Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
REVIEW: Obstetric first aid: time for resuscitation

There is currently insufficient knowledge on the effectiveness of individual obstetric first aid procedures and the contribution that first aid as a strategy may make on saving women’s lives. The concept of obstetric first aid is given scant attention in current obstetric literature. A rapid search of the standard medical and nursing databases (Embase Medline Cinahl Cochrane Library) since 1996 revealed only four articles specifically relevant to obstetric first aid. Some first aid procedures are described as part of emergency obstetric care but as a distinct entity its components are poorly defined. One reason for differentiating between emergency care and first aid is to encourage the generation of evidence for individual components of first line care. Evidence is available on the utility of procedures already included as standard emergency care such as administration of oxytocics anticonvulsants and antibiotics some of which may also be used in first aid. Conversely for a number of simpler procedures such as nipple stimulation for treatment in acute postpartum haemorrhage and umbilical injection of oxytocics2 evidence is limited or lacking. (excerpt)
Bloch wave approach for the analysis of sequential bifurcations in bilayer structures

A wide variety of surface morphologies can be formed by compressing a bilayer comprising a thin film bonded to a compliant substrate. In particular, as the applied strain is increased, secondary instabilities are triggered and the initial sinusoidal wrinkles evolve into new complex patterns. Here, we propose a robust numerical analysis based on Floquet–Bloch boundary conditions to detect the primary and secondary instabilities triggered upon compression. Because the proposed method is based on unit cell simulations, it is computationally very efficient. Moreover, it accurately predicts not only the critical strains, but also the corresponding critical modes and their wavelengths, enabling us to follow the evolution of the surface morphology as the applied strain is progressively increased.
Building on the Strengths of a Cambodian Refugee Community Through Community-Based Outreach

Literature and practice are limited on strategies to reach elder Southeast Asian refugees by using their strengths and resilience. This article presents the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—funded Cambodian Community Health 2010 Program in Lowell, Massachusetts, as a case example and provides refugee history, project background, community survey results about strengths and risks, literature on strengths-based approaches, outreach activities, and evaluation. The focus is elimination of health disparities in cardiovascular disease and diabetes. “Community conversations” and a daylong forum with community leaders were used to develop plans for outreach. A Cambodian Elders Council provided information and guidance used to refine the program. Key findings highlight involving elders in organizing events, avoiding reliance on literacy, integrating health promotion with socialization, using ties with Buddhist temples, developing transportation alternatives, and utilizing local Khmer-language media. Implications include applicability to other refugee communities with low literacy, high levels of trauma, limited English, and strong religious involvement.
Treatment of Elderly Cancer Patients with Chemotherapy

Persons over the age of 65 are the fastest growing segment of the United States population. In the next 30 years, they will comprise over 20 percent of the population. Fifty percent of all cancers occur in this age group and, therefore, there will be an expected rise in the total cancer burden. Data is becoming available that will better guide the use of chemotherapy in the older patient population. Information regarding age-related physiologic changes are presented with their relationship to pharmacology, functional status, and hematopoiesis. Treatments are reviewed in regard to the adjuvant treatment of breast and colon cancer as well as primary therapy of aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The treatment of more advanced breast, ovary and non-small cell lung cancer also are discussed.
Scrub typhus and leptospirosis co-infection in Himalayan region

Scrub typhus and leptospirosis are both zoonosis and systemic febrile illnesses with diverse clinical manifestations and they may present with similar signs and symptoms. We present a case of co-infection of scrub typhus and leptospirosis from Himachal Pradesh in the Himalayan region of India.
Cooperation of neural nets for robust classification

The problem of building robust neural network classification algorithms that perform well on a wide variety of problems is addressed. Evidence of the fact that current procedures are only accurate on a restricted range of tasks is presented. The authors propose multimodule architectures based on the cooperation of two or more neural net techniques as a solution. This idea is illustrated by the cooperation of a multilayer perceptron and a learning vector quantization algorithm. It is shown that this method combines the advantages of its individual components and is much more robust. It is accurate for a large range of problems and is easy to tune. An algorithm that allows the direct training of this multimodule architecture is described. The use of this technique enhances performance when dealing with classification problems
Immunocytochemical quantitation of human immunodeficiency virus in the brain: Correlations with dementia

