Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long-term label retaining cells localize to distinct regions within the female reproductive epithelium

The uterus is an extremely plastic organ that undergoes cyclical remodeling including endometrial regeneration during the menstrual cycle. Endometrial remodeling and regeneration also occur during pregnancy and following parturition, particularly in hemochorial implanting species. The mechanisms of endometrial regeneration are not well understood. Endometrial stem/progenitor cells are proposed to contribute to endometrial regeneration in both humans and mice. BrdU label retention has been used to identify potential stem/progenitor cells in mouse endometrium. However, methods are not available to isolate BrdU label-retaining cells (LRC) for functional analyses. Therefore, we employed a transgenic mouse model to identify H2B-GFP LRCs throughout the female reproductive tract with particular interest on the endometrium. We hypothesized that the female reproductive tract contains a population of long-term LRCs that persist even following pregnancy and endometrial regeneration. Endometrial cells were labeled (pulsed) either transplacentally/translactationally or peripubertally. When mice were pulsed transplacentally/translactationally, the label was not retained in the uterus. However, LRCs were concentrated to the distal oviduct and endocervical transition zone (TZ) following natural (i.e., pregnancy/parturition induced) and mechanically induced endometrial regeneration. LRCs in the distal oviduct and endocervical TZ expressed stem cell markers and did not express ERα or PGR, implying the undifferentiated phenotype of these cells. Oviduct and endocervical TZ LRCs did not proliferate during endometrial re-epithelialization, suggesting that they do not contribute to the endometrium in a stem/progenitor cell capacity. In contrast, when mice were pulsed peripubertally long-term LRCs were identified in the endometrial glandular compartment in mice as far out as 9 months post-pulse. These findings suggest that epithelial tissue of the female reproductive tract contains 3 distinct populations of epithelial cells that exhibit stem/progenitor cell qualities. Distinct stem/progenitor-like cells localize to the oviduct, endometrium, and cervix.
Thoracoscopic purse string technique for minimally invasive Ivor Lewis esophagectomy.

OBJECTIVE Thoracolaparoscopic esophagectomy with chest anastomosis (TLE-chest) is increasingly performed for middle and lower esophageal cancer; however, gastroesophageal anastomosis for this surgery remains both challenging and inefficient. To address this issue, we previously reported our MIE technique with Ivor-Lewis anastomosis. Here we present the video to introduce our TLE-chest operation procedures. METHODS TLE-chest with a combined thoracoscopic and laparoscopic technique was performed by one group of surgeons. From October 2011 to September 2013, 80 esophageal cancer patients were treated with TLE-chest using this improved anastomotic technique. RESULTS The surgery was successful for all patients, although the anastomosis in one patient required intraoperative manual repair. No patients required open conversion. In this video, dissociation of stomach, and dissection of lymph nodes, creation of gastric tube and staple line embedding, jejunostomy were carried out by laparoscopic surgery. Dissection of esophageal cancer and mediastinal lymph nodes were done through rib 3 or 4 by a 3-4 cm video-assisted right anterior minithoracotomy, then esophago-gastric anastomosis was performed in right thoracic cavity This video shows the R0 resection of T3N0M0 esophageal cancer. Totally, 36 lymph nodes were dissected, including 21 mediastinal lymph nodes and 15 abdominal lymph nodes. The patient recovered well and was discharged on day 8 after the surgery, with good short term outcomes. CONCLUSIONS A safe, cost effective purse string stapled anastomotic technique has been presented for TLE-chest in our video. It is consistent with the oncology principles.
The Football Association medical research programme: an audit of injuries in academy youth football

