Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Refractory Longitudinally Extensive Transverse Myelitis Responsive to Cyclophosphamide

Abstract Severe longitudinally extensive transverse myelitis (LETM) can cause quadriplegia, marked sensory dysfunction, and respiratory failure. Some patients are unresponsive to conventional immune therapy. We report two cases of severe immune-mediated LETM requiring intensive care admission that failed to respond to high-dose corticosteroids, plasma exchange, intravenous immunoglobulin, and rituximab. Disease cessation and significant recovery was achieved after cyclophosphamide induction. In patients with severe acute immune-mediated LETM who fail to respond to corticosteroids and plasma exchange, cyclophosphamide induction should be considered. This agent and regimen provides a robust immunosuppressive response and can be induced rapidly. Cyclophosphamide effects and supportive evidence are discussed. RÉSUMÉ Myélite transverse longitudinalement étendue répondant à la cyclophosphamide. La myélite transverse longitudinalement étendue (MTLE) peut causer une quadriplégie, une dysfonction sensitive importante et une insuffisance respiratoire. Certains patients ne répondent pas à l’immunothérapie conventionnelle. Nous rapportons deux cas de MTLE sévère d’origine auto-immune nécessitant une hospitalisation à l’unité des soins intensifs et ne réagissant pas au traitement par les corticostéroïdes à haute dose, à la plasmaphérèse, à l’immunoglobuline intraveineuse ou au rituximab. Le traitement par la cyclophosphamide a entraîné l’arrêt de la maladie et une récupération importante. Chez les patients qui présentent une MTLE auto-immune aiguë sévère qui ne répond pas aux corticostéroïdes et à la plasmaphérèse, le traitement par la cyclophosphamide devrait être envisagé. Cet agent provoque une réponse immunosuppressive importante qui peut être induite rapidement. Nous discutons des effets de la cyclophosphamide et des données appuyant son utilisation.
A Virtual Machines Placement Model for Energy Aware Cloud Computing

We present an energy aware model for virtual machines placement in cloud computing systems. Our model manages resources of different kind (like CPU and memory) and energy costs that are depending on the kind and amount of deployed resources, incorporating capital expenses (costs of infrastructure and amortizations), operational expenses (electricity costs) and data center energy parameters as PUE, also with possibly different service levels for virtual machines. We show that the resulting model could be solved via a genetic algorithm, and we perform some sensitivity analysis on the model energy parameters.
A mobile phone as a memory aid for individuals with traumatic brain injury: A preliminary investigation

Primary objective: To investigate the use of a ‘reminders’ function on a mobile phone as a compensatory memory aid for five individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Research design: A series of five single case ABAB reversal design. Methods and procedure: A mobile phone was given to each participant during two intervention phases. Target behaviours were recorded for the length of the study. Experimental intervention: The phone was programmed to prompt a number of identified target behaviours. Main outcomes and results: For two participants, there was an increase in the target behaviours achieved when the phone was used, with percentages rising from 51% to 95% for Participant 1 (P1) and 58% to 88% for Participant 5 (P5). The percentage of target behaviours achieved did not return to initial baseline levels when the phone was removed, indicating that the intervention may have facilitated P1 and, in particular, P5 in the learning of their routines. The participants who did not benefit from the mobile phone differed from P1 and P5 as they fell in the category of ‘severe memory impairment’ on the RBMT, were significantly impaired on an assessment of executive functioning (Tower Test) and required 24-hour care. Conclusions: The preliminary investigation with five participants suggests that this system may be of best use with individuals who do not require 24-hour care and do not experience severe memory and executive functioning difficulties. However, further research with a larger sample is highly recommended.
Requirements : a Questionnaire-based Study *

User requirements can break or make any project. The gathering of user requirements is a key avenue for gaining a deeper understanding of the needs evolving from the user's operational context and from the use of the system. User requirements are pivotal in guiding the development (and evaluation) process of any system. This is no less true in the arena of digital libraries. The gathering of digital library requirements should be carried out with the understanding that the anticipated digital library user interface should accord support to the user throughout the entire digital library usage/interaction process. This paper describes an investigation of digital library requirements based on the foregoing understanding.
Long-term relevance feedback using simple PCA and linear transformation

