Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long term mortality of mothers and fathers after pre-eclampsia: population based cohort study.

Abstract Objective: To assess whether mothers and fathers have a higher long term risk of death, particularly from cardiovascular disease and cancer, after the mother has had pre-eclampsia. Design: Population based cohort study of registry data. Subjects: Mothers and fathers of all 626 272 births that were the mothers' first deliveries, recorded in the Norwegian medical birth registry from 1967 to 1992. Parents were divided into two cohorts based on whether the mother had pre-eclampsia during the pregnancy. Subjects were also stratified by whether the birth was term or preterm, given that pre-eclampsia might be more severe in preterm pregnancies. Main outcome measures: Total mortality and mortality from cardiovascular causes, cancer, and stroke from 1967 to 1992, from data from the Norwegian registry of causes of death. Results: Women who had pre-eclampsia had a 1.2-fold higher long term risk of death (95% confidence interval 1.02 to 1.37) than women who did not have pre-eclampsia. The risk in women with pre-eclampsia and a preterm delivery was 2.71-fold higher (1.99 to 3.68) than in women who did not have pre-eclampsia and whose pregnancies went to term. In particular, the risk of death from cardiovascular causes among women with pre-eclampsia and a preterm delivery was 8.12-fold higher (4.31 to 15.33). However, these women had a 0.36-fold (not significant) decreased risk of cancer. The long term risk of death was no higher among the fathers of the pre-eclamptic pregnancies than the fathers of pregnancies in which pre-eclampsia did not occur. Conclusions: Genetic factors that increase the risk of cardiovascular disease may also be linked to pre-eclampsia. A possible genetic contribution from fathers to the risk of pre-eclampsia was not reflected in increased risks of death from cardiovascular causes or cancer among fathers. What is already known on this topic Maternal and fetal genes (including those inherited from the father) may contribute to pre-eclampsia, which occurs in 3-5% of pregnancies One set of candidate genes for pre-eclampsia is the maternal genes for thrombophilia, which may increase the mother's risk of death from cardiovascular disease What this study adds Women who have pre-eclampsia during a pregnancy that ends in a preterm delivery have an eightfold higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease compared with women who do not have pre-eclampsia and whose pregnancy goes to term Fathers of pregnancies in which pre-eclampsia occurred have no increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease These results are compatible with maternal genes for thrombophilia having an effect on the risk of pre-eclampsia and of death from cardiovascular disease
Global localization and tracking for wearable augmented reality in urban environments

Reliably localizing and tracking displays moving relative to content in the physical world is one of the primary technical challenges facing all augmented reality systems. While significant progress has been made in recent years, all approaches remain limited to functioning only in certain environments and situations. Attempts to improve solution generality via additional sensors (e.g., depth sensors, multiple cameras) add significant size, weight and power to wearable solutions sensitive to these attributes. In this work, we propose an approach to tracking and localization using a single camera and inertial chip. Through a combination of visual-inertial navigation, point cloud mapping and dynamically correlating building faces and edges with sparse OpenStreetMap datasets, we achieved a typical global localization precision of less than 0.25 meters and 1 degree heading relative to the map. All motion tracking calculations are performed on a local mobile device with less than 10 milliseconds of latency while global localization and drift correction is performed remotely.
Hardware Acceleration for Map/Reduce Analysis of Streaming Data Using OpenCL

The channelized approach takes advantage of Altera’s channel concept to pass data directly between kernels eliminating costly host/device memory transfers. Channels are a superset to the pipe concept written into the latest OpenCL specification. Altera channels are implemented as FIFOs allowing direct data transfer between kernels, as well as between kernels and external I/O. In the channelized implementation, the code is written as a simple single-threaded application. Parallelism is exploited by the use of vector data types (data parallelism) as implemented by the developer and by unrolling loops (programming parallelism) as provided primarily by the compiler. Therefore, the channelized approach is a more straight forward implementation for the developer than the NDRange approach. Additional helper functions (producer and consumer kernels) are used for writing and reading to external memory
Electromechanical characterization of the effects of racemic sotalol and its optical isomers on isolated canine ventricular trabecular muscles and Purkinje strands.

