Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
[Multiple sclerosis].

Multiple sclerosis is a condition characterized by areas of damage (lesions) on the brain and spinal cord. These lesions are associated with destruction of the covering that protects nerves and promotes the efficient transmission of nerve impulses (the myelin sheath) and damage to nerve cells. Multiple sclerosis is considered an autoimmune disorder; autoimmune disorders occur when the immune system malfunctions and attacks the body's own tissues and organs, in this case tissues of the nervous system.
Attitudinal educational objectives at therapeutic consultation: measures of performance, educational approach and evaluation

Summary. The study aims at (1) measuring doctors' performance while giving therapeutic instructions and (2) testing the effectiveness of an educational technique for affective objectives. For this purpose doctors' performance was analysed into nine components. Twenty‐five trainees in internal medicine were observed and rated regarding the nine components, while instructing 40 patients with a chronic disease. Both doctors and patients were then questioned regarding the verbal components of the doctors' performance and the answers were compared to assess the degree of concordance. One to 3 months later the patients were interviewed to assess whether they complied with the instructions or not. Eighteen months later a 4‐hour seminar on affective objectives was held, involving listening and small‐group discussion on tape‐recorded doctor—patient consultations. After completion of the seminar, 25 doctors instructed 39 patients and were assessed as above. The findings suggest that the doctors' performance regarding the nine components did not predict patient compliance. However, sufficient doctor—patient concordance regarding the verbal components of the behaviour significantly predicted patient compliance. Following the seminar, significant improvement was noted in doctors' performance, in doctor—patient communication and in patient compliance. It is concluded that (1) observing the doctors' behaviour independently of the patient does not predict patients' compliance; (2) the analysis of the total doctors' behaviour into components is valid in predicting patient compliance if it is used in order to assess doctor‐patient communication; and (3) a programme based on audiotape‐assisted education is both simple and effective in improving the trainees' behaviour and communication skills.
An Integrated Genomic Analysis of Human Glioblastoma Multiforme

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common and lethal type of brain cancer. To identify the genetic alterations in GBMs, we sequenced 20,661 protein coding genes, determined the presence of amplifications and deletions using high-density oligonucleotide arrays, and performed gene expression analyses using next-generation sequencing technologies in 22 human tumor samples. This comprehensive analysis led to the discovery of a variety of genes that were not known to be altered in GBMs. Most notably, we found recurrent mutations in the active site of isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1) in 12% of GBM patients. Mutations in IDH1 occurred in a large fraction of young patients and in most patients with secondary GBMs and were associated with an increase in overall survival. These studies demonstrate the value of unbiased genomic analyses in the characterization of human brain cancer and identify a potentially useful genetic alteration for the classification and targeted therapy of GBMs.
Supporting treatment decision making in advanced cancer: a randomized trial of a decision aid for patients with advanced colorectal cancer considering chemotherapy.

PURPOSE Decision making in advanced cancer is increasingly complex. We developed a decision aid (DA) for patients with advanced colorectal cancer who are considering first-line chemotherapy and reviewing treatment options, prognostic information, and toxicities. We examined its impact on patient understanding, treatment decisions, decisional conflict, decision making, consultation satisfaction, anxiety, and quality of life by using a randomized trial design. PATIENTS AND METHODS In all, 207 patients with colorectal cancer who were considering first-line chemotherapy for metastatic disease were randomly assigned to receive a standard medical oncology consultation or a consultation in which the DA (take-home booklet with audio recording, reviewed by an oncologist) was used. Participants completed questionnaires postconsultation, postdecision, and 1 month later. RESULTS In this study, 100 patients were randomly assigned to the control arm, and 107 received the DA. Median age of the sample was 62 years, 58% were male, 89% had a performance status of 0 or 1, and 36% had received prior adjuvant chemotherapy. Patients receiving the DA demonstrated a greater increase in understanding of prognosis, options, and benefits, with higher overall understanding (P < .001). Decisional conflict, treatment decisions, and achievement of involvement preferences were similar between the groups. Anxiety was similar across groups and decreased over time. Most patients were confident in a decision during the first consultation; 74% chose chemotherapy, 7% supportive care alone, and 10% observation. CONCLUSION This randomized trial of a decision aid in advanced cancer showed that its use in advanced colorectal cancer improved patient understanding of prognosis, treatment options, risks, and benefits without increasing anxiety. DAs can improve informed consent and can be tested through randomized trials even in the advanced cancer setting.
A new candidate adding algorithm for coded MIMO systems with fixed-complexity detection

