Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Impact of Methicillin Resistance in Staphylococcus aureus Bacteremia on Patient Outcomes: Mortality, Length of Stay, and Hospital Charges

Abstract Objective: To evaluate the impact of methicillin resistance in Staphylococcus aureus on mortality, length of hospitalization, and hospital charges. Design: A cohort study of patients admitted to the hospital between July 1, 1997, and June 1, 2000, who had clinically significant S. aureus bloodstream infections. Setting: A 630-bed, urban, tertiary-care teaching hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Patients: Three hundred forty-eight patients with S. aureus bacteremia were studied; 96 patients had methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA). Patients with methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) and MRSA were similar regarding gender, percentage of nosocomial acquisition, length of hospitalization, ICU admission, and surgery before S. aureus bacteremia. They differed regarding age, comorbidities, and illness severity score. Results: Similar numbers of MRSA and MSSA patients died (22.9% vs 19.8%; P = .53). Both the median length of hospitalization after S. aureus bacteremia for patients who survived and the median hospital charges after S. aureus bacteremia were significantly increased in MRSA patients (7 vs 9 days, P = .045; $19,212 vs $26,424, P = .008). After multivariable analysis, compared with MSSA bacteremia, MRSA bacteremia remained associated with increased length of hospitalization (1.29 fold; P = .016) and hospital charges (1.36 fold; P = .017). MRSA bacteremia had a median attributable length of stay of 2 days and a median attributable hospital charge of $6,916. Conclusion: Methicillin resistance in S. aureus bacteremia is associated with significant increases in length of hospitalization and hospital charges.
Pediatric Graves’ Disease: Controversies in Management

Background/Aims: Graves’ disease (GD) is the most common cause of thyrotoxicosis in children and adolescents. Caused by immunologic stimulation of the thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor, lasting remission occurs in only a minority of pediatric patients with GD, including children treated with antithyroid drugs (ATDs) for many years. Thus the majority of pediatric patients with GD will need thyroidectomy or treatment with radioactive iodine (RAI; 131I). Results: When ATDs are used in children, only methimazole should be used. Propylthiouracil is associated with an unacceptable risk of severe liver injury in children and should never be used as first-line therapy. If remission (defined as normal thyroid function off ATDs) is not achieved after 1 or 2 years of ATD therapy, 131I or surgery may be considered, with the choice influenced by the age of the individual. When 131I is used, administered doses should be >150 µCi/g of thyroid tissue. When surgery is performed, near total or total thyroidectomy is recommended. Conclusion: Choosing a treatment approach for childhood GD is often a difficult and highly personal decision. Discussion of the advantages and risks of each therapeutic option is essential to help the patient and family select a treatment option.
Possibilities of Protecting Personal Data Published on Social Network Sites in the Light of the Law on Personal Data Protection

Aside from being a typical place for everyday activities and social communication, social networks are a unique place where various types of social behaviour and interactions can be observed. The majority of social network users leave a lot of their personal data on their social network accounts as they believe that they will be visible only to their friends and good-willed users, i.e. that they will not be misused or perverted. Unfortunately, misuses of personal data collected by social networking sites are far from being rare. Violation of the right to privacy most often occurs on the most popular social networking sites with the highest number of registered users. The Law on Personal Data Protection of the Republic of Serbia sets out the requirements for personal data collection and processing, as well as the limits for such data collection and database creation, the mechanisms aimed to maintain security of the collected data and the issue of data keeping surveillance. The authors shall attempt to determine whether this law applies to personal data collection on the Internet and whether it can ensure adequate and efficient legal protection of users.
Biochemical Characterization of Glutaredoxins from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii Reveals the Unique Properties of a Chloroplastic CGFS-type Glutaredoxin*