Objectives: To undertake a prospective epidemiological study of the injuries sustained in English youth academy football over two competitive seasons. Methods: Player injuries were annotated by medical staff at 38 English football club youth academies. A specific injury audit questionnaire was used together with a weekly return form that documented each club’s current injury status. Results: A total of 3805 injuries were reported over two complete seasons (June to May) with an average injury rate of 0.40 per player per season. The mean (SD) number of days absent for each injury was 21.9 (33.63), with an average of 2.31 (3.66) games missed per injury. The total amount of time absent through injury equated to about 6% of the player’s development time. Players in the higher age groups (17–19 years) were more likely to receive an injury than those in the younger age groups (9–16 years). Injury incidence varied throughout the season, with training injuries peaking in January (p<0.05) and competition injuries peaking in October (p<0.05). Competition injuries accounted for 50.4% of the total, with 36% of these occurring in the last third of each half. Strains (31%) and sprains (20%) were the main injury types, predominantly affecting the lower limb, with a similar proportion of injuries affecting the thigh (19%), ankle (19%), and knee (18%). Growth related conditions, including Sever’s disease and Osgood-Schlatter’s disease, accounted for 5% of total injuries, peaking in the under 13 age group for Osgood-Schlatter’s disease and the under 11 age group for Sever’s disease. The rate of re-injury of exactly the same anatomical structure was 3%. Conclusions: Footballers are at high risk of injury and there is a need to investigate ways of reducing this risk. Injury incidence at academy level is approximately half that of the professional game. Academy players probably have much less exposure to injury than their full time counterparts. Areas that warrant further attention include the link between musculoskeletal development and the onset of youth related conditions such as Sever’s disease and Osgood-Schlatter’s disease, the significant number of non-contact injuries that occur in academy football, and the increased rates of injury during preseason training and after the mid season break. This study has highlighted the nature and severity of injuries that occur at academy level, and the third part of the audit process now needs to be undertaken: the implementation of strategies to reduce the number of injuries encountered at this level.
The potential of probiotics: a review.

Carlos Ricardo Soccol1*, Luciana Porto de Souza Vandenberghe1, Michele Rigon Spier1, Adriane Bianchi Pedroni Medeiros1, Caroline Tiemi Yamaguishi1, Juliano De Dea Lindner1,2, Ashok Pandey3 and Vanete Thomaz-Soccol1,4 Bioprocess Engineering and Biotechnology Department, Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), 81531-990 Curitiba-PR, Brazil State University of Santa Catarina, Food Engineering Department, BR 282, Km 573 Santa Teresinha, 89870-000 Pinhalzinho SC, Brazil Biotechnology Division, National Institut for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology, CSIR, Trivandrum, 695 019, India Positivo University, Industrial Biotechnology Department, Av. Pedro Parigot de Souza 5300, 81280-330, Curitiba-PR, Brazil
Human 3-D tissue models in radiation biology: current status and future perspectives

In this review, we discuss the use of a variety of 3-D models (parƟ cularly 3-D skin, lung, breast and endothelial) in radiobiological research and highlight the differences in responses compared to 2-D culturing condiƟ ons (monolayers). We review the characterisƟ cs of exisƟ ng 3-D models and aim to point out the substanƟ al advantages 3-D cultures provide for modern radiobiology. In parƟ cular, they may facilitate the shiŌ from the classical DNA damage and repair studies mainly carried out in monolayer cultures to the invesƟ gaƟ on of more generalized responses through pathway analysis and a system biology approach. 3-D models are expected to be very informaƟ ve for invesƟ gaƟ ons on radiotherapy responses in addressing the low dose risk. However, the 3-D model systems are not as easy to propagate and standardize as monolayer cultures. Therefore, we discuss the problems and limitaƟ ons of 3-D models and propose ways to overcome some of the problems.
Ieee Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 1 Relating Things and Stuff via Object Property Interactions

—In the last few years, substantially different approaches have been adopted for segmenting and detecting " things " (object categories that have a well defined shape such as people and cars) and " stuff " (object categories which have an amorphous spatial extent such as grass and sky). While things have been typically detected by sliding window or Hough transform based methods, detection of stuff is generally formulated as a pixel or segment-wise classification problem. This paper proposes a framework for scene understanding that models both things and stuff using a common representation while preserving their distinct nature by using a property list. This representation allows us to enforce sophisticated geometric and semantic relationships between thing and stuff categories via property interactions in a single graphical model. We use the latest advances made in the field of discrete optimization to efficiently perform maximum a posteriori (MAP) inference in this model. We evaluate our method on the Stanford dataset by comparing it against state-of-the-art methods for object segmentation and detection. We also show that our method achieves competitive performances on the challenging PASCAL'09 segmentation dataset.
Posterior impingement of the ankle caused by anomalous muscles. A report of four cases.