We propose a new approach that achieves near maxlog optimal performance by improving soft information of the eliminated bits in reduced and fixed complexity coded multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. As a fixed-complexity MIMO detection, we consider both the QR decomposition with M-algorithm (QRM) and the fixed-complexity sphere decoding (FSD). In general, for the MIMO system with channel coding, the detector needs to calculate soft information for each coded bit. However, the reduced complexity detection often eliminates the candidate symbols that are required for accurate soft information calculation. We propose a novel symbol recovery approach that can retrieve the coded bits and thus recalculate the soft information with improved error performance. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed soft information calculation approach under the example system with 4 × 4 MIMO-OFDM employing 16-QAM and 64-QAM.
The genetics of Alzheimer's disease

The genetics of Alzheimer's disease is proving to be complex and controversial. Nature Genetics this month contains a paper from Tanzi's group in Boston suggesting that a common polymorphism of α2macroglobulin is associated with a major increase in the risk of developing late onset Alzheimer's disease.1 The data generated heated debate at the sixth international conference on Alzheimer's disease held in Amsterdam at the end of July. At least 70 other reports on the genetics of Alzheimer's disease were presented, implicating over a dozen other genes or genetic loci.2 So what is our current state of knowledge? Missense mutations in three genes are known to cause autosomal dominant forms of early onset Alzheimer's disease: these are the amyloid precursor protein gene located on chromosome 213 and genes for presenilin 1 and presenilin 2 located on chromosomes 14 and 1, respectively. 4 5Studies on these missense mutations have given strong support to the “amyloid cascade hypothesis” of Alzheimer's disease.6 The amyloid precursor protein …
Molecular Characterization and Evolution of the Protein Phosphatase 2A B′ Regulatory Subunit Family in Plants1

Type 2A serine/threonine protein phosphatases (PP2A) are important components in the reversible protein phosphorylation events in plants and other organisms. PP2A proteins are oligomeric complexes constituted by a catalytic subunit and several regulatory subunits that modulate the activity of these phosphatases. The analysis of the complete genome of Arabidopsis allowed us to characterize four novel genes, AtB′ε, AtB′ζ,AtB′η, and AtB′θ, belonging to the PP2A B′ regulatory subunit family. Because four genes of this type had been described previously, this family is composed of eight members. Reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction experiments showed thatAtB′ε mRNAs are present in all Arabidopsis tissues analyzed, and their levels do not respond significantly to heat stress. Expressed sequence tags corresponding to AtB′ζ,AtB′η, and AtB′θ have been identified, indicating that the new genes are actively transcribed. The genomic organization of this family of PP2A regulatory subunits is reported, as well as its chromosomal location. An extensive survey of the family has been carried out in plants, characterizing B′ subunits in a number of different species, and performing a phylogenetic study that included several B′ regulatory proteins from animals. Our results indicate that the animal and plant proteins have evolved independently, that there is a relationship between the number of B′ isoforms and the complexity of the organism, and that there are at least three main subfamilies of regulatory subunits in plants, which we have named α, η, and κ.
Organic Solvent-Free and Simple Method for Determining Cyromazine and Its Metabolite, Melamine, in Cow’s Milk