Glutaredoxins (GRXs) are small ubiquitous disulfide oxidoreductases known to use GSH as electron donor. In photosynthetic organisms, little is known about the biochemical properties of GRXs despite the existence of ∼30 different isoforms in higher plants. We report here the biochemical characterization of Chlamydomonas GRX1 and GRX3, the major cytosolic and chloroplastic isoforms, respectively. Glutaredoxins are classified on the basis of the amino acid sequence of the active site. GRX1 is a typical CPYC-type GRX, which is reduced by GSH and exhibits disulfide reductase, dehydroascorbate reductase, and deglutathionylation activities. In contrast, GRX3 exhibits unique properties. This chloroplastic CGFS-type GRX is not reduced by GSH and has an atypically low redox potential (–323 ± 4 mV at pH 7.9). Remarkably, GRX3 can be reduced in the light by photoreduced ferredoxin and ferredoxin-thioredoxin reductase. Both GRXs proved to be very efficient catalysts of A4-glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase deglutathionylation, whereas cytosolic and chloroplastic thioredoxins were inefficient. Glutathionylated A4-glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase is the first physiological substrate identified for a CGFS-type GRX.
Posture and body balance of schoolchildren aged 8 to 12 years with and without oral breathing.

PURPOSE This study aims to evaluate the posture and body balance of students with and without oral breathing, as well as to verify whether there is a correlation between the values obtained in this evaluation and those of the analysis of sensory systems. METHODS The research was conducted with school children aged 8 to 12 years. The sample was subdivided into two study groups: schoolchildren with oral breathing and school children without oral breathing (control). The division of the groups was determined on the basis of pre-established criteria investigated in the anamnesis, hearing evaluation, and assessment of the stomatognathic system. The schoolchildren from both groups were submitted to postural evaluation using the Postural Assessment Software (SAPO) on the right and left lateral views and the Foam-laser Dynamic Posturography test. RESULTS In the assessment of posture, a statistically significant difference was found only in the knee angle on the left lateral view. With regards to the Dynamic Posturography, there was a statistically significant difference in the values obtained in the six tests of sensory organization (TOS). There was a moderate correlation between the position of the head on the left lateral view and the sensory systems. CONCLUSIONS Schoolchildren with oral breathing present postural changes compared with those without oral breathing, mainly regarding the positioning of the knee. The body balance in the group of schoolchildren with oral breathing showed greater impairment compared with that in the group of schoolchildren without oral breathing. There is a correlation between the cephalic position and the different sensory systems.
National Conformity and Local Knowledge in Education Field

this article mainly discussed the relationship between national conformity and local knowledge in Education Field,and put forward some viewpoints on the current status of minority education,its problems and development.Professor Teng addressed that national conformity and local knowledge in Education Field should be combined and make minority education more practical and this would help to accomplish the goals of "fulfillment of nine-year compulsory education".
Prediction of Bandwidth and Additive Metrics for Large Scale Network Tomography

For real time communication services over the Internet, it is important to be able to predict in advance the quality of a call before relaying it over a particular path. In this paper we show how to predict the distribution of the end-to-end bandwidth, latency, jitter, and loss of a call from an arbitrary user X to an arbitrary user Y through particular components of the Internet, given a dataset of millions of calls among other users. This work is the first to infer component bandwidth distributions for an arbitrary network topology, and the first to infer component bandwidth and additive metric distributions for an arbitrary network topology at large scale. On a dataset of over seven million global Skype calls, we demonstrate significant performance improvement compared to a baseline approach used in today’s commercial systems.
Privacy preserving classification by using modified C4.5

Protecting the datasets supplied to third parties for data mining purposes is essential so that these datasets cannot be used for secondary purposes. C4.5 is a classification algorithm which works on mixed datasets. Data perturbation is an important technique in data privacy. This paper proposes a modified C4.5 which uses perturbed and unrealized datasets for classification. The decision tree is built by using the gain ratio as the split criteria and it is computed using the unreal and perturbed datasets. Experimental results are obtained by simulation in Weka.
Intelligent Agent Model for Remote Support of Rural Healthcare for the Elderly

