Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The lack of association between monoamine oxidase ( MAO ) intron 13 polymorphism and platelet MAO-B activity among men MAO-B genotypes and activity in men

Monoamine oxidase (MAO), a mitochondrial flavine containing enzyme, exists in two isoenzymes, MAO-A and MAO-B. Platelets contain MAOB subtype, proposed to be a biomarker for different personality characteristics and vulnerability for substance abuse. The most common polymorphism of MAO-B gene, a single base change (A or G) occurs in intron 13. It has been proposed to be a functional polymorphism, controlling the activity of MAO-B in platelets. The aim of the study was to determine the association between platelet MAO-B activity and MAO-B intron 13 polymorphism in 225 racially and ethnically uniform healthy Caucasian men of the Croatian origin. Our results showed that platelet MAO-B activity did not differ between subjects subdivided into those with «A allele» or «G allele». This polymorphism of the MAO-B gene did not control the activity of the MAO-B in platelets. Platelet MAO-B activity was associated only with the smoking status, and it was significantly decreased in smokers when compared to nonsmokers. No significant association was found between MAO-B polymorphism and smoking status. In healthy individuals of the Croatian origin, the studied MAO-B polymorphism showed a lack of functional importance in regulating MAO-B activity in platelets. Since different populations may vary in the association between functional polymorphism and the MAO-B activity, and the genotype of transcription factor AP-2β was reported to be associated with altered platelet MAO-B activity, and with specific personality traits, further studies on different populations should be conducted to elucidate the molecular mechanism/s regulating platelet MAO-B activity.
The Severity of Acute Cellular Rejection Defined by Banff Classification Is Associated With Kidney Allograft Outcomes

Background It is unclear if the severity or the timing of acute cellular rejection (ACR) defined by Banff classification 2009 is associated with graft survival. Methods Borderline changes, TCMR I (interstitial rejection), and TCMR II/III (vascular rejection) were defined as low, moderate, and high ACR severity, respectively. Approximately 270 patients who had at least one episode of ACR were enrolled, 270 biopsies were chosen which showed the highest ACR severity of each patient and were negative for donor-specific antibodies (DSA), C4d, and microcirculation changes (MC). Six months were used as the cutoff to define early and late ACR; 370 patients without biopsy posttransplantation were recruited in the control group. Results Up to 8-year posttransplantation, death-censored graft survival (DCGS) rates of control, borderline, TCMR I, and TCMR II/III groups were 97.6%, 93.3%, 79.6%, and 73.6% (log rank test, P<0.001); the control group had significantly higher DCGS rate than the three ACR groups (each pairwise comparison yields P<0.05). The DCGS rate of late ACR was significantly lower compared with early ACR (63.6% vs. 87.4%, P<0.001). Intimal arteritis (Banff v-lesion) was an independent histologic risk factor correlated with long-term graft loss regardless of the timing of ACR. The v-lesions with minimal or high-grade tubulitis displayed similar graft survival (72.7% vs. 72.9%, P=0.96). Conclusion All types of ACR affect long-term graft survival. Vascular or late ACR predict poorer graft survival; the extent of tubulointerstitial inflammation (TI) is of no prognostic significance for vascular rejection.
Evidence that Stress Contributes to Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Evaluation, Synthesis, and Future Directions

Background: There is a long but inconsistent history of observations suggesting that psychologic stress contributes to the course of ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD). This study evaluated the strength of evidence for a causal link between stress, depression, and inflammatory bowel disease course. Methods: Literature review and unstructured qualitative analysis of all reported prospective studies of stress or depression and disease outcomes and randomized controlled studies (RCTs) of stress reduction interventions. Results: Although results remain inconsistent, prospective studies support a role for psychologic stress in the course of UC and for depressive symptoms in the course of CD. RCTs do not support the benefit of stress reduction for unselected patients with CD. UC has not been studied with adequately designed RCTs. Animal models suggest mechanisms whereby stress can exacerbate preexisting inflammatory disease, especially through increased epithelial permeability. Conclusions: A synthesis of the literature is presented suggesting approaches to reconcile apparently contradictory findings. Recommendations for further research emphasize refinements to avoid type II error and to identify subgroups of patients who are most likely to experience stress‐related effects on illness or to benefit from stress reduction intervention.
Isolation and optimization of Protease producing Bacteria from Halophilic soil

