Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Orthopedic treatment of the lower limbs in spastic paralysis

Spastic paralysis of the limb mainly results from the central lesion, in which spastic cerebral palsy is the common cause. Due to durative muscle spasm in spastic cerebral palsy, it is often accompanied by the formation of secondary musculoskeletal deformities, resulting in limb motor disability. Based on its pathogenesis, surgical treatment is currently applied: selective posterior rhizotomy (SPR) or orthopedic surgery. The primary purpose of early orthopedic surgery was simply to correct limb deformities, which usually led to the recurrence of deformity as a result of the presence of spasticity. With the application of SPR, high muscle tone was successfully relieved, but limb deformity was still present postoperatively. Therefore, this study aimed to elaborate on the management of orthopedic surgery, common deformities of the lower limb, and orthopedic operative methods; discuss the relationship between SPR and orthopedic procedure for limb deformity; and focus on the indications, timing of intervention, and postoperative outcome of different surgical methods.
Functional interaction of human Ssu72 with RNA polymerase II complexes

Phosphorylation of the C-terminal domain (CTD) of the large subunit of human RNA polymerase II (Pol II) is regulated during the transcription cycle by the combined action of specific kinases and phosphatases. Pol II enters into the preinitiation complex (PIC) unphosphorylated, but is quickly phosphorylated by Cdk7 during initiation. How phosphatases alter the pattern and extent of CTD phosphorylation at this early stage of transcription is not clear. We previously demonstrated the functional association of an early-acting, magnesium-independent phosphatase with early elongation complexes. Here we show that Ssu72 is responsible for that activity. We found that the phosphatase enters the transcription cycle during the formation of PICs and that Ssu72 is physically associated with very early elongation complexes. The association of Ssu72 with elongation complexes was stable to extensive washing with up to 200 mM KCl. Interestingly, Ssu72 ceased to function on complexes that contained RNA longer than 28 nt. However, when PICs were washed before initiation, the strict cutoff at 28 nt was lost. This suggests that factor(s) are important for the specific regulation of Ssu72 function during the transition between initiation and pausing. Overall, our results demonstrate when Ssu72 can act on early transcription complexes and suggest that Ssu72 may also function in the PIC prior to initiation.
Programmable integrated photonics

Programmable Integrated Photonics (PIP) is a new paradigm that aims at designing common integrated optical hardware configurations, which by suitable programming can implement a variety of functionalities that, in turn, can be exploited as basic operations in many application fields. Programmability enables by means of external control signals both chip reconfiguration for multifunction operation as well as chip stabilization against non-ideal operation due to fluctuations in environmental conditions and fabrication errors. Programming also allows activating parts of the chip, which are not essential for the implementation of a given functionality but can be of help in reducing noise levels through the diversion of undesired reflections. After some years where the Application Specific Photonic Integrated Circuit (ASPIC) paradigm has completely dominated the field of integrated optics, there is an increasing interest in PIP justified by the surge of a number of emerging applications that are and will be calling for true flexibility, reconfigurability as well as low-cost, compact and low-power consuming devices. This book aims to provide a comprehensive introduction to this emergent field covering aspects that range from the basic aspects of technologies and building photonic component blocks to the design alternatives and principles of complex programmable photonics circuits, their limiting factors, techniques for characterization and performance monitoring/control and their salient applications both in the classical as well as in the quantum information fields. The book concentrates and focuses mainly on the distinctive features of programmable photonics as compared to more traditional ASPIC approaches.
Transversus thoracis muscle plane block in cardiac surgery: a pilot feasibility study

Introduction Cardiac surgery patients often experience significant pain after median sternotomy. The transversus thoracis muscle plane (TTP) block is a newly developed, single-shot nerve block technique that provides analgesia for the anterior chest wall. In this double-blind pilot study, we assessed the feasibility of performing this novel block as an analgesic adjunct. Methods All patients aged 18–90 undergoing elective cardiac surgery were randomized to the block or standard care control group on admission to the intensive care unit after surgery. Under ultrasound guidance, patients in the block group received the TTP block with 20 mL of either 0.3% or 0.5% ropivacaine bilaterally, based on weight. The control group did not receive any injections. All blocks were performed by a single anesthesiologist, and data collection was performed by blinded assessors. The primary feasibility outcomes were rate of recruitment, adherence, and adverse events. The rate of recruitment was defined as the ratio of patients giving informed consent to the number of eligible patients who were approached to participate. Secondary outcomes included 12-hour and 24-hour Numeric Rating Scale (NRS) pain scores, 24-hour hydromorphone and acetaminophen requirements, time to extubation, time to first opioid administration, and patient satisfaction (on a yes/no questionnaire) at 24 hours. Results Twenty patients were approached for this study and 19 were enrolled. Eight patients received the intended intervention in each group. The recruitment rate was 95% of all approached eligible patients, and the adherence rate to treatment group was 94%. There were no block-related adverse events. The mean (SD) NRS pain scores at rest were 3.3 (3.2) in the block group vs 5.6 (3.2) in the control group at 12 hours. At 24 hours, the pain scores were 4.1 (3.9) vs 4.1 (3.3) in the block and control group, respectively. The mean (SD) 24-hour hydromorphone administration was 1.9 (1.1) mg in the block group vs 1.8 (0.9) mg in the control group. Discussion The TTP block is a novel pain management strategy poststernotomy. The results reveal a high patient recruitment, adherence, and satisfaction rate, and provide some preliminary data supporting safety. Trial registration number NCT03128346.
Treatment of Diabetes in Older Adults: An Endocrine Society* Clinical Practice Guideline.