This paper proposes a new method to improve information retrieval performance of the vector space model (VSM) in part by preserving user-supplied relevance information in the long term in the system. The proposed method incorporates user relevance feedback information and original document similarity information into the retrieval model that is built using a sequence of linear transformations. High-dimensional and sparse vectors are mapped into the a low-dimensional vector space, namely the space representing the latent semantic meanings of words, by using SPCA (simple principal component analysis). An experimental information retrieval system based on the proposed method has been built. Experiments on the Medline collection and Cranfield collection have been carried out. Improved average precision compared with the LSI (latent semantic indexing) model, are 6.80% (Medline) and 67.46% (Cranfield) for the two training data sets, and 4.71% (Medline) and 8.12% (Cranfield) for the test data, respectively. The results of our experiments show that the proposed method has better retrieval performance and provides an approach that makes it possible to preserve user-supplied relevance information in the long term in the system in order to use it later.
Safety and Viability of Microencapsulated Human Islets Transplanted Into Diabetic Humans

OBJECTIVE Transplantation of insulin-producing cells placed inside microcapsules is being trialled to overcome the need for immunosuppressive therapy. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Four type 1 diabetic patients with no detectable C-peptide received an intraperitoneal infusion of islets inside microcapsules of barium alginate (mean 178,200 islet equivalents on each of eight occasions). RESULTS C-peptide was detected on day 1 post-transplantation, and blood glucose levels and insulin requirements decreased. C-peptide was undetectable by 1–4 weeks. In a multi-islet recipient, C-peptide was detected at 6 weeks after the third infusion and remains detectable at 2.5 years. Neither insulin requirements nor glycemic control was affected. Capsules recovered at 16 months were surrounded by fibrous tissue and contained necrotic islets. No major side effects or infection occurred. CONCLUSIONS While allografting of encapsulated human islets is safe, efficacy of the cells needs to improve for the therapy to make an impact on the clinical scene.
On the Compressive Power of Deep Rectifier Networks for High Resolution Representation of Class Boundaries

This paper provides a theoretical justification of the superior classification performance of deep rectifier networks over shallow rectifier networks from the geometrical perspective of piecewise linear (PWL) classifier boundaries. We show that, for a given threshold on the approximation error, the required number of boundary facets to approximate a general smooth boundary grows exponentially with the dimension of the data, and thus the number of boundary facets, referred to as boundary resolution, of a PWL classifier is an important quality measure that can be used to estimate a lower bound on the classification errors. However, learning naively an exponentially large number of boundary facets requires the determination of an exponentially large number of parameters and also requires an exponentially large number of training patterns. To overcome this issue of "curse of dimensionality", compressive representations of high resolution classifier boundaries are required. To show the superior compressive power of deep rectifier networks over shallow rectifier networks, we prove that the maximum boundary resolution of a single hidden layer rectifier network classifier grows exponentially with the number of units when this number is smaller than the dimension of the patterns. When the number of units is larger than the dimension of the patterns, the growth rate is reduced to a polynomial order. Consequently, the capacity of generating a high resolution boundary will increase if the same large number of units are arranged in multiple layers instead of a single hidden layer. Taking high dimensional spherical boundaries as examples, we show how deep rectifier networks can utilize geometric symmetries to approximate a boundary with the same accuracy but with a significantly fewer number of parameters than single hidden layer nets.
Mécanismes de recherche de services extensibles pour les environnements de grilles de calcul