Among the different Agro-industrial waste products like various oil cakes, wheat bran, rice bran, sugarcane baggase, moong dhal husk, cotton seed and green gram husk screened as substrates / solid state fermentation supports for the production of protease by halophilic strain of Bacillus sp. , tk1 and tk2 under solid state fermentation, green gram husk followed by moong dhal husk supported maximum protease production. Among the tested nitrogen compounds 0.5% (w/w) urea followed by Tryptone for tk1 and Yeast extract followed by Tryptone for tk2 served as best co-organic nitrogen and ammonium nitrate followed by Ammonium sulphate and Potassium nitrate followed by Ammonium sulphate, for tk2 as best co-inorganic nitrogen sources for protease production by Bacillus sp. Among the tested nitrogen compounds 0.5% (w/w) lactose followed by fructose for tk1 and glucose followed by fructose for tk2 served as the best co-carbon sources for protease production by Bacillus sp. While growth and protease production by Bacillus sp. While growth and protease production was optimum at 5% (w/v) Nacl, only marginal growth without enzyme production was evident in the absent of salt. The protease had to highest activity at pH 8.0 and 35 o c for 48 hours incubation and inoculum level played a vital role in a protease production was found to be associated with the growth of the bacterial culture.
Control of bidirectional DC-DC converter for battery storage system in grid-connected quasi-Z-source pv inverter

The use of bidirectional DC-DC converter to interface battery energy storage system with the conventional PV inverter system has been widely addressed. It is however has never been considered to be integrated with the quasi-Z-source inverter (qZSI) topology, which offers several advantages e.g. a single stage buck-boost conversion. This paper specifically discusses on the development of the controller to realize a bidirectional power flow control for the DC-DC converter attached to the grid-connected PV based qZSI using the proposed battery storage method. Based on the circuit analysis, current-to-control relation is established, and results from both simulation and experiment demonstrates the proposed method works according to the requirement.
Advances in mechanical ventilation.

The chief reason that patients are admitted to an intensive care unit is to receive ventilatory support. In this article, I update the basic principles of mechanical ventilation, which I reviewed in the Journal in 1994,1 and discuss recent advances. Basic Principles The indications for mechanical ventilation, as derived from a study of 1638 patients in eight countries,2 are acute respiratory failure (66 percent of patients), coma (15 percent), acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (13 percent), and neuromuscular disorders (5 percent). The disorders in the first group include the acute respiratory distress syndrome, heart failure, pneumonia, sepsis, complications .
Educational attainment and the transition to first marriage among Japanese women

I use data from a large nationally representative survey to examine the relationship between women’s educational attainment and the timing of first marriage in Japan. The results indicate that later marriage for highly educated women primarily reflects longer enrollment in school, that university education is increasingly associated with later and less marriage, and that the trend toward later and less marriage is occurring at all levels of educational attainment. These findings are consistent, albeit weakly, with the argument that higher education should be negatively associated with marriage only in countries in which gender relations make it particularly difficult for women to balance work and family.
Maximum likelihood estimation for multivariate mixture observations of markov chains

To use probabilistic functions of a Markov chain to model certain parameterizations of the speech signal, we extend an estimation technique of Liporace to the eases of multivariate mixtures, such as Gaussian sums, and products of mixtures. We also show how these problems relate to Liporace's original framework.
Biomedical Text Classification with Improved Feature Weighting Method