The pathogenesis of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)‐associated dementia is unclear, and the underlying pathological substrate has been a matter of debate. In a prospectively clinically characterized population of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) patients we investigated the relationship between the clinical syndrome of HIV‐associated dementia and the presence and relative quantity of immunocytochemical Marchkers for HIV‐1 (gp41 antibody), and for macrophages and microglia (HAM‐56 antibody). Sections from the basal ganglia and frontal lobes from the brains of 51 patients were studied, and the data were stratified for severity of dementia (16 nondemented, 12 mildly demented, 23 severely demented), rate of dementia progression, duration of AIDS, use of antiretrovirals, and several other demographic features. We found a highly significant correlation between the degree of macrophage staining and the severity of dementia but only a borderline correlation between the presence and amount of gp41‐positive cells and dementia. Several nondemented patients showed abundant gp41 immunoreactivity, and some severely demented showed little to no gp41 immunoreactivity. Other correlations with the immunostaining data, including antiretroviral use, were not significant. We conclude that the presence of macrophages and microglia is a better correlate with HIV‐associated dementia than is the presence and amount of HIV‐infected cells in the brain. These data support the concept that the pathogenesis of HIV‐associated dementia is likely due to indirect effects of HIV‐infection of the brain, possibly through the actions of macrophages and microglia.
Identification, Cloning, and Expression of Potential Diagnostic Markers for Q Fever

Abstract: The clinical diagnosis of Q fever is difficult. Whole cell antigens are currently used in several serological methods, but antigens are limited due to the hazardous nature of Coxiella burnetii cultivation. In this report, we described the method of detecting immunodominant antigens of C. burnetii by using proteomic techniques with patient sera, and cloning and expressing the selected antigens using a novel vector known for its ease of expression, purification, and downstream application.
Cystatin Capture Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay for Serodiagnosis of Human Clonorchiasis and Profile of Captured Antigenic Protein of Clonorchis sinensis

ABSTRACT Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) with crude extracts of adult Clonorchis sinensis has been reported to have a high degree of sensitivity with a moderate degree of specificity for the serodiagnosis of clonorchiasis. The cystatin capture ELISA was investigated for its usefulness for the serodiagnosis of human clonorchiasis. Cystatin bound specifically to cysteine proteinases in crude extracts of adult C. sinensis worms, and its binding capacity was not hindered competitively by the other proteinase inhibitors tested. The cystatin capture ELISA for clonorchiasis showed a higher degree of specificity than the conventional ELISA, which produced some cross-reactivities to sera from patients with cysticercosis, sparganosis, and opisthorchiasis. Immunoglobulin G antibodies to C. sinensis cysteine proteinases were produced in experimental rabbits at week 3, and their levels increased rapidly and remained at a plateau after 8 weeks of infection. Of the proteins from the C. sinensis crude extract captured with cystatin, seven proteins were reactive with the serum from patients with clonorchiasis. The cystatin capture ELISA is indicated to be a sensitive and highly specific immunodiagnostic assay for serodiagnosis of human clonorchiasis.
Ultraviolet B-induced Activated Protein-1 Activation Does Not Require Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor but Is Blocked by a Dominant Negative PKCλ/ι*