In both isolated canine ventricular trabecular muscle and Purkinje strand preparations, dl-sotalol and its two optical isomers d- and l-sotalol produced a concentration-dependent increase in action potential duration while other transmembrane electrical characteristics were not significantly affected. The magnitude of the increase in action potential durations was greater in Purkinje strand preparations. In Purkinje strand preparations, the effect was rate dependent (i.e., the increase in duration was proportionately greater when stimulation frequency was slowed). From the concentration of each compound calculated to produce a 50% maximal increase in Purkinje fiber action potential durations, d-sotalol appeared to be one to three times more potent than either l-sotalol or the racemate. Each compound appeared to increase force development in ventricular trabecular muscle preparations stimulated at a frequency of 2 Hz. Increased force development was only observed in Purkinje strand preparations stimulated at slower rates (0.5-0.33 Hz). These results are unlike those produced by other beta-adrenergic blockers and suggest that the antiarrhythmic effects of sotalol are related primarily to its effect of action potential duration. The estimated potency ratios established for the effect of dl-sotalol and its optical isomers on both trabeculae and Purkinje fiber action potential durations (d greater than dl-l) may indicate that these effects are unrelated to the beta-adrenergic blocking properties of these compounds. The differential effect of sotalol on isolated trabeculae and Purkinje strand preparations may help to explain the clinically reported phenomenon of sotalol-induced torsade de pointes.
A pattern recognition based handoff algorithm for micro-cellular systems

Traditional handoff algorithms generally cannot keep both the average number of unnecessary handoffs and handoff decision delays low. In order to achieve this goal, this paper presents a novel pattern recognition based handoff algorithm which uses a neural network as a classifier. It is based on the fact that in micro-cellular environments in cities, users often move on predetermined paths and as the built environment is not changed often, this regularity can be exploited in a pattern recognition based handoff method. Simulation results show that unlike traditional handoff algorithms, the proposed algorithm has the ability to keep the average number of handoffs and average number of call drops low for a negligible handoff decision delay. The proposed handoff algorithm is simpler than the existing pattern recognition based ones and only uses one training vector for each path in a given environment.
Neuroprotective effect of exogenous vascular endothelial growth factor on rat spinal cord neurons in vitro hypoxia.

BACKGROUND Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is well known as a hypoxia-induced protein. That it markedly increased expression of VEGF and improvement of rat motor function after spinal cord injury suggested that VEGF could play a neuroprotective role in ischaemic tolerance. This study investigated whether vascular endothelial growth factor has direct neuroprotective effects on rat spinal cord neurons. METHODS We employed primary cultures of embryonic rat spinal cord neurons, then administrated different concentrations of VEGF164 in the culture medium before hypoxia when the number of neurons was counted and the cell viability was detected by MTT. The neuronal apoptosis and expression of VEGF and its receptor genes were evaluated by terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase mediated dUTP nick-end labelling (TUNEL) and immunohistochemistry. The VEGFR2/FLK-1 inhibitor, SU1498, was used to confirm whether the neuroprotective effect of VEGF was mediated through VEGFR2/Flk-1 receptors. RESULT In hypoxic conditions, the number and viability of neurons decreased progressively, while the number of TUNEL-positive cells increased along with the prolongation of hypoxic exposure. When the concentration of VEGF in cell culture medium reached 25 ng/ml, the cell viability increased 11% and neuronal apoptosis reduced to half, this effect was dose dependent and led to an approximately 25% increase in cell viability and about threefold decrease in TUNEL-positive cells at a maximally effective concentration of 100 ng/ml. In normal conditions, VEGF/Flk-1 but not VEGF/Flt-1 gene expressed at a low level: after hypoxia, the expression of VEGF/Flk-1, but not VEGF/Flt-1 was significantly increased. The protective effect of VEGF was blocked by the VEGFR2/Flk-1 receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor, SU1498. CONCLUSIONS VEGF has direct neuroprotective effects on rat spinal cord neurons, which may be mediated in vitro through VEGFR2/Flk-1 receptors.
PKC zeta enhances insulin-like growth factor 1-dependent mitogenic activity in the rat clonal beta cell line RIN 1046-38.