This paper described an organic solvent-free, rapid, simple, and space-saving method of sample preparation followed by HPLC coupled photo-diode array (PDA) detector for simultaneous quantification of cyromazine (CYR) and its decy-cropropylated metabolite, melamine (MEL), in milk. The HPLC-PDA was performed on an Inertsil? HILIC column with an isocratic aqueous mobile phase. Analytes were extracted from the sample using water, and purified by Mono-Spin? -C18, a centrifugal monolithic silica spin mini-columns, and quantified within 20 min. The method, performed under 100% aqueous conditions, obtained average recoveries for CYR and MEL in the range of 93.2% - 99.1% with relative standard deviations ≤ 2.8%. The quantitation limits were 8.5 ng/mL for CYR and 10 ng/mL for MEL, respectively. No organic solvents were used at any stage of the analysis.
Rapid expression of ornithine decarboxylase mRNA in a macrophage‐like cell line: cAMP repression of the requirement for prior protein synthesis

Ornithine decarboxylase (ODC) activity was rapidly induced in the RAW264 marcophage‐like cell line after treatment with bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS). ODC mRNA leveis were determined by isolating cellular RNA, followed by Northern blot and dot blot analysis using a 32P‐labeled cDNA probe. ODC mRNA levels increased within 1 hour of stimulation of RAW264 cells with 1.0 μg/ml LPS. Transcription rate analysis on isolated nuclei indicated that an increase in transcription rate contributed to this increase in ODC mRNA. ODC mRNA levels continued to rise for 4 hours, peaking at eight times the basal level. ODC mRNA appeared as a single 2.2‐kb band prior to stimulation. After stimulation, the 2.2‐kb band intensified, and a second (2.7 kb) band was seen by Northern gel analysis. Similar induction was demonstrated when 12‐O‐tetradecanoyl‐phorbol‐13‐acetate (TPA) was used as the stimulus. The induction of ODC mRNA by either LPS or TPA was blocked by the addition of cycloheximide (25 μg/ml) or anisomycin (0.1 mM) to the cellular incubation mixture. This indicated that protein synthesis was required as a prerequisite to LPS or TPA induction of ODC mRNA. Experiments in which cycloheximide addition was delayed after LPS treatment indicated that some of the required protein synthesis occurred within the first 30 minutes and that complete expression of ODC mRNA was possible if protein synthesis continued for at least 2 hours before cycloheximide was added. Stimulation with 8‐bromo‐cAMP in addition to LPS has been shown to enhance the induction of ODC over that induced by LPS or TPA alone. It was not possible to block ODC mRNA induction with cycloheximide or anisomycin after treatment with the combined stimulus of LPS and cAMP or TPA and cAMP, indicating that protein synthesis was not required when cAMP was used as a coinducer. Thus, we have shown that in the same cell, ODC mRNA can be induced by two different pathways, one requiring protein synthesis and one not requiring protein synthesis.
The effect of selected linked locus on heterozygosity of neutral alleles (the hitch-hiking effect).

A diffusion model was developed to investigate the effect of a mutant substitution by natural selection on heterozygosity at a linked neutral locus. Using this theory, we made extensive numerical analyses to compute the expected total heterozygosity (i.e. the sum of the fraction of heterozygotes over all generations until fixation or loss) at the neutral locus. It was shown that the hitch-hiking effect is generally unimportant as a mechanism for reducing heterozygosity. The effect becomes significant only when the recombination fraction between the selected and the neutral marker loci is smaller than the selection coefficient. In order to check the validity of the mathematical theory, Monte Carlo experiments were performed, and the results were in agreement. It has been suggested that linkage is important only in transient small populations such as at the time of speciation.
ESCRT-III Assembly and Cytokinetic Abscission Are Induced by Tension Release in the Intercellular Bridge