The exposure of mammalian cells to UV irradiation leads to the activation of transcription factors such as activated protein-1 (AP-1) and NFκB. It is postulated that epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor, but not protein kinase C (PKC), is the major membrane mediator in UV-induced signal transduction. Since UVB is responsible for most of the carcinogenic effects of sun exposure, we investigated the role of EGF receptors and PKC in UVB-induced AP-1 activation. Our results indicated that while the down-regulation of novel PKC (nPKC) and conventional PKC (cPKC) by pretreatment of cells with 12-O-tetradecanoyl phorbol-13-actetate cannot block UVB-induced AP-1 activity, it can block 12-O-tetradecanoyl phorbol-13-acetate-induced AP-1 activity. Further, the dominant negative mutant PKCλ/ι blocked UVB-induced AP-1 activity in all doses and time courses studied. In contrast, UVB-induced AP-1 activity from cells devoid of EGF receptor (B82) was not significantly different from that of the stable transfectants with a kinase-deficient EGF receptor (B82M721) or those with a wild-type EGF receptor (B82L) at all UVB irradiation doses and time courses studied. All of this evidence indicated that aPKC, but not EGF receptor, is involved in UVB-induced AP-1 activation.
Gender differences in frontal and sagittal plane biomechanics during drop landings.

PURPOSE To determine gender differences in lower-extremity joint kinematics and kinetics between age- and skill-matched recreational athletes. METHODS Inverse dynamic solutions estimated the lower-extremity flexion-extension and varus-valgus kinematics and kinetics for 15 females and 15 males performing a 60-cm drop landing. A mixed model, repeated measures analysis of variance (gender (*) joint) was performed on select kinematic and kinetic variables. RESULTS Peak hip and knee flexion and ankle dorsiflexion angles were greater in females in the sagittal plane (group effect, P < 0.02). Females exhibited greater frontal plane motion (group (*) joint, P = 0.02). Differences were attributed to greater peak knee valgus and peak ankle pronation angles (post hoc tests, P = 0.00). Females exhibited a greater range of motion (ROM) in the sagittal plane (group main effect, P = 0.02) and the frontal plane (group (*) joint, P = 0.01). Differences were attributed to the greater knee varus-valgus ROM, ankle dorsiflexion, and pronation ROM (post hoc tests). Ground reaction forces were different between groups (group (*) direction, P = 0.05). Females exhibited greater peak vertical and posterior (A/P) force than males (post hoc tests). Females exhibited different knee moment profiles (Group main effect, P = 0.01). These differences were attributed to a reduced varus moment in females (post hoc tests). CONCLUSION The majority of the differences in kinematic and kinetic variables between male and female recreational athletes during landing were observed in the frontal plane not in the sagittal plane. Specifically, females generated a smaller internal knee varus moment at the time of peak valgus knee angulation.
Limited recovery of meiotic spindles in living human oocytes after cooling-rewarming observed using polarized light microscopy.

BACKGROUND Spindles are formed from microtubules and are exquisitely sensitive to changes in temperature. An orientation-independent polarized light microscope, the Polscope, can be used to image spindles in living oocytes allowing analysis of spindle kinetics in the living state. This study examined the effects of cooling on spindle disassembly in living human oocytes and spindle recovery after rewarming. METHODS Oocytes were imaged continuously with the Polscope during cooling and rewarming. The quantity of microtubules in the spindles was measured by its birefringence using the Polscope. RESULTS Spindles had completely disassembled by 5 min after cooling and recovered by 20 min after rewarming to 37 degrees C if rewarming started soon after the oocyte's temperature dropped to room temperature. However, when oocytes were cooled and kept at 33, 28 or 25 degrees C for 10 min and then warmed, it was found that warming allowed 5/5, 2/5 and 0/5 oocytes of the spindles to recover respectively. CONCLUSIONS These results indicate that human meiotic spindles are exquisitely sensitive to alterations in temperature. The maintenance of temperature at 37 degrees C during in-vitro manipulation is important for spindle integrity and, therefore, is likely to be important for normal fertilization and subsequent embryo development.
Single and multi-channel approaches for distant speech recognition under noisy reverberant conditions: I2R'S system description for the ASpIRE challenge

