infections (95.3%), but a lower sensitivity for wound infections (85.4%). Thus, 97.4% of all nosocomial infections were found with this method in intensive-care units and 96.1% in medicine units, but only 89.7% in surgical departments. In 9 (12.5%) of 72 hospitals, the overall sensitivity would have been <80% using a combination of the two indicators. For this reason, the situation in one's own hospital should be checked before using this method. CONCLUSIONS After checking the situation in one's own hospital, the "either-or" approach using the two indicators "microbiology report" and "antibiotic administration" can be recommended as a time-saving measure to diagnose pneumonia, urinary tract, and primary bloodstream infections. For wound infections, additional information obtained by changing dressings or participating in ward rounds is necessary to achieve satisfactory sensitivity in the surveillance of nosocomial infections. Of course, it is necessary that the surveillance staff discard all false positives to ensure a satisfactory specificity.
Assessment of China’s Mitigation Targets in an Effort-Sharing Framework

Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are a core component for post-2020 global climate agreements to achieve the 2 °C goal in addressing climate change. In the NDC, China has declared to lower carbon intensity by 60–65% from the 2005 level by 2030 and achieve the peak of CO2 emissions around 2030. In the context of the 2 °C goal, this study assesses China’s CO2 mitigation targets in the NDC using fair ranges of emissions allowances as calculated from an effort-sharing framework based on six equity principles (and cost-effectiveness). Results show that understanding the fairness of China’s NDC would rely heavily on selected equity principles. If the 65% target is implemented, China’s NDC would position within full ranges of emissions allowances and align with responsibility–capacity–need based on comparisons in 2030, and with responsibility–capacity–need and equal cumulative per capita emissions based on comparisons during 2011–2030. Implications of the NDC on China’s long-term CO2 mitigation targets beyond 2030 are also explored, which indicate that China’s energy system would need to realize carbon neutrality by 2070s at the latest in the scenarios in this study.
An Essentialist Account of Authenticity

The concept of authenticity is central to how people value many different types of objects and yet there is considerable disagreement about how individuals evaluate authenticity or how the concept itself should be defined. This paper attempts to reconcile previous approaches by proposing a novel view of authenticity. Specifically, I draw upon past research on psychological essentialism and propose that when people evaluate the authenticity of objects, they do so by evaluating the extent to which the object embodies or reflects a valued essence. I suggest that this explanation of authenticity provides an overarching framework that describes how people evaluate object authenticity across a variety of contexts and I report the results of three experiments that directly test the predictions made by this explanation.
Biohydrogenation of unsaturated fatty acids. VI. Source of hydrogen and stereospecificity of reduction.

Abstract The biohydrogenation of either linoleic acid or cis-9, trans-11, cis-13-octadecatrienoic acid (punicic acid) by Butyrivibrio fibrisolvens results in the formation of trans-11-octadecenoic acid. Incubation of whole cells with tritiated formate, tritiated succinate, and glucose labeled with tritium in various positions failed to result in the labeling of the monoenoic acid product. In contrast, experiments performed in D2O indicated that deuterium was incorporated at the cis double bond(s) reduced by the microorganism. This reduction, which takes place stereospecifically, was found to occur by cis addition to the d side of cis-9, trans-11-octadecadienoic acid, an intermediate in the biohydrogenation of linoleic acid. The distribution of deuterium at the reduced carbon atoms shows an isotope effect and leads to the speculation that reduction occurs by addition of a proton and hydride ion mediated by an unknown carrier.
Monitoring Cleaning-In-Place by electrical resistance tomography with dynamic references

In multifunctional food and detergent production lines, accurate identification of ending point of the cleaning process for the previous product is crucial to ensure product integrity. In this paper, a commercial electrical resistance tomography system was applied to monitoring a lab Cleaning-In-Place circuit. Several image reconstruction algorithms are compared for the accurate identification of the end point and an optimized algorithm based on Tikhonov regularization with dynamic references is proposed and verified to be the best solution. The capabilities of this novel approach are discussed.
Repeatability of Insulin Sensitivity and Glucose Effectiveness From the Minimal Model: Implications for Study Design

