Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does Opioid Pain Medication Use Affect the Outcome of Patients With Lumbar Disc Herniation?

Study Design. Subgroup analysis of prospective, randomized cohort. Objective. To review the results of patients who received opioid pain medications during treatment compared with that of patients who did not receive opioid medications. Summary of Background Data. The Spine Patient Outcomes Research Trial (SPORT) is a prospective, multicenter study of surgical treatment versus nonoperative treatment for lumbar intervertebral disc herniation. Methods. The study population includes patients enrolled in SPORT for treatment of intervertebral disc herniation in combined randomized and observational cohorts. Patients who received opioid medications at baseline (opioid) were compared with those who did not (nonopioid). Results. There were 520 patients in the nonopioid group and 542 patients in the opioid group. Among the opioid medication group, there were significantly (P < 0.001) worse baseline scores in primary and secondary outcome measures. There was an increased percentage of patients in the opioid medication group with the perception of worsening symptoms and neurological deficit (P < 0.001). A higher percentage of the opioid group patients received surgery (P < 0.001). At 4 years of follow-up, there were no significant differences in primary or secondary outcome measures or treatment effect of surgery between opioid and nonopioid medication group patients. Opioid medications were associated with increased crossover to surgical treatment (P = 0.005) and decreased surgical avoidance (P = 0.01). The incidence of opioid use at 4 years was 16% among patients who were using opioids at baseline and 5% among patients who were not using opioids at baseline. Conclusion. Patients who were treated with opioids had significantly worse baseline pain and quality of life. At final follow-up, there was no long-term difference in outcome associated with opioid pain medication use. Opioid medications were not associated with surgical avoidance. The majority of patients who use opioids during the study did not continue usage at 4 years. Level of Evidence: 2
Patient with coronary stents needs surgery: what to do?

One of the most common questions interventional cardiologists are being asked is: �My patient needs surgery and has a coronary stent; should I clear him/her for surgery and what should I do about the antiplatelet therapy? � With approximately 1 in 5 patients undergoing noncardiac surgery within 2 years after receiving a stent,1 this will continue to be a frequent question in the years to come. The fact that this question is being asked is encouraging and reflects that most physicians are aware of the possibility of perioperative stent thrombosis, a severe and sometimes life-threatening complication that can occur when patients with coronary stents undergo surgery.2 Perioperative stent thrombosis is the result of several factors, such as incomplete stent endothelialization, antiplatelet therapy discontinuation, and the prothrombotic state caused by surgery, and carries significant morbidity and mortality.2
Vasculitis as a Cause of First-Ever Stroke

The term “vasculitis” includes a heterogeneous group of multisystemic disorders characterized pathologically by inflammation of blood vessels [1,2,3]. Inflammation can involve some, or all, of the thickness of the vessel wall. Immune complexes are a major component of vasculitis syndromes, and cellular mechanisms play a major pathogenic role in giant cell arteritis [4-12]. Arterial lesion can lead to stenosis, occlusion, and ischemic infarction [1,13]. The diagnosis of vasculitis is difficult in most cases because of the insidious nature of the disease and the fact that various parts of the circulation can be affected without definitive signs or symptoms [1, 13-15]. More often than not, the diagnosis of vasculitis is made indirectly [1,15,16]. It is an infrequent disorder and a rare cause of stroke, even in young age groups [1,17-19]. Corticosteroid therapy is the basic and most common treatment for this disease, irrespective of the antigen involved or the type of vasculitis syndrome [1,4,5,8,20,21]. The aim of this study was to use the Lausanne Stroke Registry (LSR) to evaluate how often vasculitis is a cause of first-ever stroke, and to determine the risk factors, clinical and radiological patterns, and early outcome for stroke with vasculitis.
Measurement of disease activity and outcome in atopic dermatitis

Many different systems have been proposed for the recording and measurement of disease activity in atopic dermatitis (AD). This review describes the techniques that have been used and published in recent years for clinical evaluation and for objective measurement of AD, as well as for recording its effects on quality of life. Recommendations are made concerning which methods should be used.
Provocation of schizophrenic symptoms by intravenous administration of methylphenidate.