P osterior impingement of the ankle results from the compression of the talus and surrounding soft tissue between the tibia and the calcaneus and has been likened to a “nut in a nutcracker. ”1 It is produced by repetitive or forced plantar flexion of the foot and has been described in female ballet dancers, athletes, and in nonathletes after an ankle sprain1-4. Patients have pain in the posterolateral or posteromedial aspect of the ankle with activity, particularly plantar flexion. Often there is tenderness medial or lateral to the Achilles tendon, and soft-tissue thickening may be palpated. A positive posterior impingement test consists of reproduction of the symptoms with forced plantar flexion of the ankle2. The diagnosis is made on the basis of the history and physical examination of the patient and the clinical judgment of the surgeon and is supported if the symptoms are temporarily relieved by an injection of a local anesthetic and steroid into the region of the posterior process of the talus through a posterolateral approach2. Structures implicated in the etiology of posterior impingement of the ankle include an os trigonum5, an enlarged lateral process of the talus2, an enlarged posterior process of the calcaneus1, the posterior intermalleolar ligament6, soft-tissue impingement7, a gouty os trigonum8, loose bodies, ganglia, calcified inflammatory tissue, and a low-lying flexor hallucis longus muscle belly1,2. The surgical resection of symptomatic structures can be a successful treatment even in the high-level athlete2. Anomalous muscles about the ankle have been documented since the nineteenth century9-11. The peroneus quartus has been reported most frequently, and studies involving anatomical dissection of cadavera have shown that the prevalence …
Geometric Correction of Projection Using Structured Light and Sensors Embedded Board

Computer vision based projector-camera calibration approaches usually involve with complex geometry transformation and trivial operations, mostly inappropriate for scenarios that under poor illumination or interfering background. An automatic geometric correction method for projector using projection board embedded with optic sensors is proposed, aiming at simplifying the calibration operations and improving the robustness of geometric correction. By capturing the Gray-coded structured light frames, the correspondence between the points of interest on the projection board and the pixels on image plane could be obtained; furthermore, homograph matrixes are exploited to transform the images to be projected. A special one-to-many hardware design paradigm is adopted so that multiple projection boards are able to connect to one renderer node simultaneously. To further enhance the projection precision against each projection board, a self-adaptive illumination density threshold determination method is used. Copyright © 2014 IFSA Publishing, S. L.
Regional subculture and homicide: an examination of the Gastil-Hackney thesis.

Two recent comparative studies of regional variation in U.S. homicide rates by Sheldon Hackney and Raymond Gastil have been widely interpreted as verifying the hypothesis that the high levels of interpersonal violence, which characterize the Southern region, result largely from cultural factors that exist independent of the effects of situational variables. A close examination of Gastil's and Hackney's studies reveals that their estimates of the independent effects of regional culture are based on poor measurement and arebiased in the direction of the culture of violence hypothesis. A new regression analysis of similar data using slightly modified procedures demonstrates the weaknesses of their procedures by showing that it is possible to obtain estimates of cultural and situational effects vastly different from those obtained by Gastil and Hackney.
Seleção de genótipos de soja para resistência ao complexo de percevejos