To determine the repeatability of insulin sensitivity measurements generated by the minimal model, we subjected 11 normal men to 3 frequently sampled intravenous glucose tolerance tests (FSIGTs) over the course of 12 days under conditions of fixed diet and limited physical activity. FSIGTs were analyzed by the minimal model using a full, 30-sample data set, as well as a reduced, 12-sample data set that has been proposed for population studies. Minimal model insulin sensitivity index (Si) calculated from the 30-sample data set averaged 0.8 ± 0.083 × 10−4 min−1 · (pmol/1)−1 (range 0.10–1.64 × 10−4 min−1 · (pmol/I)−1 with an average interday coefficient of variation (CV) of 20.2 ± 3.2% (range 6–44%). Glucose effectiveness (SG) was slightly less repeatable, with an average interday variability of 25.1 ± 8.8%. The mean CVs for first-phase insulin secretion (20.1 ± 3.5%) and total insulin secretion (21.4 ± 3.2%) were similar to the CV for Sp Mean insulin sensitivity calculated from the 12-sample data set (0.82 ± 0.08 × 10−4 min−1 · (pmol/1)−1 was not significantly different from the mean calculated from the full data set (P = 0.37, paired Student's t test). However, the mean CV of Sx calculated from the reduced data set tended to be greater than that calculated from the full data set (27.7 ± 5.4% vs. 20.2 ± 3.2%). Power calculations using the observed variances from the full and reduced data sets indicated that the full sample protocol is preferable for small studies designed to detect small changes in Si, whereas the reduced sample protocol is appropriate for studies with large numbers of subjects or large anticipated changes in Si
The BBX subfamily IV

Plants depend on light during all phases of its life cycle, and have evolved a complex signaling network to constantly monitor its surroundings. Photomorphogenesis, a process during which the plant reprograms itself in order to dwell life in presence of light is one of the most studied phenomena in plants. Recent mutant analyses using model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and protein interaction assays have unraveled a new set of players, an 8-member subfamily of B-box proteins, known as BBX subfamily IV. For the members of this subfamily, positive (BBX21, BBX22) as well as negative (BBX24) functions have been described for its members, showing a strong association to two major players of the photomorphogenic cascade, HY5 and COP1. The roles of these new BBX regulators are not restricted to photomorphogenesis, but also have functions in other facets of light-dependent development. Therefore this newly identified set of regulators has opened up new insights into the understanding of the fine-tuning of this complex process.
The Cortical Bone Trajectory : An Alternative to Traditional Pedicle Screw Fixation-A Review

The cortical based trajectory for pedicle screw fixation of the lumbar spine is not a novel as it once was. This is a review of the background, indications, advantages, disadvantages of cortical based trajectory pedicle screw fixation with an emphasis on biomechanical evidence and recent clinical studies which only now are just coming to light.
2 Variational inference and Gaussian mixtures

Modern Bayesian inference typically requires some form of posterior approximation, and mean-field variational inference (MFVI) is an increasingly popular choice due to its speed. But MFVI can be inaccurate in various aspects, including an inability to capture multimodality in the posterior and underestimation of the posterior covariance. These issues arise since MFVI considers approximations to the posterior only in a family of factorized distributions. We instead consider a much more flexible approximating family consisting of all possible finite mixtures of a parametric base distribution (e.g., Gaussian). In order to efficiently find a high-quality posterior approximation within this family, we borrow ideas from gradient boosting and propose boosting variational inference (BVI). BVI iteratively improves the current approximation by mixing it with a new component from the base distribution family. We develop practical algorithms for BVI and demonstrate their performance on both real and simulated data.
Peptide receptor radionuclide therapy in vitro using [111In-DTPA0]octreotide.

UNLABELLED Peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT) using [(111)In-DTPA(0)]octreotide (where DTPA is diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid) is feasible because, besides gamma-radiation, (111)In emits both therapeutic Auger and internal conversion electrons having a tissue penetration of 0.02-10 and 200-500 micro m, respectively. The aim of this study was to investigate the therapeutic effects of [(111)In-DTPA(0)]octreotide in a single-cell model including the effects of incubation time, radiation dose, and specific activity of [(111)In-DTPA(0)]octreotide. Finally, we discriminated between the effects of the Auger electrons and internal conversion electrons in PRRT. METHODS An in vitro, colony-forming assay to study cell survival after PRRT using the sst subtype 2-positive rat pancreatic tumor cell line CA20948 was developed. RESULTS In this in vitro system [(111)In-DTPA(0)]octreotide can control tumor growth to 0% survival, and the effects were dependent on incubation time, radiation dose, and specific activity used. Similar concentrations of (111)In-DTPA, which is not internalized into sst-positive tumor cells like [(111)In-DTPA(0)]octreotide, did not influence tumor survival. Excess unlabeled octreotide (10(-6) mol/L) could decrease tumor cell survival to 60% of control; the addition of radiolabeled peptide ([(111)In-DTPA(0)]octreotide [10(-9) mol/L] + 10(-6) mol/L octreotide) did not further decrease survival. CONCLUSION These in vitro studies show that the therapeutic effect of (111)In is dependent on internalization, enabling the Auger electrons with their very short particle range to reach the nucleus. Our results also indicate that the PRRT effects were receptor mediated.
Cutaneous Water Loss and the Development of the Stratum Corneum of Nestling House Sparrows (Passer domesticus) from Desert and Mesic Environments