In this paper, we introduce the system developed at the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2 R) for the ASpIRE (Automatic Speech recognition In Reverberant Environments) challenge. The main components of the system are a front-end processing system consisting of a distributed beam-forming algorithm, that performs adaptive weighting and channel elimination, a speech dereverberation approach using a maximum-kurtosis criteria, and a robust voice activity detection (VAD) module based on using the sub-harmonic ratio (SHR). The acoustic back-end consists of a multi-conditional Deep Neural Network (DNN) model that uses speaker adapted features combined with a decoding strategy that performs semi-supervised DNN model adaptation using weighted labels generated by the first-pass decoding output. On the single-microphone evaluation, our system achieved a word error rate (WER) of 44.8%. With the incorporation of beamforming on the multi-microphone evaluation, our system achieved an improvement in WER of over 6% to give the best evaluation result of 38.5%.
The C Terminus of the Saccharomyces cerevisiaeα-Factor Receptor Contributes to the Formation of Preactivation Complexes with Its Cognate G Protein

ABSTRACT Binding of the α-factor pheromone to its G-protein-coupled receptor (encoded by STE2) activates the mating pathway inMATa yeast cells. To investigate whether specific interactions between the receptor and the G protein occur prior to ligand binding, we analyzed dominant-negative mutant receptors that compete with wild-type receptors for G proteins, and we analyzed the ability of receptors to suppress the constitutive signaling activity of mutant Gα subunits in an α-factor-independent manner. Although the amino acid substitution L236H in the third intracellular loop of the receptor impairs G-protein activation, this substitution had no influence on the ability of the dominant-negative receptors to sequester G proteins or on the ability of receptors to suppress theGPA1-A345T mutant Gα subunit. In contrast, removal of the cytoplasmic C-terminal domain of the receptor eliminated both of these activities even though the C-terminal domain is unnecessary for G-protein activation. Moreover, the α-factor-independent signaling activity of ste2-P258L mutant receptors was inhibited by the coexpression of wild-type receptors but not by coexpression of truncated receptors lacking the C-terminal domain. Deletion analysis suggested that the distal half of the C-terminal domain is critical for sequestration of G proteins. The C-terminal domain was also found to influence the affinity of the receptor for α-factor in cells lacking G proteins. These results suggest that the C-terminal cytoplasmic domain of the α-factor receptor, in addition to its role in receptor downregulation, promotes the formation of receptor–G-protein preactivation complexes.
Mapping Plastic-Mulched Farmland with C-Band Full Polarization SAR Remote Sensing Data

Plastic mulching is an important technology in agricultural production both in China and the rest of the world. In spite of its benefit of increasing crop yields, the booming expansion of the plastic mulching area has been changing the landscape patterns and affecting the environment. Accurate and effective mapping of Plastic-Mulched Farmland (PMF) can provide useful information for leveraging its advantages and disadvantages. However, mapping the PMF with remote sensing is still challenging owing to its varying spectral characteristics with the crop growth and geographic spatial division. In this paper, we investigated the potential of Radarsat-2 data for mapping PMF. We obtained the backscattering intensity of different polarizations and multiple polarimetric decomposition descriptors. These remotely-sensed information was used as input features for Random Forest (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers. The results indicated that the features from Radarsat-2 data have great potential for mapping PMF. The overall accuracies of PMF mapping with Radarsat-2 data were close to 75%. Although the classification accuracy with the back-scattering intensity information alone was relatively lower owing to the inherent speckle noise in SAR data, it has been improved significantly by introducing the polarimetric decomposition descriptors. The accuracy was nearly 75%. In addition, the features derived from the Entropy/Anisotropy/Alpha (H/A/Alpha) polarimetric decomposition, such as Alpha, entropy, and so on, made a greater contribution to PMF mapping than the Freeman decomposition, Krogager decomposition and the Yamaguchi4 decomposition. The performances of different classifiers were also compared. In this study, the RF classifier performed better than the SVM classifier. However, it is expected that the classification accuracy of PMF with SAR remote sensing data can be improved by combining SAR remote sensing data with optical remote sensing data.
Noninvasive Blood Glucose Measurement Based on NIR Spectrums and Double ANN Analysis