In bioinformatics, we are interested in new techniques and advances in classification of biomedical documents for the hope of extracting useful biomedical knowledge out of the classification task. In this paper we introduce a feature weighting method for improving biomedical text classification. The method is effective in inducing weighted features from text data for classification. The weight of a feature is induced by the difference in class probability with versus without the feature. Specifically, in a simple inductive learning setting, the difference in class probability in the presence vs absence of feature fj can be a good metric for the contribution of fj in predicting the class. This technique is suitable for biomedical text mining in particular because it gives rise to terms with low per-document frequency and such terms play a good role in predicting the class in biomedical texts. The technique gives weight for each term feature based on the distribution of the class in presence vs absence of the term without considering the term frequency in each document. The evaluation is conducted using six biomedical text datasets and compared to the tfidf technique and baseline with encouraging results. We further examined the predictiveness of low average frequency terms and their effectiveness in classification accuracy.
THE EFFECTS OF WINTER LENGTH ON THE GENETICS OF APPLE AND HAWTHORN RACES OF RHAGOLETIS POMONELLA (DIPTERA: TEPHRITIDAE)

Host plant‐associated fitness trade‐offs are central to models of sympatric speciation proposed for certain phytophagous insects. But empirical evidence for such trade‐offs is scant, which has called into question the likelihood of nonallopatric speciation. Here, we report on the second in a series of studies testing for host‐related selection on pupal life‐history characteristics of apple‐ (Malus pumila L.) and hawthorn‐ (Crataegus mollis L. spp.) infesting races of the Tephritid fruit fly, Rhagoletis pomonella (Walsh). In particular, we examine the effects of winter length on the genetics of these flies.
Universal conductance fluctuations in the presence of Landau quantization.

We generalize the analytic theory of universal conductance fluctuations to systems with Landau-level quantization. Results are valid to leading order in 1/g (g is conductance) but for arbitrary magnetic field. We show that the field only enters through the diffusion constant and cancels in the variance of g, which hence remains ∼(e 2 /h) 2 over the entire range of magnetic fields. However, the correlation range B c does vary with field in good agreement with experiments
Formulation and evaluation of mouth dissolving film of antipsychotic drug aripiprazole

The oral route is the most preferred route, though preoral administration of drug has disadvantage like hepatic first pass metabolism and enzymatic degradation within the GI tract however trans mucosal routes of drug delivery ( i.e. Mucosal lining of nasal, rectal, vaginal, ocular, & oral cavities) offer distinct advantage over preoral administration because mucosa are permeable and well supplied with vascular and lymphatic drainage. Their other advantages include bypass of first pass effects and avoidance of pre-systematic elimination within GI tract. The present investigation highlights the formulation and evaluation of matrix type mouth dissolving films of Aripiprazole, prepared by solvent evaporation technique using Hydroxy propyl Methyl Cellulose (HPMC) - 3 cps. The formulated films were evaluated for their physiochemical parameters like mouth dissolving time, surface pH, thickness & weight of the films, PMA, PML, folding endurance, taste, drug content, stability and in vitro bioequivalence. In vitro release studies were also performed in solutions of different pH. The mouth dissolving film was found to be bioequivalent to the conventional solid dosage form of Aripiprazole.
Exploiting Linux and PaX ASLR’s weaknesses on 32-bit and 64-bit systems

Address Space Layout Randomization is a very effective mitigation technique. The first implementation was done by the PaX team in 2001, and since then it has been the most advanced and secure. We have analyzed the PaX an Linux implementations, and found several weaknesses. We have carried out a deep review and analysis of all constraints that determine ASLR operation. Based on these results we have designed and implemented a novel ASLR called ASLR-NG, which maximized the entropy (security) and does not introduce fragmentation (compatibility). ASLR-NG is specially suitable for 32-bit systems because of their intrinsic reduced VMA size. We have developed ASLRA, a tool to analyze the quality of the ASLR. This tool shows that ASLR-NG outperforms PaX ASLR in all aspects.
Impact of pharmacist interventions on seeking of medical care by migraineurs.