Evaporation through the skin contributes to more than half of the total water loss in birds. Therefore, we expect the regulation of cutaneous water loss (CWL) to be crucial for birds, especially those that live in deserts, to maintain a normal state of hydration. Previous studies in adult birds showed that modifications of the lipid composition of the stratum corneum (SC), the outer layer of the epidermis, were associated with changes in rates of CWL. However, few studies have examined the ontogeny of CWL and the lipids of the SC in nestling birds. In this study, we measured CWL and the lipid composition of the SC during development of nestlings from two populations of house sparrows, one from the deserts of Saudi Arabia and the other from mesic Ohio. We found that desert and mesic nestlings followed different developmental trajectories for CWL. Desert nestlings seemed to make a more frugal use of water than did mesic nestlings. To regulate CWL, nestlings appeared to modify the lipid composition of the SC during ontogeny. Our results also suggest a tighter regulation of CWL in desert nestlings, presumably as a result of the stronger selection pressures to which nestlings are exposed in deserts.
Posterolateral, Anterior, or Circumferential Fusion In Situ for High-Grade Spondylolisthesis in Young Patients: A Long-Term Evaluation Using The Scoliosis Research Society Questionnaire

Study Design. A retrospective, comparative follow-up study. Objective. To compare clinical and radiographic outcomes after posterolateral, anterior, or circumferential fusion in situ for high-grade spondylolisthesis in children and adolescents. Summary of Background Data. Controversial opinions still exist about the surgical treatment of severe isthmic spondylolisthesis. There are no long-term comparative studies of different fusion in situ techniques in these patients. Methods. A total of 21 patients treated using posterolateral, 23 using anterior, and 26 using the circumferential fusion technique without instrumentation for high-grade isthmic spondylolisthesis (≥50% slip) participated. Their mean age at surgery was 14.4 years (range 8.0–19.6). The follow-up rate was 84% after a mean of 17.2 years (range 10.7–26.0). Radiographs were obtained before surgery, at 2-year follow-up, and at final follow-up. The Scoliosis Research Society (SRS) and Oswestry Disability Index questionnaires were completed, and a physical examination was performed at the final follow-up visit. Results. Progression of lumbosacral kyphosis (≥10°) was found in 9 (43%), 3 (13%), and 3 (12%) patients of the posterolateral, anterior, and circumferential fusion groups, respectively (P = 0.017). The SRS total score averaged 89.7 (range 56–105) in the posterolateral, 93.2 (range 66–114) in the anterior, and 100.0 (range 71–117) in the circumferential fusion groups (P = 0.021). Patients in the circumferential fusion group had better values for pain (P = 0.023) and function from back condition domains (P = 0.079) than patients in the posterolateral or anterior groups. The Oswestry Disability Index averaged 9.7 (range 0–62) in the posterolateral, 8.9 (range 0–32) in the anterior, and 3.0 (range 0–16) in the circumferential fusion groups (P = 0.035). Conclusions. Circumferential fusion provided significantly better long-term clinical, radiographic, and SRS total score than posterolateral or anterior fusion for high-grade isthmic spondylolisthesis.
Beam Search with Dynamic Pruning for Artificial Intelligence Hard Problems

The "Beam" search algorithm is derived from the classical Artificial Intelligence discipline and it searches under the strategy of "Space-states-operators", guided by heuristics. Although “Beam” is better than the “Breadth” search strategy, it suffers of some drawbacks. In this paper we propose and describe two innovative dynamic pruning variants of the "Beam" search algorithm. In the experiments that we performed with our two variants we obtained that they were consistently more efficient than the original algorithm, maintaining the solution quality. In particular we observed very significant reductions in the number of states required to reach the problem solution, and consequently reducing the response time.
Factors Influencing Consumer Adoption for Network Fellowship Auction in Taiwan

The emerging online economy in recent years has facilitated the rapid growth of e-commerce, such as Internet bank, e-wallet, and electronic bidding. Network fellowship auction is a collective effort by people who network and pool their money together by Internet in order to invest in and support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. Network fellowship auction has replaced conventional fellowship auction by offering a new safer and faster financial instrument. This research investigated the determinants of network fellowship auction user acceptance, including consumer perceived risk, perceived value, computer self-efficacy, and product involvement. An online survey was used with a sample of 446 respondents. Structural equation models (SEM) were used to examine hypotheses in the theoretical framework. The results showed that consumer perceived risk substantially negatively influenced perceived ease of use and intention; consumer perceived value positively influenced perceived usefulness; consumer computer self-efficacy positively influenced perceived ease of use. Additionally, consumer perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and product involvement positively influenced consumer intention.