This paper presents a new noninvasive blood glucose monitoring method based on four near infrared spectrums and double artificial neural network analysis. We choose four near infrared wavelengths, 820 nm, 875 nm, 945 nm, 1050 nm, as transmission spectrums, and capture four fingers transmission PPG signals simultaneously. The wavelet transform algorithm is used to remove baseline drift, smooth signals and extract eight eigenvalues of each PPG signal. The eigenvalues are the input parameters of double artificial neural network analysis model. Double artificial neural network regression combines the classification recognition algorithm with prediction algorithm to improve the accuracy of measurement. Experiments show that the root mean square error of the prediction is between 0.97 mg/dL - 6.69 mg/dL, the average of root mean square error is 3.80 mg/dL.
Sir Frederick Banting

Sir Frederick Banting died in Newfoundland on February 21, as the result of a flying accident. He was on his way to England in the service of the Canadian government. Canada has lost a great citizen, the University and the medical profession one of their most distinguished scientists, and humanity a practical benefactor without equal in this generation.
Sex steroid influence on triglyceride metabolism.

Triglyceride metabolism was investigated in groups of fed and fasted rats after 21 days of parenteral estradiol (5 mug daily), progesterone (5 mg daily), or the two steroids in combination. Results were compared with control groups receiving an oil solvent alone. In rats given estradiol separately or combined with progesterone, hypertriglyceridemia was uniformly associated with increased plasma triglyceride entry, estimated with the i.v. Triton WR1339 technique. Progesterone alone had no effect on these parameters. Plasma postheparin lipolytic activity (PHLA), adipose, mammary gland, and protamine-resistant liporotein lipases (LPL) were significantly increased in progesterone-treated rats and significantly decreased in rats receiving estradiol with the exception of mammary gland LPL, which was also increased to a slight extent. The combined regimen reduced plasma PHLA and increased protamine-resistant adipose, and mammary gland LPL activity. Sex steroid treatments had minimal effects on plasma glucose and free fatty acid concentrations, but all increased plasma insulin significantly. Hyperinsulinemia did not parallel changes in body weight or other measured parameters. Linear regression analyses revealed that plasma triglyceride concentrations in all fed, treated rats correlated significantly with triglyceride entry but not very uniformly with plasma or tissue LPL activity. We conclude that estradiol, unlike progesterone, has substantial lipemic effects in the rat which relate best to triglyceride entry. Hyperinsulinemia, changes in body weight, plasma PHLA, and tissue LPL activities did not consistently predict the influence of sex steroid treatment on plasma triglyceride concentrations.
Opening lines.

Clinical nurse specialist Joyce Burman shares a joke with actor Brian Blessed during his visit to Doncaster Royal Infirmary, South Yorkshire last week. He opened the hospital's new chemotherapy unit, which replaces the previous unit used by his late brother Alan. The new unit includes a centre which offers patients 'pampering' days and advice on hair loss.
Availability of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons to earthworms (Eisenia andrei, Oligochaeta) in field‐polluted soils and soil‐sediment mixtures

The bioavailability of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) for earthworms (Eisenia andrei) was experimentally determined in seven field‐polluted soils and 15 soil‐sediment mixtures. The pore‐water concentration of most PAHs was higher than predicted. However, most of the compound was associated with dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and not directly available for uptake by earthworms. The apparent sorption could be reasonably predicted on the basis of interactions with DOC; however, the biota‐soil accumulation factors (BSAFs) for earthworms were up to two orders of magnitude lower than predicted by equilibrium partitioning. The large variability between sites was not fully explained by differences in sorption. Experimental results indicate that the pool of freely dissolved PAHs in the pore water became partially depleted because of uptake by the earthworms and that bioaccumulation is thus also influenced by the kinetics of PAH desorption and mass transport. A pilot study with Lumbricus rubellus showed that steady‐state body residues were well correlated to E. andrei. Current results show that depositing dredge spoil on land may lead to increased bioavailability of the lower‐molecular‐weight PAHs. However, risk assessment can conservatively rely on equilibrium partitioning, but accurate prediction requires quantification of the kinetics of bioavailability.