OBJECTIVES To determine the impact of a pharmacist-led educational intervention on the seeking of medical care from physicians by patients with migraine and identify barriers to migraine care and lapsing from this care. DESIGN Prospective, multigroup, quasiexperimental. SETTING Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, November 2004 through June 2005. PARTICIPANTS 100 university employees and students. Information from the initial interview was used to divide the patients into four groups: (1) not a migraineur, (2) migraineur who is currently consulting a physician for care of headaches (current consulter), (3) migraineur who has not consulted with a physician for more than 12 months concerning headaches (lapsed consulter), and (4) migraineur who has never consulted a physician regarding headache (never consulter). INTERVENTIONS Verbal counseling by a pharmacist and written education on migraine, as well as self-administered questionnaires. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Participants' physician consultation rates, perceived barriers to physician consultation, and perceived reasons for lapsing from care. RESULTS Of the 100 headache sufferers who participated in the study, 82 met International Headache Society criteria for migraine, of whom 22 were never consulters and 20 were lapsed consulters. Cross-tabulation and chi-square statistics did not reveal any statistically significant differences between the never-consulter control and intervention groups for 3-month physician consultation rates or intention to seek consultation during the next 6 months; however, 64% of never consulters contacted their physician or expressed intentions to do so after the intervention. The top three barriers to physician consultation identified were misidentifying migraines as headaches (50%), satisfaction with current treatment (45%), and inconvenience of physician consultation (41%). The top three reasons for lapsing from care were reduced frequency of headache (40%), self-identification of effective therapy (40%), and physician-directed effective therapy (30%). Cross-tabulation and chi-square statistics revealed one significant difference among student/employee groups in their identification of barriers. CONCLUSION This study identified barriers associated with migraineur physician consultation behavior and reasons for lapses in care. The role of pharmacists in encouraging migraineur physician consultation should be further examined.
Bioresorbable Pins and Interference Screws for Fixation of Hamstring Tendon Grafts in Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction Surgery

Background Biodegradable cross-pins have been shown to provide higher failure loads than do screws for fixation of hamstring tendons under laboratory conditions. Purpose To compare the clinical results of biodegradable pins (RigidFix) and interference screws (BioCryl) for fixation of hamstring grafts in arthroscopically assisted anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction. Study Design Randomized controlled trial; Level of evidence, 1. Methods To test the hypothesis of a difference of 1.0 ± 1.2 mm in anterior knee laxity between the two fixation options, 54 patients were randomly assigned to groups via a block randomization scheme and sealed envelopes. All patients underwent standardized hamstring graft reconstruction and had similar postoperative aftercare by an accelerated rehabilitation protocol. Measures assessed at baseline and after 1 and 2 years of follow-up included (1) the side-to-side difference in anterior laxity (KT-1000 arthrometer), (2) Short Form 36 physical and mental component scores, and (3) the International Knee Documentation Committee form scores. Results After 1 and 2 years, 26 and 21 patients in the BioCryl group and 28 and 24 patients in the RigidFix group were available for follow-up examination. No significant difference was noted in instrumented anterior translation between BioCryl and RigidFix fixation: 1 year, 0.11 (95% CI, —0.60 to 0.82; P = .7537); 2 years, 0.33 (95% CI, —0.43 to 1.08 mm; P = .3849). Also, there were no significant differences in the mean physical and mental component scores and International Knee Documentation Committee form scores and in overall complication and surgical revision rates. A pin dislocation was classified as the sole procedure-specific serious adverse event. Conclusion Bioresorbable pins do not provide better clinical results than do resorbable interference screws for hamstring graft fixation in anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction surgery.
Using the Sociotechnical Approach in Global Software Developments: Is the Theory Relevant today?