With the aging population, the number of individuals requiring long-term care is expected to dramatically increase in the next twenty years, placing an increasing burden on healthcare. Many patients are admitted to assisted living facilities at a fairly early stage due to their inability to perform normal daily living activities. The purpose of this study is to determine if the use of technology for both monitoring and intervention can permit elderly patients to remain in their homes for longer periods of time with the benefit of the comfort of familiar surroundings while at the same time reducing the burden on caregivers. In addition, remote access to healthcare can improve monitoring of the patient's physical and mental condition and involve the patient in his or her own care. The home monitoring and intervention system is based on intelligent agent methodology developed by the authors
A fine-grained access control model for relational databases

Fine-grained access control (FGAC) must be supported by relational databases to satisfy the requirements of privacy preserving and Internet-based applications. Though much work on FGAC models has been conducted, there are still a number of ongoing problems. We propose a new FGAC model which supports the specification of open access control policies as well as closed access control policies in relational databases. The negative authorization is supported, which allows the security administrator to specify what data should not be accessed by certain users. Moreover, multiple policies defined to regulate user access together are also supported. The definition and combination algorithm of multiple policies are thus provided. Finally, we implement the proposed FGAC model as a component of the database management system (DBMS) and evaluate its performance. The performance results show that the proposed model is feasible.
Quinupristin-Dalfopristin Combined with β-Lactams for Treatment of Experimental Endocarditis Due to Staphylococcus aureus Constitutively Resistant to Macrolide-Lincosamide-Streptogramin B Antibiotics

ABSTRACT Quinupristin-dalfopristin (Q-D) is an injectable streptogramin active against most gram-positive pathogens, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). In experimental endocarditis, however, Q-D was less efficacious against MRSA isolates constitutively resistant to macrolide-lincosamide-streptogram B (C-MLSB) than against MLSB-susceptible isolates. To circumvent this problem, we used the checkerboard method to screen drug combinations that would increase the efficacy of Q-D against such bacteria. β-Lactams consistently exhibited additive or synergistic activity with Q-D. Glycopeptides, quinolones, and aminoglycosides were indifferent. No drugs were antagonistic. The positive Q-D–β-lactam interaction was independent of MLSB or β-lactam resistance. Moreover, addition of Q-D at one-fourth the MIC to flucloxacillin-containing plates decreased the flucloxacillin MIC for MRSA from 500 to 1,000 mg/liter to 30 to 60 mg/liter. Yet, Q-D–β-lactam combinations were not synergistic in bactericidal tests. Rats with aortic vegetations were infected with two C-MLSB-resistant MRSA isolates (isolates AW7 and P8) and were treated for 3 or 5 days with drug dosages simulating the following treatments in humans: (i) Q-D at 7 mg/kg two times a day (b.i.d.) (a relatively low dosage purposely used to help detect positive drug interactions), (ii) cefamandole at constant levels in serum of 30 mg/liter, (iii) cefepime at 2 g b.i. d. , (iv) Q-D combined with either cefamandole or cefepime. Any of the drugs used alone resulted in treatment failure. In contrast, Q-D plus either cefamandole or cefepime significantly decreased valve infection compared to the levels of infection for both untreated controls and those that received monotherapy (P < 0.05). Importantly, Q-D prevented the growth of highly β-lactam-resistant MRSA in vivo. The mechanism of this beneficial drug interaction is unknown. However, Q-D–β-lactam combinations might be useful for the treatment of complicated infections caused by multiple organisms, including MRSA.
Graph Colouring and its Application within Cartography

The problem of colouring geographical political maps has historically been associated with the theory of graph colouring. In the middle of the 19th century the following question was posed: how many colours are needed to colour a map in a way that countries sharing a border are coloured differently. The solution has been reached by linking maps and graphs. It took more than a century to prove that 4 colours are sufficient to create a map in which neighbouring countries have different colours.
A Novel Joint Routing and Channel Allocation Approach in Hybrid Data Center Network