Methylphenidate (Ritalin) hydrochloride was administered intravenously to schizophrenic, manic, and depressed patients during the active phase of their illness and upon recovery and to normal. Methylphenidate was found to activate psychotic symptoms in schizophrenics during the active phase of their illness. It failed to produce this effect in the same patients after remission had occurred. It failed to produce a psychotic reaction in most patients with mania and all normal or depressed patients.
The disulfide bond isomerase DsbC is activated by an immunoglobulin‐fold thiol oxidoreductase: crystal structure of the DsbC–DsbDα complex

The Escherichia coli disulfide bond isomerase DsbC rearranges incorrect disulfide bonds during oxidative protein folding. It is specifically activated by the periplasmic N‐terminal domain (DsbDα) of the transmembrane electron transporter DsbD. An intermediate of the electron transport reaction was trapped, yielding a covalent DsbC–DsbDα complex. The 2.3 Å crystal structure of the complex shows for the first time the specific interactions between two thiol oxidoreductases. DsbDα is a novel thiol oxidoreductase with the active site cysteines embedded in an immunoglobulin fold. It binds into the central cleft of the V‐shaped DsbC dimer, which assumes a closed conformation on complex formation. Comparison of the complex with oxidized DsbDα reveals major conformational changes in a cap structure that regulates the accessibility of the DsbDα active site. Our results explain how DsbC is selectively activated by DsbD using electrons derived from the cytoplasm.
Inadequate Cold Tolerance as a Possible Limitation to American Chestnut Restoration in the Northeastern United States

The American chestnut (Castanea dentata (Marshall) Borkh. ), once a major component of eastern forests from Maine to Georgia, was functionally removed from the forest ecosystem by chestnut blight (an exotic fungal disease caused by Cryphonectria parasitica (Murr.) Barr), first identified at the beginning of the twentieth century. Hybrid‐backcross breeding programs that incorporate the blight resistance of Chinese chestnut (Castenea mollissima Blume) and Japanese chestnut (Castenea crenata Sieb. & Zuc.) into American chestnut stock show promise for achieving the blight resistance needed for species restoration. However, it is uncertain if limitations in tissue cold tolerance within current breeding programs might restrict the restoration of the species at the northern limits of American chestnut's historic range. Shoots of American chestnut and hybrid‐backcross chestnut (i.e., backcross chestnut) saplings growing in two plantings in Vermont were tested during November 2006, February 2007, and April 2007 to assess their cold tolerance relative to ambient low temperatures. Shoots of two potential native competitors, northern red oak (Quercus rubra L.) and sugar maple (Acer saccharum L.), were also sampled for comparison. During the winter, American and backcross chestnuts were approximately 5°C less cold tolerant than red oak and sugar maple, with a tendency for American chestnut to be more cold tolerant than the backcross chestnut. Terminal shoots of American and backcross chestnut also showed significantly more freezing damage in the field than nearby red oak and sugar maple shoots, which showed no visible injury.
Year : 2007 Active integration : new strategies for transgenesis

This paper presents novel methods for producing transgenic animals, with a further emphasis on how these techniques may someday be applied in gene therapy. There are several passive methods for transgenesis, such as pronuclear microinjection (PNI) and Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection-Mediated Transgenesis (ICSI-Tr), which rely on the repair mechanisms of the host for transgene (tg) insertion. ICSI-Tr has been shown to be an effective means of creating transgenic animals with a transfection efficiency of approximately 45% of animals born. Furthermore, because this involves the injection of the transgene into the cytoplasm of oocytes during fertilization, limited mosaicism has traditionally occurred using this technique. Current active transgenesis techniques involve the use of viruses, such as disarmed retroviruses which can insert genes into the host genome. However, these methods are limited by the size of the sequence that can be inserted, high embryo mortality, and randomness of insertion. A novel active method has been developed which combines ICSI-Tr with recombinases or transposases to increase transfection efficiency. This technique has been termed "Active Transgenesis" to imply that the tg is inserted into the host genome by enzymes supplied into the oocyte during tg introduction. DNA based methods alleviate many of the costs and time associated with purifying enzyme. Further studies have shown that RNA can be used for the transposase source. Using RNA may prevent problems with continued transposase activity that can occur if a DNA transposase is integrated into the host genome. At present piggyBac is the most effective transposon for stable integration in mammalian systems and as further studies are done to elucidate modifications which improve piggyBac's specificity and efficacy, efficiency in creating transgenic animals should improve further. Subsequently, these methods may someday be used for gene therapy in humans.
Bilayer Segmentation of Live Video in Uncontrolled Environments for Background Substitution: An Overview and Main Challenges