Deux topologies sont couramment utilisees pour former ces graphes de communication : les arbres et les graphes pseudo-aleatoires. Si les arbres permettent de realiser des parcours avec un nombre de messages optimal, ils souffrent de la presence de noeuds de contention qui limitent le nombre de recherches pouvant etre effectuees de maniere simultanee. Quant aux graphes pseudo-aleatoires, bien qu'ils utilisent plus de messages, ils supportent une charge plus importante tout en fournissant des recherches plus rapides. La solution proposee est une alternative entre les arbres et les graphes. Elle emprunte aux arbres leur structure hierarchique pour minimiser le nombre de messages et aux graphes l'egalite de leurs noeuds. Si chaque noeud de l'arbre est un serveur, certains serveurs sont des feuilles se contentant de recevoir des messages. Les autres serveurs sont des noeuds intermediaires acheminant les messages de recherche. Afin de mettre tous les serveurs sur un pied d'egalite, nous distribuons le role des noeuds intermediaires entre plusieurs serveurs. Nous avons montre qu'il est possible de construire un tel arbre qui realise effectivement les recherches par voisinage a l'aide d'algorithmes de parcours d'arbre tout en repartissant la charge d'une maniere similaire aux parcours de graphe. Il en resulte de meilleures performances concernant la vitesse de recherche et la charge supportee quel que soit le nombre de serveurs et la probabilite de trouver une offre.
Preliminary Lexical Framework for English-Arabic Semantic Resource Construction

This paper describes preliminary work concerning the creation of a Framework to aid in lexical semantic resource construction. The Framework consists of 9 stages during which various lexical resources are collected, studied, and combined into a single combinatory lexical resource. To evaluate the general Framework it was applied to a small set of English and Arabic resources, automatically combining them into a single lexical knowledge base that can be used for query translation and disambiguation in Cross-Language Information Retrieval.
The arterial wall and atherosclerosis.

Although atherosclerosis has been recognized as the principal cause of death in Western man, it is only within the last decade or so that the disease process itself has begun to be understood (1). The disease develops insidi­ ously before the development of symptoms. Its widespread occurrence at an early age was not g�nerally accepted until studies of American males who died in the Korean and Vietnam wars documented its high prevalence within the second decade of life (2, 3). The lesions of atherosclerosis are limited principally to the innermost layer of the artery wall, the intima. Although there are many variants of the lesion in man, there is general acceptance that the disease process consists of three events, each of which involves the cells of the artery wall. These include (a) intimal smooth muscle cell proliferation, (b) formation of large amounts of connective tissue matrix by the proliferated smooth muscle,lmd (c) deposition of lipids both within the cells and in the connec­ tive. tissues surrounding them (4-7). The principal biological phenomenon in the development of the lesions of atherosclerosis with which this article is concerned is intimal smooth muscle proliferation. Because of the accumulation of lipid and calcium deposits, atherosclerosis has commonly been considered to be a degenera­ tive process. However, in the absence of intimal smooth muscle prolifera­ tion there would probably be few sequelae of clinical significance. Epidemiologic research has identified a list of risk factors that are com­ monly associated with an increased incidence of atherosclerosis. Each of these risk factors must be explained at the cellular level if we are to under­ stand the role they play in the induction of lesion formation (1, 8-13).
Retracted: Administration of MS‐275 Improves Cognitive Performance and Reduces Cell Death Following Traumatic Brain Injury in Rats

The MS‐275 is a selective inhibitor of class I histone deacetylases (HDACs), which has been reported as a potential strategy in some central nervous system diseases associated with neurodegeneration and disturbed learning. However, its role in traumatic brain injury is not well defined. In this study, we examined the behavioral–cognitive performance as well as histology outcome in adult rats to evaluate whether postinjury administration of MS‐275 (15 and 45 mg/kg) would provide neuroprotection benefits and ameliorate cognitive deficits following fluid percussion injury.
A Game Theoretic Approach to Organic Foods: An Analysis of Asymmetric Information and Policy

Demand for healthy, safe, and environmentally friendly food products has been increasing. In response, producers are marketing organic and other quality-differentiated foods, sometimes claiming to have followed sound environmental and animal welfare practices. These products frequently have unobservable quality attributes. If the profit-maximizing producer is able to deceive the consumer with a false claim, then he or she will enjoy a higher price with lower production costs (compared to the full disclosure outcome). The analysis described in this paper shows that repeat-purchase relationships and third-party monitoring are required for high-quality credence goods to be available. Policy implications of this analysis for national organic food standards are discussed.
The ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) concept in pediatric interventional and fluoroscopic imaging: striving to keep radiation doses as low as possible during fluoroscopy of pediatric patients--a white paper executive summary.