Selection of soybean genotypes for resistance to stink bug complex Stink bugs are considered key pests of soybean, because they feed directly on reproductive parts of the plant, causing damage to the seeds and pods. Thus, the present study aims to i) propose an efficient alternative for the selection of resistant plants in large populations; ii) identify lines with excellent agronomic performance and resistance to members of the stink bug complex, in different environments; and iii) compare the efficiency of two selection methods. To evaluate the good seed weight (GSW) as a criterion for selection of resistant genotypes, two experiments were conducted in the field, with and without chemical control of insects. To validate GSW as an efficient criterion for the selection of productive genotypes with resistance indices were used. In the next step, GSW was used for the selection of genotypes from a population of recombinant inbred lines (RILs) obtained from the cross IAC100 (resistant) x CD-215 (susceptible). The performance of the lines obtained by single pod descent was compared to lines obtained by the pedigree method. The following characters were evaluated in field, under different locations with natural infestation by insects: number of days to maturity (NDM), plant height at maturity (PHM), grain filling period (GFP), lodging (L), agronomic value (AV), grain yield (GY), 100 seed weight (HSW), leaf retention (LR) and good seeds weight (GSW). Based on the results, we concluded that the selection based on GSW is an excellent strategy for identifying genotypes with resistance to stink bugs, and high yield potential. In the RIL population, choosing only those genotypes with a minimum GSW of 2908.26 kg ha (acceptable losses of 20% from the GY average) the selection gain (SG) was 665.4 and 482.4 kg ha, season 2012/13. The parameter used in the selection was effective in identifying the most productive genotypes with resistance to the stink bug complex. Estimates of variance components showed a major influence of genotype by environment interaction for GY and GSW, which had the lowest heritability estimates (23 and 34% respectively). The single pod descent (SPD) and pedigree methods were both efficient in generating superior progenies for yield and resistance to stink bugs. Independent of the method used, the CD-215 x IAC-100 cross has genetic potential to generate progenies that combine high productivity and resistance to pests in the stink bug complex.
Placement of Deep Brain Stimulators into the Subthalamic Nucleus or Globus pallidus internus: Technical Approach

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) represents a major advance in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease (PD). As more neurosurgeons enter this field, technical descriptions of implantation techniques are needed. Here we present our technical approach to subthalamic nucleus (STN) and globus pallidus internus (GPi) DBS implantation, based on 180 STN implants and 75 GPi implants. The essential steps in DBS implantation are magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided stereotactic localization, confirmation of the motor territory of the target nucleus with microelectrode mapping, and intra-operative test stimulation to determine voltage thresholds for stimulation-induced adverse effects. Lead locations are documented by postoperative MRI in all cases.
Association between the activation of macrophages, changes of iron metabolism and the degree of anaemia in patients with malignant disorders

Abstract: In this study, we investigated a possible association between the degree of macrophage activation ‐ as measured by serum neopterin concentrations ‐ and disturbances of iron metabolism, determined by the concentrations of ferritin and serum iron, in patients with malignant disorders. Additionally we evaluated correlations between these factors and the degree and type of anaemia. Seventy‐three patients, who suffered from non‐Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) (n = 43), Hodgkin's disease (n = 11), myeloma or monoclonal gammopathy of unknown significance (n = 9), myelodysplastic syndrome (n = l), and solid tumours (n = 9), were examined. Mean neopterin levels were raised in all groups, patients with NHL showing the highest concentrations. Ferritin but not neopterin concentrations were higher in males than in females. A significant correlation was found between neopterin and ferritin concentrations (p<0.01). Considering only female patients the strength of the correlation was the same (p<0.02). In addition, we found inverse correlations of neopterin with haemoglobin and iron concentrations (all p< 0.01). Similar relationships existed in patients during follow‐up. Our results support the hypothesis of an association between the degree of activation of macrophages and the development of anaemia by a shift or iron towards the storage sites.
Polymeric Nanoparticles Based Topical Drug Delivery: An Overview

