Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Correlation Between Persistent Neurological Impairment and Clinical Outcome After Microdiscectomy for Treatment of Lumbar Disc Herniation

BACKGROUND: Outcome of lumbar disc herniation is often based on clinical scores and less frequently on the neurological examination. However, even when clinical outcome measures are favorable, patients may still experience motor or sensory impairment. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the percentage of patients with persistent neurological deficits after lumbar disc surgery and whether these correlate with clinical outcome. METHODS: A total of 150 patients with sciatica and lumbar disc herniation with neurological impairment underwent microdiscectomy and were prospectively followed for 24 months. Patients were assessed pre- and postoperatively with neurological examination, the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), and the visual analog scale (VAS) for pain. RESULTS: Twenty-four months after surgery, 25% of patients who presented with motor deficits, 40% of patients with sensory deficits, and 48% of patients with reflex abnormalities remained unchanged. The VAS and the ODI showed significant improvement in both patients with and without persistent neurological impairment immediately after surgical repair of the herniated disc with progressive improvement over the follow-up period. However, when calculating the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve, no statistically significant correlation could be established between the presence and persistence of neurological impairment and the 2 clinical scores. CONCLUSION: There seems to be no correlation between clinical results and neurological impairment when assessed by the VAS and ODI.
Perception of Humanoid Movement

With the ultimate goal of producing natural-looking movements in humanoid robots and virtual humans, we examined the visual perception of movements generated by different models of movement generation. The models of movement generation included 14 synthetic motion generation algorithms based on theories of human motor production. In addition, we obtained motion from recordings of actual human movement. The resulting movements were applied to both a humanoid robot and a computer graphics virtual human. The computational efficiency of the motion production algorithms is described. In Experiment 1, we examined observers' judgments of the naturalness of a movement. Results showed that, for the humanoid robot, low ratings of naturalness were obtained for rapid movement. In addition, it was found that some movements that appeared to have unremarkable naturalness ratings were anomalous examples of the desired movement. In Experiment 2, we used naturalness ratings to study the influence of movement speed on the humanoid robot. Results indicated that the decrease in naturalness was due to motion artifacts at the ends of the movement. In Experiment 3, we returned to the issue of anomalous movements by obtaining ratings of similarity between pairs of movements, and analyzing these with multi-dimensional scaling to obtain a psychological space representation of the set of movements. Results showed that the presumed anomalous movements were indeed distinctive from the other movements, suggesting that the naturalness judgments did not completely indicate the perception of movement. We discuss these results in the context of what they suggest for the relative effectiveness of the different generation algorithms at producing natural movement, and their relative computational efficiency, as well as in terms of the effectiveness of different psychological techniques for the assessment of humanoid movement.
What patients with gilles de la tourette syndrome should be treated with deep brain stimulation and what is the best target?

BACKGROUND Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS) is a chronic neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by tics and associated behavioral symptoms. Over the past decade, deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been increasingly advocated as a reversible and controllable procedure for selected cases of GTS. OBJECTIVE We set out to answer 2 clinically relevant questions: what patients with GTS should be treated with DBS and what is the best target? METHODS We conducted a systematic literature review of the published studies of DBS in GTS and critically evaluated the current evidence for both patient and target selection. RESULTS Since 1999, up to 99 cases of DBS in GTS have been reported in the scientific literature, with varying selection criteria, stimulation targets, and assessment protocols. The vast majority of studies published to date are case reports or case series reporting successful outcomes in terms of both tic severity improvement and tolerability. The reviewed studies suggest that the best candidates are patients with significant functional impairment related to the tic symptoms, who did not respond to conventional pharmacological and behavioral interventions. The globus pallidus internus and thalamus appear to be the safest and most effective targets, especially for patients with "pure" GTS and patients with comorbid obsessive-compulsive symptoms, anxiety, and depression. CONCLUSION DBS is a promising treatment option for severe cases of GTS. There is a need to reach consensus on the definition of "treatment-refractoriness" and to conduct larger double-blind randomized controlled studies on the most promising targets.
Prevalence of Self-reported Lactose Intolerance in a Multiethnic Sample of Adults