Protein kinase C seems to be linked to the regulation of insulin secretion as well as mitogenic signaling in pancreatic beta cells. To study the impact of different PKC isoforms on insulin secretion and mitogenic activity we stably overexpressed the PKC isoforms alpha, beta2, epsilon, and zeta in the rat clonal beta cell line RIN 1046-38. Under basal conditions PKC alpha, beta2, epsilon, and zeta were identified mainly in the cytosol. Treatment with the phorbol ester TPA caused translocation of PKC alpha, beta2, and epsilon to the plasma membrane. Glucose- and TPA-dependent increases in insulin release were comparable in all cell lines regardless of whether PKC was overexpressed or not. While PKC isoforms alpha, beta2, and epsilon had no effect on the [(3)H]thymidine incorporation rate, overexpression of PKC zeta specifically increased basal as well as IGF-1-dependent [(3)H]thymidine incorporation. Incubation with the MAP-kinase inhibitor PD98056 abolished this effect. Furthermore, treatment with IGF-1 led to activation of the beta cell-specific transcription factor PDX-1 in RIN 1046-38 cells overexpressing PKC zeta. Our data suggest that PKC zeta is involved in basal as well as IGF-1-dependent mitogenesis in RIN 1046-38 cells, while none of the PKC isoforms tested seem to be related to glucose-stimulated insulin release.
Value of Ultrasound Machine Settings Optimization for Better Diagnosis of Focal Liver Lesions

Value of Ultrasound Machine Settings Optimization for Better Diagnosis of Focal Liver Lesions Background. Focal liver lesions and metastasis can be very hard to localize. For best imaging, customizing of several settings of the machine are necessary: brightness, contrast, probe frequency, focusing, dynamic range, time gain compensation, flow area, flow gain, sample volume, angle, peak repetitive frequency, filter adjusting and parallelogram of region of interest. Aim. The aim of this study is to examine the influence of adjusted or not adjusted ultrasound scanner in diagnosing of focal liver lesions. Material and methods. The study involves 129 patients from the group of focal liver lesions including a broad spectrum of benign, malignant, and infectious aetiologies. We made ultrasound examination with automatic factory settings of ultrasound machine parameters and after that all off them were examined with manual settings of the scanner. Results. The results obtained from "auto" and "manual" mode settings were compared with CT and MRI imaging as a gold standard. In auto mode false positive results were seen in patients with hiperechoic metastases understood like FNH, patients with hipoechoic metastases treated like haemangioma, patients with anechoic metastases and patients with abscesses treated like cysts. Conclusion. Manual mode ultrasound procedure is more accurate in detection of focal liver parenchymal lesions because of reduced specificity in auto mode compared with higher specificity and small percentage of false positive results within manually adjusted scanner. We show the great value of best performance manual setting of the scanner in liver parenchymal focal lesions detecting.
Role of aberrant IgG glycosylation in the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease

The intestine is one of the most important organs associated with the immune system. It is thought that disruption of intestinal immunity causes inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Recent advances in immune glycobiology have provided novel insights into many human diseases. For example, studies of glycosylation remodeling in mice have underscored the importance of oligosaccharides in the pathogenesis of IBD. Furthermore, aberrant glycosylation of IgG is a good serum marker of IBD activity. In this review, we examine current understanding of the role of aberrant glycosylation in the pathogenesis of IBD in terms of our original data and recent reports.
Chronic Wasting Disease in Free-Ranging Wisconsin White-Tailed Deer

Three White-tailed Deer shot within 5 km during the 2001 hunting season in Wisconsin tested positive for chronic wasting disease, a prion disease of cervids. Subsequent sampling within 18 km showed a 3% prevalence (n=476). This discovery represents an important range extension for chronic wasting disease into the eastern United States.
The Global Village of Heritage: the contribution of the Centre for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULTNAT)