ALARA represents a practice mandate adhering to the principle of keeping radiation doses to patients and personnel As Low As Reasonably Achievable. This concept is strongly endorsed by the Society for Pediatric Radiology, particularly in the use of procedures and modalities involving higher radiation doses such as CT and fluoroscopic examinations of pediatric patients. There is no doubt that medical imaging, which has undergone tremendous technological advances in recent decades, is integral to patient care. However, these technological advances generally precede the knowledge of end-users concerning the optimal use and correct operation of the resulting imaging equipment, and such knowledge is essential to minimizing potential risks to the patients. Current imaging methods must be optimized for radiation dose reduction in pediatric patients who might be as much as ten times more radiosensitive than adults. Unlike straightforward radiographic examinations, radiation dose to the patient during fluoroscopy is dependent on the operator’s training, experience with the fluoroscope, and efficiency in completing a diagnostic study. The range of pediatric radiation doses from fluoroscopy is wide because this examination is performed not only by pediatric radiologists but also by general radiologists who occasionally care for children, interventional cardiologists, gastroenterologists, urologists and others. Thus, a venue where multidisciplinary interaction by this variety of operators can occur serves to improve pediatric patient care. The third ALARA conference organized by the Society for Pediatric Radiology was held in Orlando, Fla. , on 11–12 February 2006. It was co-sponsored by the Office of Rare Diseases and the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NCI/NIH). The conference was funded by unrestricted educational grants from three manufacturers of fluoroscopic and interventional equipment (GE, Philips, Siemens) and financial support from the Society for Pediatric Radiology and NCI/NIH. The 22 faculty members consisted of 8 pediatric radiologists, 5 medical physicists, 3 pediatric subspecialists, 3 industry speakers, and 3 radiation epidemiology researchers. A diverse cadre of 74 pediatric radiologists, medical physicists, radiologic technologists, researchers, pediatric subspecialists and vendors met to examine the risk of radiation exposure from fluoroscopic and interventional procedures, identify means by which to reduce ionizing radiation exposure, and explore future technologic modifications that could optimize imaging while further reducing radiation exposures.
EU law makes Netherlands reconsider its health system

The Dutch system of financing health care through a combination of private and public insurance is vulnerable to European Union internal market law guaranteeing free movement of goods and services, according to senior government advisers. An advisory report, Europa en de Gezondheidszorg (Europe and Healthcare; http://www.rvz.net/), from the Council for Health and Social Service (RVZ), has urged the health minister, Els Borst, to begin discussions on a future system that is “explicitly placed in a European perspective. ” …
Primary Alloproliferative TH1 Response Induced by Immature Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells in Collaboration with Myeloid DCs

The role played by dendritic cell (DC) subsets in the immune response to alloantigens is not well defined. In vitro experiments have extensively shown that freshly isolated myeloid (M)DCs induce a strong T lymphocyte proliferation whereas plasmacytoid (P)DCs do not, unless activated by CD40 ligation. The aim of these studies was to explore whether the interplay among PDCs, MDCs and T cells modulates alloresponse. Freshly isolated MDCs and PDCs were merged in different proportions and used as antigen presenting cells (APCs) in mixed lymphocyte cultures (MLC). As described, isolated PDCs only induced a mild alloresponse, while MDCs were potent inducers of alloproliferation. Unexpectedly, when PDCs were merged with even low numbers of MDCs (down to 100 cells) and used as APCs, a potent Th1 cell proliferation was detected. Survival and maturation of PDCs was increased in these MLC conditions, which could partially explain the magnitude of the T‐cell response. Interestingly, the proportion of IFNγ‐producing cells generated in such cultures was higher compared to MDC‐stimulated cultures. These data suggest that the interaction between both DC subsets is determinant to generate a potent Th1 response, at least in an allogeneic situation, and may be relevant to the outcome of allogeneic stem cell transplantation.
Involvement of the Liver in the Induction of CD8 T Cell Tolerance towards Oral Antigen