According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, between 30 and 50 million Americans have the potential for lactose-intolerance symptoms. However, lactose-intolerance prevalence rates in practical life settings may be lower than originally suggested. The goal of this study was to determine the prevalence of self-reported lactose intolerance among a national sample of European American (EA), African American (AA), and Hispanic American (HA) adults. A nationally representative sample of randomly generated telephone numbers was purchased from a commercial sample provider. A nationally representative sample of randomly selected telephone numbers were called from the Survey Research Unit's Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing facility at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Interviews were completed by a total of 1,084 respondents between the ages of 19 and 70 years with 486 EAs, 355 AAs, and 243 HAs. The response rate was 24.2%, and the cooperation rate was 34.2%. The age-adjusted lactose-intolerance prevalence estimates were 7.72%, 19.50%, and 10.05% for EAs, AAs, and HAs, respectively. For all respondents in the sample, the crude and age-adjusted self-reported lactose-intolerance prevalence rates were 13.38% and 12.04%, respectively. These results indicate that the prevalence of perceived lactose intolerance is significantly lower than what has been previously estimated. Health professionals need to be aware of the misrepresentation of currently estimated lactose-intolerance rates and should continue to encourage individuals with lactose intolerance to consume dairy foods first to help meet key nutrient recommendations with proper guidance and education
Synergy-Driven Myoelectric Control for EMG-Based Prosthetic Manipulation: A Case Study

The paper proposes a synergy-based myoelectric control strategy for prosthetic hands. Synergy is first reviewed in the context of hand movement, then postural synergy-based proportional and simultaneous control has been introduced to prosthetic manipulation via the principal component analysis (PCA) framework. Experiments have been comprehensively carried out on lab-developed prosthetic hand called SJU-5 to evaluate the proposed method. It is evident that the synergy driven myoelectric control achieves the targeted objectives and performs well on the SJU-5 prosthetic hand.
The experience with suramin in advanced prostate cancer

Suramin is a new experimental polyanionic compound that has shown evidence of antitumor activity in patients with hormone refractory prostate cancer. After a few years of Phase I and Phase II testing, much of the drug's toxicity pattern has been carefully characterized. Similarly, pharmacologic studies have defined many of the drug's complex pharmacologic properties to the extent that simple outpatient methods of drug administration can be easily accomplished. A pharmacologically derived, fixed outpatient schedule has been shown to be safe and effective and is currently in active Phase III development in prostate cancer and will provide more definitive data regarding the role of suramin in the treatment of this disease. Despite these accomplishments, a number of questions require further study, such as definition of pharmacodynamic correlations, effects on the hypothalamic‐pituitary‐adrenal and gonadal axis, and the nature of its most common dose‐limiting toxicity, which is a syndrome of malaise and fatigue. Cancer 1995;75:1927–34.
Correlation among systemic inflammatory parameter, occurrence of delayed neurological deficits, and outcome after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage.

BACKGROUND The role and impact of systemic inflammatory response after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage remain to be elucidated. OBJECTIVE To assess the time course and correlation of systemic inflammatory parameters with outcome and the occurrence of delayed ischemic neurological deficits (DINDs) after subarachnoid hemorrhage. METHODS Besides the baseline characteristics, daily interleukin-6 (IL-6), procalcitonin, C-reactive protein levels, and leukocyte counts were prospectively measured until day 14 after subarachnoid hemorrhage. Occurrence of infectious complications and application of therapeutic hypothermia were assessed as confounding factors. The primary end point was outcome after 3 months, assessed by Glasgow outcome scale; the secondary end point was the occurrence of DINDs. RESULTS During a 3-year period, a total of 138 patients were included. All inflammatory parameters measured were higher in patients with unfavorable outcome (Glasgow outcome scale score, 1-3). After adjustment for confounding factors, elevated IL-6 and leukocyte counts remained significant risk factors for unfavorable outcome. The odds ratio for log IL-6 was 4.07 (95% confidence interval, 1.18 to 14.03; P = .03) and for leukocyte counts was 1.24 (95% confidence interval, 1.06-1.46, P = .008). The analysis of the time course established that IL-6 was the only significantly elevated parameter in the early phase in patients with unfavorable outcome. Higher IL-6 levels in the early phase (days 3-7) were associated with the occurrence of DINDs. The adjusted odds ratio for log IL-6 was 4.03 (95% confidence interval, 1.21-13.40; P = .02). CONCLUSION Higher IL-6 levels are associated with worse clinical outcome and the occurrence of DINDs. Because IL-6 levels were significantly elevated in the early phase, they might be a useful parameter to monitor.
Identifying barriers to promoting healthy nutrition in New Zealand primary schools