Fathi Saleh is professor of computer engineering at Cairo University and Director of the Centre for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULTNAT), which is affiliated to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. He is also a member of the Supreme Council of Culture. He obtained his doctorate in engineering from the University of Paris, France. During his career, he has been cultural attaché to the Egyptian Embassy in Paris and Egypt’s ambassador to UNESCO. His keen interest in cultural heritage led him to establish the centre of which he is now the director.
Commentary on "Timbre as an Elusive Component of Imagery for Music," by Freya Bailes

The study of musical timbre by Bailes (2007) raises important questions concerning the relative ease of imaging complex perceptual attributes such as timbre, compared to more unidimensional attributes. I also raise the issue of individual differences in auditory imagery ability, especially for timbre. Submitted 2006 November 21; Accepted 2006 November 25
The virtue gap in humor: Exploring benevolent and corrective humor.

The recent emergence of positive psychology gave rise to the idea to conceptualize humor from a “good character” perspective. Present constructs, however, show a “virtue gap,” and the two concepts of benevolent and corrective humor were developed to fill this gap. The former describes a humorous outlook on life that entails the realistic observations and understanding of human weaknesses (and the imperfection of the world) but also their benevolent humorous treatment. By contrast, corrective humor involves moral-based ridicule—that is, the use of mockery to fight badness and mediocrity. Corrective humor, akin to satire, uses wit to ridicule vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings with the intent of shaming individuals and groups into improvement. Participants (N = 340) filled in statements assessing the two virtue-related humor concepts, general sense of humor (subsample of n = 144), mockery, and 24 character strengths. As expected, benevolent humor showed positive correlations with most of the 24 character strengths and uniquely related to the strengths of several virtues (justice, temperance, and transcendence) beyond general sense of humor. Corrective humor related most strongly to strengths of the virtues wisdom, courage, and justice, especially once mockery was controlled for. Thus, both constructs capture important virtue-related humor aspects over and above the sense of humor and mockery and are thus suitable for—at least partially—filling the “virtue gap” in humor research. They have the potential to pave the way for developing and investigating further humor constructs that meaningfully relate to strengths and virtues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
The Concise Oxford dictionary of botany

This dictionary is a reference work on all aspects of the study of plants. With more than 5000 entries, it should be valuable to students, amateur botanists and naturalists, and everyone with an interest in plants and their environments. Many of the entries have been taken from the "Oxford Dictionary of Natural History", but each one has been scrutinized thoroughly and, where necessary, amended or rewritten to adapt it to the new dictionary. A substantial number of new entries have been added in the areas of ecology, plant physiology, biochemistry, cytology, and genetics, and other subjects covered include biogeography, evolution, Earth history and the Earth sciences. There are also brief biographical notes on some of the most eminent botanists of the past. The dictionary provides world-wide coverage of taxonomic groups and takes full account of recent taxonomical revisions. One-third of the entries are devoted to taxa, from bacteria and fungi to the main groups of flowering and non-flowering plants.
Robust Distributed Reprogramming Protocol of Wireless Sensor Networks for Healthcare Systems

With the development of the wireless communication technologies, the wireless sensor networks (WSNs for short) are considered as one of the key research areas in healthcare systems. However, there is sometimes a need for removing bugs or adding new functionalities after WSNs are deployed. Wireless reprogramming is a process for propagating a new code image or relevant commands to sensor nodes in WSNs. In this paper, we propose a robust distributed reprogramming protocol of WSNs for healthcare systems, in which the security requirements are proved to be secure based on the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem, such as existential unforgeability of signature for code image, authenticity of code image, freshness, and node compromised tolerance.
Perspectives in CancerResearch Genetics of Cancer Predisposition