Making the Final Cut Abscission, the final separation of two daughter cells, was long thought to be an unimportant step in cytokinesis, triggered merely by the cells pulling strongly enough on the bridge to rupture it. Research over the past 10 years, however, has challenged this notion. Defects in cutting the cytokinetic bridge can lead to the formation of large networks of connected cells or to binucleate cells. Lafaurie-Janvore et al. (p. 1625) now show that the forces postmitotic cells exert on the cytokinetic bridge play an important role in abscission: Surprisingly, increasing the tension in the bridge inhibits abscission, while reducing tension induces abscission. This could provide a sensing mechanism to ensure that daughter cells establish sound connections with their surrounding cells and matrix before detaching from one another. When a daughter cell lets go, the mother cell cuts it loose. The last step of cell division, cytokinesis, produces two daughter cells that remain connected by an intercellular bridge. This state often represents the longest stage of the division process. Severing the bridge (abscission) requires a well-described series of molecular events, but the trigger for abscission remains unknown. We found that pulling forces exerted by daughter cells on the intercellular bridge appear to regulate abscission. Counterintuitively, these forces prolonged connection, whereas a release of tension induced abscission. Tension release triggered the assembly of ESCRT-III (endosomal sorting complex required for transport–III), which was followed by membrane fission. This mechanism may allow daughter cells to remain connected until they have settled in their final locations, a process potentially important for tissue organization and morphogenesis.
Relationship of Blood Pressure Self-Monitoring, Medication Adherence, Self-Efficacy, Stage of Change, and Blood Pressure Control among Municipal Workers with Hypertension

Uncontrolled blood pressure remains a major public health issue. Medication adherence is a key factor in blood pressure management; however, adherence behavior is not clearly understood and the most significant factors contributing to poor medication adherence and blood pressure control are unknown. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship of self-monitoring of blood pressure, medication adherence, self-efficacy, stage of change, and blood pressure control among municipal workers with access to health insurance. Stage of change was a significant independent predictor of self-monitoring of blood pressure, but not blood pressure control. A strong relationship was found between medication adherence and medication adherence self-efficacy (r = .549, p < .05).
Towards the verification of image integrity in online news

The widespread of social networking services allows users to share and quickly spread an enormous amount of digital contents. Currently, a low level of security and trustworthiness is applied to such information, whose reliability cannot be taken for granted due to the large availability of image editing software which allow any user to easily manipulate digital contents. This has a huge impact on the deception of users, whose opinion can be seriously influenced by altered media. In this work, we face the challenge of verifying online news by analyzing the images related to the particular news article. Our goal is to create an empirical system which helps in verifying the consistency of visually and semantically similar images used within different news articles on the same topic. Given a certain news online, our system identifies a set of images connected to the same topic and presenting common visual elements, which can be successively compared with the original ones and analyzed in order to discover possible inconsistencies also by means of multimedia forensics tools.
Efficacy of early systemic betamethasone or cyclosporin A after corneal alkali injury via inflammatory cytokine reduction.

PURPOSE To evaluate the effects of early systemic administration of betamethasone or cyclosporin A (CsA) on inflammatory cytokine expression and corneal damage after alkali injury. METHODS Sixty-five Wistar rat corneas injured with 1N NaOH were divided into three groups: untreated, betamethasone-treated and CsA-treated. Both agents were administered systemically and daily during the first 7 days after injury. Interleukin (IL)-1alpha, -6 and -8 concentrations in the injured corneas were measured with ELISA at 2, 4 and 7 days after injury. Corneal damage was evaluated by scoring clinical findings. RESULTS In untreated injured corneas, IL-1alpha, -6 and -8 were markedly elevated during the 7-day period following injury. Both betamethasone and CsA significantly suppressed IL-1alpha and IL-8 at day 4. Only betamethasone significantly suppressed IL-6 at days 4 and 7. Both agents significantly reduced corneal opacity at day 4. CONCLUSION Early systemic administration of betamethasone or CsA after alkali injury may be of benefit by suppressing inflammatory cytokine expression in the cornea.
p53 mutations, benzo[a]pyrene and lung cancer: a reply.