Global software development teams are highly dependent on technology for daily activities and production. Researchers have investigated the areas such as communication and time-zone difficulties when working across global boundaries during the last decade. However, this research explores job satisfaction, efficiency and the quality of working life of people working in a medium sized globally distributed software development organisation. It is assumed that the work structures of organisations of today are influenced by the theories from the past. This paper focus upon the issues that faces an Australian organisation involved in global software development, the research compares and contrasts the feelings of the employees using a Sociotechnical approach. The discussion highlights several problems areas specific to the organisation which will lay the foundation for future research.
Manipulating the extracellular matrix: an animal model of the bladder pain syndrome

Abstract Bladder pain syndrome (BPS) is associated with breakdown of the protective uroepithelial barrier of the urinary bladder allowing urinary constituents access to bladder sensory neurons. Although there are several animal models of cystitis, none specifically relates to BPS. Here, we aimed to create such a model using enzymatic digestion of the barrier proteoglycans (PGs) in the rat. Twenty female Wistar rats were anaesthetized and transurethrally catheterized. Ten animals were treated with 0.25IU of intravesical chondroitinase ABC and heparanase III to digest chondroitin sulphate and heparin sulphate PGs, respectively. Ten animals received saline. Following PG deglycosylation, bladders showed irregular loss of the apical uroplakin and a significant increase in neutrophils, not evident in the control group. Spinal cord sections were also collected for c-fos analysis. A large and significant increase in fos immunoreactivity in the L6/S1 segments in the treatment vs control bladders was observed. Cystometry was performed on 5 treatment and 5 control animals. Analysis revealed a significant increase in micturition reflex excitability postdeglycosylation. On a further group of 10 animals, von Frey mechanical withdrawal thresholds were tested on abdominal skin before and after PG digestions. There was a significant decrease in abdominal mechanical withdrawal threshold postdeglycosylation compared with controls. The results of this animal study suggest that many of the clinical features of BPS are seen after PG digestion from the bladder lumen. This model can be used to further understand mechanisms of pain in patients with BPS and to test new therapeutic strategies.
Channel Estimation and Hybrid Precoding/Combining for Frequency Selective Multiuser mmWave Systems

In this work we consider the problem of designing the precoders and combiners in a multiuser hybrid frequency selective millimeter wave (mmWave) system. We propose two methods to design the hybrid analog-digital filters when only an estimate of the channel is available at both the base station (BS) and the users. The first one is a projected gradient method that factorizes the all-digital solution, while the second approach is based on an alternating minimization (AM) iterative strategy. The channel is estimated using an algorithm that takes into account the hardware limitations of the hybrid architecture and leverages the sparse structure of mmWave channels. The proposed methods are evaluated in terms of achievable sum rate, outperforming the state of the art solutions. The negligible impact of the hybrid structure and the imperfect channel knowledge on the system performance are shown via numerical experiments.
Anatomical Connection Between the Rectus Capitis Posterior Major and the Dura Mater

Study Design. Anatomic study performed on 13 cadaveric specimens focused on muscles of the suboccipital triangle, specifically, the rectus capitis posterior major (RCPma). Objective. To investigate a connection between the RCPma and the cervical dura mater. Summary of Background Data. In a study of the posterior intervertebral spaces, a connection between the RCPma and the dura mater was briefly described. To the best of our knowledge, no study has been conducted specifically on this communication. Methods. Anatomic dissections were performed in the suboccipital regions of 13 embalmed, adult cadaveric specimens. Findings were recorded via photographic documentation. Results. In 11 of the 13 specimens, the RCPma attached to the spinous process of the axis and then continued to establish a gross anatomical connection with the dura mater in the atlantoaxial interspace. Manual traction of the RCPma resulted in gross dural movement from the spinal root level of the axis to the spinal root level of the first thoracic vertebra. Conclusion. A connection was found to exist between the RCPma and the cervical dura mater. Various clinical manifestations may be linked to this anatomical relationship.