Background. Schools are often identified as a site for intervention to improve the diets of students, and help prevent excess weight gain and obesity. Rates of overweight and obesity amongst school children have risen in much of the world, including New Zealand, with unequal distribution by ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Objective. To identify barriers to improving school food environments and promoting healthy nutrition experienced by primary schools in New Zealand. Methods. Five primary schools (ages 5—10 or 5—12 years) were recruited within Wellington, New Zealand. Data included: interviews with school management; school food policy documents; school lunch/food sales; and location of food outlets and outdoor food advertisements surrounding the schools. A case-comparison approach identified barriers to promoting healthy nutrition within primary schools in New Zealand. Results. Common barriers in all schools included the high proportion of food brought to school from home, the crowded curriculum and limited resources to implement changes. Barriers that varied across socioeconomic contexts included the ability of home and community settings to support healthy diets, the degree to which schools relied on fundraising, and engagement of parents and families with the school food environment. Conclusion. New Zealand primary schools face a number of barriers to promoting healthy nutrition related to time and resource constraints, with limited influence on children’s diets in relation to home and community settings. Incremental actions to improve school food environments seem most effective, supported by external agency expertise. The nature of external support should to be tailored to the needs of the individual school.
A New Approach to Iris Recognition

Iris recognition technology relates to computer vision, pattern recognition, statistical inference, and optics etc. Because the randomness of iris patterns has very high dimensionality, it is difficult to find an efficient approach to iris recognition. The intersecting cortical model (ICM) is good at directly extracting important information from image. A new method of iris recognition is proposed for the first time based on the ICM. With the method, a series of binary images are firstly produced from iris image through the ICM. Entropy sequence can be gained from these binary images. And then phase information is obtained from entropy sequence. This phase information is taken as feature vector because of its uniqueness. The results show that our method is feasible, potential and effective in obtaining feature from iris image.
Major Risk Factors as Antecedents of Fatal and Nonfatal Coronary Heart Disease Events

ContextA frequently cited concept is that individual major risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD) are absent in many patients (perhaps >50%) with CHD. However, prior studies have not systematically evaluated the extent to which CHD patients have previous exposure to at least 1 risk factor, including diabetes, cigarette smoking, or clinically elevated levels of cholesterol or blood pressure.ObjectiveTo determine the frequency of exposure to major CHD risk factors.Design, Setting, and ParticipantsThree prospective cohort studies were included: the Chicago Heart Association Detection Project in Industry, with a population sample of 35 642 employed men and women aged 18 to 59 years; screenees for the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial, including 347 978 men aged 35 to 57 years; and a population-based sample of 3295 men and women aged 34 to 59 years from the Framingham Heart Study (FHS). Follow-up lasted 21 to 30 years across the studies.Main Outcome MeasuresFatal CHD in all cohorts and nonfatal myocardial infarction (MI) in the FHS, compared by exposure to major CHD risk factors, defined as total cholesterol of at least 240 mg/dL (≥6.22 mmol/L), systolic blood pressure of at least 140 mm Hg, diastolic blood pressure of at least 90 mm Hg, cigarette smoking, and diabetes. Participants were stratified by sex and age (18-39 vs 40-59 years). ResultsFor fatal CHD (n = 20 995), exposure to at least 1 clinically elevated major risk factor ranged from 87% to 100%. Among those aged 40 to 59 years at baseline with fatal CHD (n = 19 263), exposure to at least 1 major risk factor ranged from 87% to 94%. For nonfatal MI, prior exposure was documented in 92% (95% CI, 87%-96%) (n = 167) of men aged 40 to 59 years at baseline and in 87% (95% CI, 80%-94%) (n = 94) of women in this age group.ConclusionsAntecedent major CHD risk factor exposures were very common among those who developed CHD, emphasizing the importance of considering all major risk factors in determining CHD risk estimation and in attempting to prevent clinical CHD. These results challenge claims that CHD events commonly occur in persons without exposure to at least 1 major CHD risk factor.
Multi-Resolution Texture Analysis of Mammograms Using Nearest Neighbor Classification Techniques