OBJECTIVE The objective is to formulate clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of diabetes in older adults. CONCLUSIONS Diabetes, particularly type 2, is becoming more prevalent in the general population, especially in individuals over the age of 65 years. The underlying pathophysiology of the disease in these patients is exacerbated by the direct effects of aging on metabolic regulation. Similarly, aging effects interact with diabetes to accelerate the progression of many common diabetes complications. Each section in this guideline covers all aspects of the etiology and available evidence, primarily from controlled trials, on therapeutic options and outcomes in this population. The goal is to give guidance to practicing health care providers that will benefit patients with diabetes (both type 1 and type 2), paying particular attention to avoiding unnecessary and/or harmful adverse effects.
The GCMS analysis of partially purified chloroform sub fractions of methanol extract of drymaria cordata (Linn) and their effects on mitochondrial membrane permeability transition pore

The plant drymaria cordata is folklorically used in the treatment of uterine fibroids. Investigating its phytoconstituents and their effects on mitochondrial permeability transition (mPT) pore is of pharmacological importance. The aim of this study was to identify the possible phytochemical compounds present in the most potent sub-fraction of the plant and test them on mPT pore. The methanol extract of drymaria cordata was successively partitioned between n-hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate and methanol solvent using Vacuum Liquid Chromatography (VLC) technique to obtain n-hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate and methanol fractions. The chloroform fraction was partitioned into five different subfractions using VLC. The subfractions were tested for their potency in the induction of mPT pore opening. The subfraction D which was the most potent with respect to mPT pore opening was loaded on a column and eluted with n-hexane and chloroform varying the solvent systems in order of increasing polarity. The flow rate was 2.5ml/min. Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) plates were used to monitor samples with similar components. Samples with similar Rf values were pooled together. For further resolution, samples which showed the same single band on the TLC plates were further subjected to purification using micro-column chromatography. The eluents were also monitored using the TLC plates. The partially purified samples were subjected to GC-MS analysis and certain phytochemicals including hexadecanoic acid methyl ester, hexadecanoic acid ethyl ester, hexadecanoic acid, 9-Octadecenoic acid, Oxalic acid 2-ethylhexyl isobutyl ester, 3-(p-Fluorobenzoyl)-propionic acid and Bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate were identified. The presence of these major compounds might be responsible for the pharmacological properties ascribed to the fraction. Also, these could give an insight into developing chemopreventive and therapeutic approaches to various diseases in human associated with dysregulated apoptosis. Keywords: Drymaria cordata, Mitochondrial membrane permeability transition pore, Gas Chromatography, Thin Layer Chromatography, Apoptosis.
The Use of Janus Kinase Inhibitors in Vitiligo: A Review of the Literature

Vitiligo is a common acquired depigmenting disorder characterized by the development of white macules and patches due to the loss of melanocytes. Patients with vitiligo can be stigmatized by society, making the disease a source of psychological stress that can considerably affect quality of life. The goal of vitiligo treatment is to obtain skin repigmentation in the majority of cases, and less commonly to depigment the remaining normal skin. There is no consistent, long-term, durable therapy for vitiligo for all patients, highlighting the unmet need for new safe and effective therapies to control this disease. Recently, JAK inhibitors have been explored as a promising novel treatment option in vitiligo. The JAK and signal transducers and activators of transcription (STAT) pathway is an attractive therapeutic target because IFN-γ–dependent cytokines produced through this pathway have been implicated in the pathogenesis of disease. This literature review describes vitiligo pathophysiology, explains the usefulness of the JAK inhibitors for treatment, and summarizes published case reports, case series, and open-label studies. Research outlined here shows JAK inhibitors in patients with vitiligo have a favorable safety profile and effectively produce repigmentation of lesions, especially with concomitant ultraviolet exposure. Additional studies are required to confirm efficacy, establish safety, and investigate durability of repigmentation.
Synthesis and Characterization of 3-(1-((3,4-Dihydroxyphenethyl)amino)ethylidene)-chroman-2,4-dione as a Potential Antitumor Agent