We appreciate the opportunity to address the comments of Krawczak and Cooper published in the 'Discussion forum' in Mutagenesis, 13, 319-320 (1998). Krawczak and Cooper take issue with the validity of the conclusions drawn from our study on the relationship between the distribution of adducts of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) benzo[a]pyrene (B[a]P) and lung cancer mutations in the p53 gene (Denissenko et al., 1996). We address their points as follows. They conclude that the p53 mutational spectrum in lung cancer is not much different from other cancers. This statement, on which most of their argument is based, is erroneous and misleading. There is no doubt that the p53 mutational spectrum (i.e. the distribution of mutations along the gene) and the mutational signature (i.e. the characteristic ratio of transitions, transversions, deletions, etc.) is different between lung cancer and other cancer types (HernandezBoussard and Hainaut, 1998). In lung cancer, -40% of the mutations are G—>T transversions, >90% of them biased to a guanine on the non-transcribed DNA strand (Greenblatt et al., 1994). This type of mutation is rare in most other cancers. In addition, there is a striking scarcity of transition mutations at CpG sequences in the p53 gene of lung cancer (9%), despite methylation of all CpG sites in lung cells (Toraaletti and Pfeifer, 1995). Transition mutations at CpG are much more frequent in almost all other cancers or in the germline (up to 50%) and have been linked to deamination of endogenous 5methylcytosine bases (Gonzalgo and Jones, 1997). Thus, as is widely recognized (Greenblatt et al., 1994; Hernandez-Boussard and Hainaut, 1998) but simply denied by Cooper and Krawczak, the mutational signature in lung cancer clearly suggests the involvement of exogenous carcinogens. The cigarette smoke component B[a]P or similar PAHs are strong candidates for being involved in p53 mutagenesis, since these highly carcinogenic compounds cause predominantly G-»T transversions with a strand bias in selectable genes of cultured human cells or in animals (Greenblatt et al., 1994). From the several mutational hotspots that are selectively damaged by activated B[a]P (Denissenko et al., 1996), codon 157 is a hotspot unique to lung cancer. Mutations occur frequently at codons 248 and 273 also in other cancers and are usually recovered there as transition mutations at the corresponding CpG sequences (Hainaut et al., 1997). In lung cancers, however, G—»T transversions predominate at these mutational hotspots. Although selection certainly plays a role in shaping the p53 mutational spectra in all cancers, there are many codons (~150 in lung cancer and ~220 in all cancers combined) that can be targets of different missense mutations (Hainaut et ai, 1997). The striking coincidence of the lung cancer mutational spectrum in smokers and the B[a]P adduct spectrum (Denissenko et al., 1996, 1998), together with the dominance of G->T transversion mutations in these cancers, suggests that a large proportion of p53 mutations in lung cancer are not caused by Nonamokera
Reflections on Partial Least Squares Path Modeling

The purpose of the present article is to take stock of a recent exchange in Organizational Research Methods between critics and proponents of partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM). The two target articles were centered around six principal issues, namely whether PLS-PM: (a) can be truly characterized as a technique for structural equation modeling (SEM), (b) is able to correct for measurement error, (c) can be used to validate measurement models, (d) accommodates small sample sizes, (e) is able to provide null hypothesis tests for path coefficients, and (f) can be employed in an exploratory, model-building fashion. We summarize and elaborate further on the key arguments underlying the exchange, drawing from the broader methodological and statistical literature to offer additional thoughts concerning the utility of PLS-PM and ways in which the technique might be improved. We conclude with recommendations as to whether and how PLS-PM serves as a viable contender to SEM approaches for estimating and evaluating theoretical models.
Organizational Justice in Family Firms of Iran

Recently, scholars have begun to examine the role of non-family member employees (Astrachan and Keyt, 2003 ;Barnett and Kellermans,2006; Chua, Chrisman, and Sharma,2003). more than 80% of employees of family businesses are nonfamily members (MassMutual,2007). It is likely that non-family member employees struggle to nd their place within the family business for which they work as they do not necessarily have in-group status due to their lack of membership in the founding family.