Mammograms are the most reliable and cost effective method for showing tissues abnormalities of breast. The proposed method classifies the breast tissues by extracting multi texture properties with multi scale wavelet transformations on regions of interest (ROI). The ability of each texture property in discriminating normal and abnormal ROI is analyzed individually and collectively. The method is tested on 217 mammogram images from the mini-MIAS database. Results indicate that multi-resolution image parametrization becomes inevitable when improvement of classification accuracy in textural domains is required. Further, this paper finds the classification accuracy of the nearest neighbor (NN) classification techniques which exploits the underlying density structure of dataset. The study reveals that the variants of the nearest neighbor classifier perform well individually and they significantly enhance the classification accuracy when combined. Finally, the performance of the proposed statistical classifier is compared with radial basis classifier Support Vector Machines (SVM). The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis is used as the performance measure to justify the result. It yields an area under the ROC curve (AZ) of 0.946 for proposed scheme, against 0.924 of SVM.
Hd3a and RFT1 are essential for flowering in rice

RICE FLOWERING LOCUS T 1 (RFT1/FT-L3) is the closest homologue of Heading date 3a (Hd3a), which is thought to encode a mobile flowering signal and promote floral transition under short-day (SD) conditions. RFT1 is located only 11.5 kb from Hd3a on chromosome 6. Although RFT1 RNAi plants flowered normally, double RFT1-Hd3a RNAi plants did not flower up to 300 days after sowing (DAS), indicating that Hd3a and RFT1 are essential for flowering in rice. RFT1 expression was very low in wild-type plants, but there was a marked increase in RFT1 expression by 70 DAS in Hd3a RNAi plants, which flowered 90 DAS. H3K9 acetylation around the transcription initiation site of the RFT1 locus had increased by 70 DAS but not at 35 DAS. In the absence of Hd3a and RFT1 expression, transcription of OsMADS14 and OsMADS15, two rice orthologues of Arabidopsis APETALA1, was strongly reduced, suggesting that they act downstream of Hd3a and RFT1. These results indicate that Hd3a and RFT1 act as floral activators under SD conditions, and that RFT1 expression is partly regulated by chromatin modification.
Quantum Teleportation and Holomorphic Representation of CCR

For the treatment of teleportation of continuous quantum variables, often the Wigner functions are used. In this paper, we will show that by using the holomorphic representation of the canonical commutation relations (CCR), the teleportation of continuous quantum variables is treated in a parallel way as the teleportation of qubits.
Ascl1 is required for oligodendrocyte development in the spinal cord