The explosion of traffic demands within data centers accentuates the conventional infrastructures ossification. Unfortunately, the traditional tree based architectures struggle to resist and suffer from congestion and wiring complexity which deeply deteriorate the network performance. In aim to address the QoS degradation, we put forward a Hybrid Data Center Network (HDCN) architecture based on CISCO's Massively Data Center (MSDC) model. Specifically, it combines both the wired (Fiber and/or Gigabit Ethernet) and wireless communications based on 60 GHz band (IEEE 802.11ad). Note that few related work have dealt with the optimization of multi-hop communications in HDCN infrastructures and hence the problem is still open. In this paper, we tackle the challenge of jointly i) routing and ii) allocating wireless channels for intra data centers flows, while considering beamforming antennas. For that, we propose a new strategy named Joint Routing and Channel Allocation Algorithm (JRCA-HDCN). To do so, first the problem is formulated as a Minimum Weight Perfect Matching. Then, our resolution is based on the Blossom algorithm. JRCA-HDCN aims to maximize the throughput of intra-HDCN communication over the wireless and/or wired infrastructure. Based on extensive simulations, conducted in QualNet simulator while considering the full protocol stack, the obtained results show that our proposal outperforms the related prominent strategies in terms of i) end-to-end delay, ii) throughput and iii) spectrum spatial reuse.
Measuring Changes in Symptoms Relevant to Borderline Personality Disorder Following Short-Term Treatment across Partial Hospital and Intensive Outpatient Levels of Care

Objective. This study examined whether measurable changes in symptoms relevant to borderline personality disorder (BPD) occur following short-term treatment across partial hospital and intensive outpatient levels of care. Preliminary data on symptom changes among patients with BPD during the first 3 months of treatment in a step-down treatment program are presented. Methods. Of the 42 patients who entered the BPD-specific treatment program during the 18-month study period, 36 consented to participate in the study. Patients began treatment in the partial hospitalization program (where the average length of stay is 8 weeks) and then transitioned into the intensive outpatient program. Patients completed questionnaire packets upon admission, and again at 1 month and 3 months into treatment. The questionnaires assessed BPD-relevant behaviors and symptoms, including: mood and emotion dysregulation, parasuicidality, symptom severity, and quality of life. Results. Results indicate significant and progressive improvements in mood and emotion dysregulation, parasuicidality, and symptom severity following 1 and 3 months of treatment. However, neither global functioning nor quality of life dramatically improved. Conclusions. The findings from this study highlight the amenability of BPD-relevant symptoms to short-term treatments and demonstrate the possibility of measuring change in these symptoms within the very early phases of treatment.
Anti-inflammatory effects of prostaglandin E1: in vivo modulation of the formyl peptide chemotactic receptor on the rat neutrophil.

The local generation of chemotactic factors at sites of acute inflammation is thought to be responsible for the recruitment of polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMN) from the intravascular compartment to the site of tissue injury (1). Many of these potent phlogistic mediators have also been shown to activate PMN resulting in degranulation of lysosomal granules with release of hydrolytic enzymes into the extracellular environment and the generation of superoxide anion (O2-) and other toxic metabolites (reviewed in Reference 2). Several in vitro studies have shown that treatment of PMN with specific prostaglandins will inhibit both soluble mediator- and particulate material-induced neutrophil lysosomal enzyme release and chemotaxis (3, 4). In vivo studies have demonstrated potent anti-inflammatory activity of prostaglandins of the E series (5-7). Systemic administration of prostaglandin E1 (PGE1) or its stable analog 15-(S)-15-methyl-PGE1 (15-M-PGE1) will inhibit neutrophil dependent immune complex tissue injury in a dose-dependent manner (8). In addition, i.v. infusion of PGE1 into humans has been shown to inhibit formyl-methionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine- (FMLP) induced lysosomal enzyme release from PMN (9). This study was undertaken to examine the effects of in vivo systemic treatment of rats with 15-M-PGE1 on FMLP-induced neutrophil lysosomal enzyme release and O2- secretion. As we will show, the modulation of FMLP-induced neutrophil function is correlated with a decrease in binding affinity for formyl-methionyl-leucyl-(3H)phenylalanine ((3H)-FMLP) to its specific receptor on the neutrophil plasma membrane. The data suggest a novel mechanism for the anti-inflammatory effects of prostaglandins of the E series.
The cold‐shock stress response in Mycobacterium smegmatis induces the expression of a histone‐like protein