Bilayer segmentation of live video in uncontrolled environments is an essential task for home applications in which the original background of the scene must be replaced, as in video chats or traditional videoconference. The main challenge in such conditions is overcome all difficulties in problem-situations (e.g., illumination change, distract events such as element moving in the background and camera shake) that may occur while the video is being captured. This paper presents a survey of segmentation methods for background substitution applications, describes the main concepts and identifies events that may cause errors. Our analysis shows that although robust methods rely on specific devices (multiple cameras or sensors to generate depth maps) which aid the process. In order to achieve the same results using conventional devices (monocular video cameras), most current research relies on energy minimization frameworks, in which temporal and spacial information are probabilistically combined with those of color and contrast.
Secondary prevention with calcium antagonists after a myocardial infarction.

The Secondary Prevention Reinfarction Israel Nifedipine Trial 2 study recently published in theArchives 1 demonstrates the importance of testing the value of each calcium-channel blocker for secondary prevention after an acute myocardial infarction and consideration that all calcium-channel blockers are not equal, 2 probably contrary to β-blockers. 3 In an accompanying editorial, Deedwania and Carbajal 4 discuss secondary prevention underlining aspirin and β-blockers as first-time treatment, which is now generally accepted. But, as stated in the editorial, a major problem is that after an acute myocardial infarction only 20% to 30% of the patients were treated with β-blockers. The most likely explanation of this low figure is that contraindications to, or unacceptable side effects of, β-blockers prevent their use in a large number of patients. For this reason, it is important to look for alternatives to β-blockers for secondary prevention. Deedwania and Carbajal also describe diltiazem as an established
Suggesting and Justifying Model Updates for Improved Troubleshooting

For the troubleshooting domain, machine learning is used to suggest model updates using in‐service troubleshooting and component testing records. One of the challenges of using these updates is how to justify each change to the system experts; a novel approach for the justification of updates to a Bayesian network troubleshooting model is presented. The results of experiments into the performance of the approach suggest that the changes suggested by maximum likelihood learning improve a model by fitting to the new records and a good justification for each change can be obtained from quantities already computed during the learning process. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Fast Retrieval with Column Store using RLE Compression Algorithm

Column oriented database have continued to grow over the past few decades. C-Store, Vertica Monet DB and Lucid DB are popular open source column oriented database. Columnstore in a nutshell, store each attribute values belonging to same column contiguously. Since column data is uniform type therefore, there are some opportunities for storage size optimization in Column-store, many renowned compression schemes such as RLE & LZW that make use of similarity of adjacent data to compress. Good Compression can also be achieved using bitmap index by order of magnitude through the sorting. The Run Length Encoding works best for the columns of ordered data, or data with few distinct values. This ensures long runs of identical values which RLE compresses quite well. In this paper we have put an effort to build a simulation of Column-Store and applied the best bitmap compression technique RLE which further improves the retrieval time. General Terms Your general terms must be any term which can be used for general classification of the submitted material such as Pattern Recognition, Security, Algorithms et. al.
Novel Approaches to the Primary Prevention of Edema After Ischemia

Progressive edema and tissue swelling after large anterior circulation stroke are the leading cause of death in malignant infarction.1–3 The formation of rapidly accumulating cerebral edema after infarction compromises arterial inflow to surrounding tissue, culminating in further ischemic damage, enlargement of the infarct, herniation, and death. Despite the great morbidity and mortality that are a direct consequence of brain swelling, novel approaches to the prevention of cerebral edema have …
The development of atrophic gastritis—Helicobacter pylori and the effects of acid suppressive therapy

Helicobacter pylori is uniquely adapted to survival in the strongly acidic gastric lumen. In vitro, both acid and certain acid suppressors affect bacterial growth. In vivo, there is little evidence that acid suppressors have any effect on bacterial survival. In contrast, decrease of acid secretion quickly leads to a spreading of the bacterial infection throughout the body and fundus of the stomach, which is accompanied by an increase of the associated gastritis.
Acid in the Duodenum

Acid in the duodenum triggers many physiological responses. Also, acid in the duodenum elicits hyperalgesia of the foregut. In the article by Hobson et al. in this issue the reduction of the latencies in evoked potential in response to electrical stimulation of the esophagus after duodenal acidification is reported, which may explain the symptom development in functional dyspepsia. Microscopic damages of the duodenal epithelium might be responsible for such changes. Microscopic damages of the intestinal epithelium may come into the center stage of the pathogenesis of functional GI disorders.
Multihoming and Compatibility