The liver is an organ with unique immune regulatory potential. This review highlights the experimental evidence for the involvement of hepatic cell populations in the induction of oral tolerance. Although immune tolerance towards oral antigens is mainly induced in the gastrointestinal tract within gut associated lymphatic tissue via generation of regulatory CD4 T cells, there is a further need for tolerance induction outside the gastrointestinal tract, because oral antigens rapidly distribute within minutes systemically through the blood stream. Besides hepatic dendritic cells, liver sinusoidal endothelial cells are active in the uptake and cross-presentation of oral antigens from portal venous blood and engage in the induction of CD8 T cell tolerance towards these antigens. These reports strengthen the notion that the liver participates in the induction of oral tolerance.
Protein digestion in ruminants

Although the protein requirement of domestic ruminants may be calculated from a simple one-compartment model, this approach ignores factors such as microbial fermentation in the rumen and the non-equality of feed proteins. By examining digestion in each of the functional compartments of the digestive tract of the ruminant, a model may be constructed of the complete process. In this review, we propose to show the essential role played by the development of suitable animal preparations in which protein digestion may be studied in detail, and the application of this data to the development of theoretical models. In order to do this, we intend to examine protein digestion in terms of the whole animal, fermentation in the rumen, hydrolysis and absorption from the small intestine. Finally we propose a new technique for examining the interaction between the small and large intestines. Alhoewel die protei"enbehoefte van plaasherkouers d.m. v. 'n eenvoudige enkelkompartementmodel bereken kan word, word faktore soos mikrobiese fermentasie in die rumen en die onvergelykbaarheid van verskillende voerprotei"ene deur hierdie benadering uitgesluit. 'n Beskrywende model van die verteringsproses in die herkouer kan opgestel word deur vertering in elke funksionele deel van die spysverteringskanaal afsonderlik te ondersoek en daarna die inligting te integreer. In hierdie oorsig beoog ons om op die belangrikheid van gepaste voorbereidings van diere te wys vir gedetailleerde protei"enverteringstudies, asook die toepassing van sulke data by die ontwikkeling van teoretiese modelle. am dit te doen sal protei"envertering ondersoek word in terme van die dier in sy geheel, fermentasie in die rumen, hidrolise en absorpsie in die dunderm. Ten laaste word 'n nuwe tegniek voorgestel om die interaksie tussen die dun- en dikderm te ondersoek.
Audiometric Findings in Workers Exposed to Low Levels of Styrene and Noise

Learning ObjectivesExplain whether and how exposure of workers to styrene in the course of making fiberglass products, and to high noise levels, interact to produce bilateral high-frequency hearing loss.Recall the personal and environmental factors that were significantly associated with hearing loss in this study.Discuss how these findings relate to past studies in animals and styrene-exposed workers, and take note of relevant public health considerations.Audiometry and exposure measurements were conducted on workers from fiberglass and metal products manufacturing plants and a mail distribution terminal (N = 313). Workers exposed to noise and styrene had significantly worse pure-tone thresholds at 2, 3, 4, and 6 kHz when compared with noise-exposed or nonexposed workers. Age, noise exposure, and urinary mandelic acid (a biologic marker for styrene) were the variables that met the significance level criterion in the multiple logistic regression. The odds ratios for hearing loss were 1.19 for each increment of 1 year of age (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.11–1.28), 1.18 for every decibel >85 dB(A) of noise exposure (95% CI, 1.01–1.34), and 2.44 for each millimole of mandelic acid per gram of creatinine in urine (95% CI, 1.01–5.89). Our findings suggest that exposure to styrene even below recommended values had a toxic effect on the auditory system.