Development of oligodendrocytes, myelin-forming glia in the central nervous system (CNS), proceeds on a protracted schedule. Specification of oligodendrocyte progenitors (OLPs) begins early in development, whereas their terminal differentiation occurs at late embryonic and postnatal periods. How these distinct steps are controlled remains unclear. Our previous study demonstrated an important role of the helix-loop-helix (HLH) transcription factor Ascl1 in early generation of OLPs in the developing spinal cord. Here, we show that Ascl1 is also involved in terminal differentiation of oligodendrocytes late in development. Ascl1-/- mutant mice showed a deficiency in differentiation of myelin-expressing oligodendrocytes at birth. In vitro culture studies demonstrate that the induction and maintenance of co-expression of Olig2 and Nkx2-2 in OLPs, and thyroid hormone-responsive induction of myelin proteins are impaired in Ascl1-/- mutants. Gain-of-function studies further showed that Ascl1 collaborates with Olig2 and Nkx2-2 in promoting differentiation of OLPs into oligodendrocytes in vitro. Overexpression of Ascl1, Olig2 and Nkx2-2 alone stimulated the specification of OLPs, but the combinatorial action of Ascl1 and Olig2 or Nkx2-2 was required for further promoting their differentiation into oligodendrocytes. Thus, Ascl1 regulates multiple aspects of oligodendrocyte development in the spinal cord.
Deriving multipotent stem cells from mouse spermatogonial stem cells: a new tool for developmental and clinical research

In recent years, embryonic stem (ES) cell-like cells have been obtained from cultured mouse spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs). These advances have shown that SSCs can transition from being the stem cell-producing cells of spermatogenesis to being multipotent cells that can differentiate into derivatives of all three germ layers. As such, they offer new possibilities for studying the mechanisms that regulate stem cell differentiation. The extension of these findings to human SSCs offers a route to obtaining personalized ES-like or differentiated cells for use in regenerative medicine. Here, we compare the different approaches used to derive ES-like cells from SSCs and discuss their importance to clinical and developmental research.
EXTENSIVE ARTERIAL AND VENOUS THROMBOSIS COMPLICATING CHRONIC ULCERATIVE COLITIS

It is generally agreed that chronic ulcerative colitis is one of the most serious of the diseases that afflict the digestive tract of man. Its complications may be equally serious. Fortunately, they are rare, but, unfortunately, when they do occur in a given case they are likely to be multiple. 1 One of the very serious complications of chronic ulcerative colitis is extensive thrombosis of the blood vessels. Among fifteen hundred cases of chronic ulcerative colitis which we have observed thrombophlebitis or arterial thrombosis which was extensive enough to become a grave clinical problem occurred in eighteen. Less serious subclinical thrombosis of small vessels, chiefly the veins, has occurred more frequently than extensive thrombosis. In patients who come to necropsy, emboli and thrombi have been found in various places, such as the pelvic plexuses, lungs, spleen and kidneys. Among the last forty-three of our patients who died of chronic ulcerative
Enfermedad aterotrombótica coronaria: avances en el tratamiento antiplaquetario

La plaqueta ha asumido un papel preponderante en la medicina cardiovascular gracias a la comprension del syndrome coronario agudo (SCA) como un proceso aterotrombotico. Esto ha establecido el uso generalizado de agentes antiplaquetarios, como la aspirina, las tienopiridinas y los antagonistas de los receptores de la glucoproteina IIb/IIIa, en la prevencion de las enfermedades isquemicas coronarias. Sin embargo, hay evidencias recientes de que no todos los pacientes reciben el tratamiento antiplaquetario adecuado, ya sea por el fenomeno de la «resistencia » o «respuesta variable» al farmaco o por un aumento en el riesgo de sangrado. Es mas, la falta de eficacia de la combinacion aspirina-clopidogrel en la prevencion primaria ha cuestionado el concepto de «a mayor inhibicion, mayor eficacia». Actualmente, los esfuerzos se centran en la mejora de los tratamientos antiplaquetarios en uso a fin de mejorar su efectividad y su seguridad. Se estan desarrollando antagonistas alternativos de los receptors del ADP (prasugrel, AZD6140 y cangrelor) y de la trombina (E555 y SCH530348) que podrian ofrecer mas inhibicion de las plaquetas, mas rapida y constante. Asimismo, el avance en el conocimiento de la estructura de la plaqueta y los mecanismos implicados en la formacion del trombo puede dar lugar al descubrimiento de nuevas dianas terapeuticas. Este articulo revisa el papel fisiopatologico de las plaquetas en el proceso aterotrombotico, evalua lo mas actual del arsenal antiplaquetario actualmente en uso y comenta nuevas aproximaciones terapeuticas.