The newly synthesized coumarin derivative with dopamine, 3-(1-((3,4-dihydroxyphenethyl)amino)ethylidene)-chroman-2,4-dione, was completely structurally characterized by X-ray crystallography. It was shown that several types of hydrogen bonds are present, which additionally stabilize the structure. The compound was tested in vitro against different cell lines, healthy human keratinocyte HaCaT, cervical squamous cell carcinoma SiHa, breast carcinoma MCF7, and hepatocellular carcinoma HepG2. Compared to control, the new derivate showed a stronger effect on both healthy and carcinoma cell lines, with the most prominent effect on the breast carcinoma MCF7 cell line. The molecular docking study, obtained for ten different conformations of the new compound, showed its inhibitory nature against CDKS protein. Lower inhibition constant, relative to one of 4-OH-coumarine, proved stronger and more numerous interactions with CDKS protein. These interactions were carefully examined for both parent molecule and derivative and explained from a structural point of view.
Counteraction of HCV-Induced Oxidative Stress Concurs to Establish Chronic Infection in Liver Cell Cultures

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a blood-borne pathogen causing acute and chronic hepatitis. A significant number of people chronically infected with HCV develop cirrhosis and/or liver cancer. The pathophysiologic mechanisms of hepatocyte damage associated with chronic HCV infection are not fully understood yet, mainly due to the lack of an in vitro system able to recapitulate the stages of infection in vivo. Several studies underline that HCV virus replication depends on redox-sensitive cellular pathways; in addition, it is known that virus itself induces alterations of the cellular redox state. However, the exact interplay between HCV replication and oxidative stress has not been elucidated. In particular, the role of reduced glutathione (GSH) in HCV replication and infection is still not clear. We set up an in vitro system, based on low m.o. i. of Huh7.5 cell line with a HCV infectious clone (J6/JFH1), that reproduced the acute and persistent phases of HCV infection up to 76 days of culture. We demonstrated that the acute phase of HCV infection is characterized by the elevated levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) associated in part with an increase of NADPH-oxidase transcripts and activity and a depletion of GSH accompanied by high rates of viral replication and apoptotic cell death. Conversely, the chronic phase is characterized by a reestablishment of reduced environment due to a decreased ROS production and increased GSH content in infected cells that might concur to the establishment of viral persistence. Treatment with the prooxidant auranofin of the persistently infected cultures induced the increase of viral RNA titer, suggesting that a prooxidant state could favor the reactivation of HCV viral replication that in turn caused cell damage and death. Our results suggest that targeting the redox-sensitive host-cells pathways essential for viral replication and/or persistence may represent a promising option for contrasting HCV infection.
Unchain My Heart: Integrins at the Basis of iPSC Cardiomyocyte Differentiation

The cellular response to the extracellular matrix (ECM) microenvironment mediated by integrin adhesion is of fundamental importance, in both developmental and pathological processes. In particular, mechanotransduction is of growing importance in groundbreaking cellular models such as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), since this process may strongly influence cell fate and, thus, augment the precision of differentiation into specific cell types, e.g., cardiomyocytes. The decryption of the cellular machinery starting from ECM sensing to iPSC differentiation calls for new in vitro methods. Conveniently, engineered biomaterials activating controlled integrin-mediated responses through chemical, physical, and geometrical designs are key to resolving this issue and could foster clinical translation of optimized iPSC-based technology. This review introduces the main integrin-dependent mechanisms and signalling pathways involved in mechanotransduction. Special consideration is given to the integrin-iPSC linkage signalling chain in the cardiovascular field, focusing on biomaterial-based in vitro models to evaluate the relevance of this process in iPSC differentiation into cardiomyocytes.
Brain Complete Response to Cabozantinib prior to Radiation Therapy in Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma

Cabozantinib represents an established vascular endothelial growth factor- (VEGF-) tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) in the treatment paradigm of metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC). Its activity in mRCC patients with brain metastases (BMs) has been largely underreported in prospective clinical trials. We present the unique case of a heavily pretreated mRCC patient with BMs who achieved a brain complete response to cabozantinib prior to receiving radiation therapy. We end with a literature review and discussion of the biologic rationale and growing evidence supporting the intracranial activity of cabozantinib.
Genetic Diversity and Phylogenetic Analysis of Citrus tristeza virus Isolates from Turkey