Human skin not only functions as a permeation barrier (mainly due to the stratum corneum layer), but it also provides a unique delivery pathway for therapeutic and other active agents. Skin is a widely used route of delivery for local and systemic drugs and is useful as a route for their delivery as nanoparticles. The skin behaves as a natural physical barrier against particle penetration, but there are opportunities to deliver therapeutic nanoparticles, especially in diseased skin and to the openings of hair follicles. These compounds penetrate via intercellular, intracellular and transappendageal routes, resulting in topical delivery (into skin strata) and transdermal delivery (to subcutaneous tissues and into the systemic circulation). Active and passive permeation enhancement methods have been widely used to increase cutaneous penetration. Recent literature has demonstrated that nanoparticles-based topical delivery systems can be successful in treating skin conditions as they combine the advantages of both the nano sized drug carriers and the topical approach.
Onchocerciasis: the clinical and epidemiological burden of skin disease in Africa

Abstract An attempt was made to assess the true public-health importance of onchocercal skin disease throughout the African region and hence provide an objective basis for the rational planning of onchocerciasis control in the area. The seven collaborative centres that participated in the study (three in Nigeria and one each in Ghana, Cameroon, Tanzania and Uganda) were all in areas of rainforest or savannah-forest mosaic where onchocercal blindness is not common. A cross-sectional dermatological survey was undertaken at each site following a standard protocol. At each site, the aim was to examine at least 750 individuals aged 5 years and living in highly endemic communities and 220-250 individuals aged 5 years and living in a hypo-endemic (control) community. Overall, there were 5459 and 1451 subjects from hyper-and hypo-endemic communities, respectively. In the highly endemic communities, the prevalence of itching increased with age until 20 years and then plateaued, affecting 42% of the population aged 20 years. There was a strong correlation between the prevalence of itching and the level of endemicity (as measured by the prevalence of nodules; r=0.75; P<0.001). The results of a multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that, at the individual level, the presence of onchocercal reactive skin lesions (acute papular onchodermatitis, chronic papular onchodermatitis and/or lichenified onchodermatitis) was the most important risk factor for pruritus, with an odds ratio (OR) of 18.3 and 95% confidence interval (CI) of 15.19-22.04, followed by the presence of palpable onchocercal nodules (OR=4.63; CI=4.05-5.29). In contrast, non-onchocercal skin disease contributed very little to pruritus in the study communities (OR=1.29; CI=1.1–1.51). Onchocercal skin lesions affected 28% of the population in the endemic villages. The commonest type was chronic papular onchodermatitis (13%), followed by depigmentation (10%) and acute papular onchodermatitis (7%). The highest correlation with endemicity was seen for the prevalence of any onchocercal skin lesion and/or pruritus combined (r=0.8; P<0.001). Cutaneous onchocerciasis was found to be a common problem in many endemic areas in Africa which do not have high levels of onchocercal blindness. These findings, together with recent observations that onchocercal skin disease can have major, adverse, psycho–social and socio–economic effects, justify the inclusion of regions with onchocercal skin disease in control programmes based on ivermectin distribution. On the basis of these findings, the World Health Organization launched a control programme for onchocerciasis, the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC), that covers 17 endemic countries in Africa.
DOWNS AND TWO-PARTY CONVERGENCE

We take as our starting point the insights of Downs (1957) into twoparty competition. A careful reading of Downs offers a much more sophisticated and nuanced portrait of the factors affecting party differentiation than the simplistic notion that, in plurality elections, we ought to expect party convergence to the views of the median voter. Later scholars have built on Downsian ideas to see what happens vis-àvis party differentiation when we modify key assumptions found in the basic Downsian spatial model. Recent work allows us to turn what is taken to be the Downsian view on its head: Although there are pressures in two-party competition for the two parties to converge, in general we should expect nonconvergence. Moreover, contra the negative portrait offered by Green & Shapiro (1994) of the limited or nonexistent value of research on party competition models in the Downsian tradition, we argue that, when viewed as a whole, neo-Downsian models—especially those of the past decade—do allow us to reconcile theory and data in terms of a multi-componented theory of party competition with testable implications for comparative statics.