The response of Mycobacterium smegmatis to a cold shock was investigated by monitoring changes in both growth and cellular protein composition of the organism. The nature of the cellular response was influenced by the magnitude of the temperature reduction, with the shock from 37°C to 10°C having the most widespread effect on growth, metabolism and protein composition. This 27°C temperature reduction was associated with a lag period of 21–24 h before increases were seen in all the measured cellular activities. The response to cold shock was adaptive, with growth resuming after this period, albeit at a 50‐fold slower rate. The synthesis of at least 15 proteins was induced during the lag period. Two distinct patterns of cold‐induced synthesis were apparent, namely transient and continuous, indicating the production of both cold‐induced and cold‐acclimation proteins. One of these cold‐shock proteins, CipMa, was identified as the histone‐like protein, Hlp, of M. smegmatis, which is also induced during anaerobic‐induced dormancy. The corresponding gene demonstrated transient, cold‐inducible expression with a five‐ to sevenfold increase in mRNA occurring 9–12 h after temperature shift. Although bacterial survival was unaffected, CipMa/Hlp knock‐out mutants were unable to adapt metabolically to the cold shock and resume growth, thus indicating a key role for CipMa in the cold‐shock response.
Sulfated Polysaccharides in the Freshwater Green Macroalga Cladophora surera Not Linked to Salinity Adaptation

The presence of sulfated polysaccharides in cell walls of seaweeds is considered to be a consequence of the physiological adaptation to the high salinity of the marine environment. Recently, it was found that sulfated polysaccharides were present in certain freshwater Cladophora species and some vascular plants. Cladophora (Ulvophyceae, Chlorophyta) is one of the largest genera of green algae that are able to grow in both, seas and freshwater courses. Previous studies carried out on the water-soluble polysaccharides of the marine species C. falklandica established the presence of sulfated xylogalactoarabinans constituted by a backbone of 4-linked β-L-arabinopyranose units partially sulfated mainly on C3 and also on C2 with partial glycosylation, mostly on C2, with terminal β-D-xylopyranose or β-D-galactofuranose units. Besides, minor amounts of 3-, 6- and/or 3,6-linked β-D-galactan structures, with galactose in the pyranosic form were detected. In this work, the main water soluble cell wall polysaccharides from the freshwater alga Cladophora surera were characterized. It was found that this green alga biosynthesizes sulfated polysaccharides, with a structure similar to those found in marine species of this genus. Calibration of molecular clock with fossil data suggests that colonization of freshwater environments occurred during the Miocene by its ancestor. Therefore, the presence of sulfated polysaccharides in the freshwater green macroalga C. surera could be, in this case, an adaptation to transient desiccation and changes in ionic strength. Retention of sulfated polysaccharides at the cell walls may represent a snapshot of an evolutionary event, and, thus constitutes an excellent model for further studies on the mechanisms of sulfation on cell wall polysaccharides and environmental stress co-evolution.
On the Origin of Kink Effect in Current–Voltage Characteristics of AlGaN/GaN High Electron Mobility Transistors

An explanation for the observed drain current collapse in AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors is presented. The drain current-voltage (I-V) characteristics which show this undesirable behavior have been modeled using the physics-based ATLAS device simulator by Silvaco. A basic theory for the determination of virtual gate length for a three terminal device has been developed and used in the simulation. The simulated I-V characteristics closely match the experimental results. This paper suggests a model based on formation of a high resistance region under the virtual gate in the 2-D electron gas channel. The resistance of this region changes abruptly at a critical lateral electric field due to application of drain-source voltage. This abrupt change has been found to be a function of channel temperature. The dynamic behavior of this high resistance region has been proposed to be the cause of drain current collapse.