Formal genetic analysis of cancer engenders several paradox ical situations: (a) although familial instances are well de scribed, most disease occurs as sporadic isolated cases; (b) even in those cases arising subsequent to inheritance, tumors are focal in nature rather than affecting all cells of a particular tissue; (c) individuals in those families who exhibit high pro pensities to malignancy appear to be at risk for broad, but specific, subsets of cancer. Here we have consolidated evidence from familial, epidemiolÃ3gica! , cytogenetic, and molecular ge netic studies which support the notion that cancer is a pro foundly genetic disease and which help explain the aforemen tioned seeming paradoxes. We review approaches and results addressing these questions afforded by molecular biological technologies and speculate on the nature of genetic lesions responsible for predisposition to cancer.
Role of Pin2/TRF1 in telomere maintenance and cell cycle control

Telomeres are specialized structures found at the extreme ends of chromosomes, which have many functions, including preserving genomic stability, maintaining cell proliferative capacity, and blocking the activation of DNA‐damage cell cycle checkpoints. Deregulation of telomere length has been implicated in cancer and ageing. Telomere maintenance is tightly regulated by telomerase and many other telomere‐associated proteins and is also closely linked to cell cycle control, especially mitotic regulation. However, little is known about the identity and function of the signaling molecules connecting telomere maintenance and cell cycle control. Pin2/TRF1 was originally identified as a protein bound to telomeric DNA (TRF1) and as a protein involved in mitotic regulation (Pin2). Pin2/TRF1 negatively regulates telomere length and importantly, its function is tightly regulated during the cell cycle, acting as an important regulator of mitosis. Recent identification of many Pin2/TRF1 upstream regulators and downstream targets has provided important clues to understanding the dual roles of Pin2/TRF1 in telomere maintenance and cell cycle control. These results have led us to propose that Pin2/TRF1 functions as a key molecule in connecting telomere maintenance and cell cycle control. J. Cell. Biochem. 89: 19–37, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Study of noise robustness of First Formant Bandwidth (F1BW) method

The performance of speech recognition application under adverse noisy condition often becomes the topic of researchers regardless of the language used. Applications that use vowel phonemes require high degree of Standard Malay vowel recognition capability.In Malaysia, researches in vowel recognition is still lacking especially in the usage of Malay vowels, independent speaker systems, recognition robustness and algorithm speed and accuracy. This paper presents a noise robustness study on an improved vowel feature extraction method called First Formant Bandwidth (F1BW) on three classifiers of Multinomial Logistic Regression (MLR), K-Nearest Neighbors (k-NN) and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA). Results show that LDA performs best in overall vowel classification compared to MLR and KNN in terms of robustness capability.
Application of L1 reconstruction of sparse signals to ambiguity resolution in radar

A novel approach for range-Doppler ambiguity resolution in pulse Doppler radars is presented. The new technique makes use of the sparse measurement structure of the post-detection data in multiple pulse repetition frequency radars and the resulting L0/L1 equivalence. The ambiguity resolution problem is cast as a linear system of equations which is solved for the unique sparse solution. Numerical results show that the ambiguities can be effectively resolved even with the number of measurements much less than the number of unknowns. The proposed technique reduces the number of PRFs required to resolve multiple targets in some cases compared to conventional techniques.
Woodland demographic and social dynamics in the American Midwest: Analysis of a burial mound survey

Abstract The Woodland period in eastern North America was the climax of the gatherer‐hunter‐horticultural‐ist way of life. In many areas, the dead from this period were buried in earthen mounds. These facilities are readily discovered during systematic pedestrian surveys, and they can provide data for regional population estimates and for studies of social change. This paper presents the rationale for such inferences, and it documents a case‐study from west‐central Illinois. The results suggest a refinement in our understanding of Hopewell and the transition from Middle to Late Woodland patterns of material culture. The Middle Woodland period, at least in this region, was not one of stable development but was instead an era of marked population redistribution. Hopewell exchange and mortuary ritual were used by elite segments of communities to create, sustain and/or augment their social standing. The ‘less interesting’ Late Woodland material culture reflects a stabilization of the social and demographic sc.