The presence of Citrus tristeza virus (CTV) in Turkey has been known since the 1960s and the virus was detected in all citrus growing regions of the country. Even though serological and biological characteristics of CTV have been studied since the 1980s, molecular characteristics of CTV isolates have not been studied to date in Turkey. In this study, molecular characteristics of 15 CTV isolates collected from different citrus growing regions of Turkey were determined by amplification, cloning, and sequencing of their major coat protein (CP) genes. The sequence analysis showed that the CP genes were highly conserved among Turkish isolates. However, isolates from different regions showed more genetic variation than isolates from the same region. Turkish isolates were clustered into three phylogenetic groups showing no association with geographical origins, host, or symptoms induced in indicator plants. Phylogenetic analysis of Turkish isolates with isolates from different citrus growing regions of the world including well-characterized type isolates of previously established strain specific groups revealed that some Turkish isolates were closely related to severe quick decline or stem pitting isolates. The results demonstrated that although CTV isolates from Turkey are considered biologically mild, majority of them contain severe components potentially causing quick decline or stem pitting.
The Value of Road and Railway Safety - an Overview

The level of safety investments can be argued to vary between sectors. The safety investments legally required and carried out within the railway sector indicate that there is a higher implicit value in preventing a fatality within the rail sector than within the road sector. The literature overview discusses factors possibly influencing individuals’ perception of risk and their willingness to trade risk for money. The study seeks to combine results, from e.g. the field of psychological studies, with work performed by economists in order to analyse whether the value of preventing a statistical life used in the road traffic sector can be argued to differ from the value used in the railway sector. The research discussed here indicates that the use of different values may be theoretically motivated. However, empirical findings presented do not confirm that the value of a statistical life used in the railway sector is many times larger than that used in the road sector. Research indicates, furthermore, that the variation of perceived risk within the context of one traffic mode may be as large as, or even larger than, the variation between different traffic contexts. The result implies that studies estimating the value of a statistical life should focus not only on disparities between transport modes per se but also on disparities between accident types.
Applications of Machine Learning and Soft Computing Techniques in Real World

Machine learning techniques are the most widely used methods in these days. It is considered to be a branch of artificial intelligence. Machine learning algorithms construct a computational model based on sample data, known as 'training data,' to make forecasts or predictions without being formally programmed to do so. Most of the machines learning techniques are based upon the computational statistics. Soft computing facilitates the implementation of methodologies that seek to design he solutions of real-life problems that are hard to model otherwise. Soft computing techniques are the blending of distinct methodologies (fuzzy logic, bio-inspired, swarm-intelligence, deep learning techniques) that were designed to solve multifaceted real-world problems [4][5]. The aim of this short communication is to highlight the use of machine learning and soft computing techniques in real life applications.
Electron-scale Vertical Current Sheets in a Bursty Bulk Flow in the Terrestrial Magnetotail

We report Magnetospheric Multiscale observations of multiple vertical current sheets (CSs) in a bursty bulk flow in the near-Earth magnetotail. Two of the CSs were fine structures of a dipolarization front (DF) at the leading edge of the flow. The other CSs were a few Earth radii tailward of the DF; that is, in the wake of the DF. Some of these vertical CSs were a few electron inertial lengths thick and were converting energy from magnetic field to plasma. The currents of the CSs in the DF wake were carried by electrons that formed flow shear layers. These electron-scale CSs were probably formed during the turbulent evolution of the bursty bulk flow and are important for energy conversion associated with fast flows.
Statistical Models for Single-Cell Data

The growing use of single-cell gene expression data (scRNA-seq data) has made it possible to more precisely identify cellular subpopulations with distinct characteristics. This offers insight both into normal cellular function and into diseases such as cancer. However, single-cell data presents new challenges which standard clustering and dimensionality reduction methods are not designed to confront. Rather than being drawn from Gaussians as assumed by most models, single-cell datasets contain an overabundance of zeros. We use several scRNA-seq datasets to investigate how zeros are distributed in real biological data. Based on our findings, we perform a series of simulations to examine how standard clustering and dimensionality reduction methods perform on high-dimensional, zero-inflated data. We show that performance suffers as the fraction of zeros increases and that more complex non-linear models fail to alleviate this problem. Based on this, we then present two new models that account for zeros: one to perform dimensionality reduction, and one to perform clustering. For dimensionality reduction, we present an extension of the factor analysis model which accounts for zero-inflation by adding a single parameter which describes how the probability of technical zeros decreases with the expression level of a gene. We show that our model, ZIFA, outperforms factor analysis and probabilistic principal components analysis on simulated data. For clustering, we present a extension of the Gaussian mixture model which accounts for zero-inflation. We show that our model, ZIMM, outperforms k-means and Gaussian mixture models on simulated data. We also show that both ZIFA and ZIMM better fit real data from several scRNA-seq experiments, and provide fast software implementations of both models. Lastly, we explore applications of our models to several other classes of non-biological datasets.