This paper analyzes the consequences of multihoming on private and social incentives for compatibility. Multihoming occurs in our model when consumers buy from both of two competing firms so as to capture network benefits. We address whether the ability of consumers to multihome means policymakers do not need to worry about compatibility between ‘networks’.
Self‐other resonance, its control and prosocial inclinations: Brain–behavior relationships

Humans seem to place a positive reward value on prosocial behavior. Evidence suggests that this prosocial inclination is driven by our reflexive tendency to share in the observed sensations, emotions and behavior of others, or “self‐other resonance”. In this study, we examine how neural correlates of self‐other resonance relate to prosocial decision‐making. Subjects performed two tasks while undergoing fMRI: observation of a human hand pierced by a needle, and observation and imitation of emotional facial expressions. Outside the scanner, subjects played the Dictator Game with players of low or high income (represented by neutral‐expression headshots). Subjects’ offers in the Dictator Game were correlated with activity in neural systems associated with self‐other resonance and anticorrelated with activity in systems implicated in the control of pain, affect, and imitation. Functional connectivity between areas involved in self‐other resonance and top‐down control was negatively correlated with subjects’ offers. This study suggests that the interaction between self‐other resonance and top‐down control processes are an important component of prosocial inclinations towards others, even when biological stimuli associated with self‐other resonance are limited. These findings support a view of prosocial decision‐making grounded in embodied cognition. Hum Brain Mapp 37:1544‐1558, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Dynamic Organization of the Actin Cytoskeleton During Meiosis and Spore Formation in Budding Yeast

During sporulation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the four daughter cells (spores) are formed inside the boundaries of the mother cell. Here, we investigated the dynamics of spore assembly and the actin cytoskeleton during this process, as well as the requirements for filamentous actin during the different steps of spore formation. We found no evidence for a polarized actin cytoskeleton during sporulation. Instead, a highly dynamic network of non‐polarized actin cables is present underneath the plasma membrane of the mother cell. We found that a fraction of prospore membrane (PSM) precursors are transported along the actin cables. The velocity of PSM precursors is diminished if Myo2p or Tpm1/2p function is impaired. Filamentous actin is not essential for meiotic progression, for shaping of the PSMs or for post‐meiotic cytokinesis. However, actin is essential for spore wall formation. This requires the function of the Arp2/3p complex and involves large carbohydrate‐rich compartments, which may be chitosome analogous structures.
Welfare to work: analysis and recommendations.

Policymakers have long hoped to find ways to buffer children from the ravages of poverty without excusing parents from the responsibility of providing for their offspring. For 60 years, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program guaranteed cash assistance for poor single-parent families, allowing the mothers to remain home with their children. In 1993, federal and state governments spent $22.3 billion on AFDC benefits to about 5 million families, reaching 9.5 million children. In recent years, however, frustration with the welfare program has escalated, and the faces of the children who depend on welfare have faded into the background.
Scytalidium infections

Introduction In 1971 Gentles and Evans [1] described what appeared to be an unusual fungal infection of the nails and plantar or palmar skin caused by a dematiaceous or pigmented fungus, Hendersonula toruloidea. A feature common to all the patients reported in the paper was the fact that they were immigrants to the United Kingdom and had originated from tropical or subtropical areas. They had also all been previously misdiagnosed as having dermatophyte infections and the fungi seen in nail and skin samples examined by direct microscopy were reported as dermatophytes but the cultures had been negative. The patients had not responded to treatment with griseofulvin. It was the omission of cycloheximide, normally incorporated into mycological media to suppress contaminant fungi, that allowed the growth of the real culprit Hendersonula, a black, rapid growing mould. A few years later Campbell and Mulder [2] reported a patient with an identical disease caused, this time, by a white mould fungus, Scytalidiun hyalinum. Again the direct microscopy appeared to be similar to that seen in dermatophytosis.
High Resolution ISAR Imaging Based on Improved Smoothed L0 Norm Recovery Algorithm

In radar imaging, a target is usually consisted of a few strong scatterers which are sparsely distributed. In this paper, an improved sparse signal recovery algorithm based on smoothed l 0 (SL0) norm method is proposed to achieve high resolution ISAR imaging with limited pulse numbers. Firstly, one new smoothed function is proposed to approximate the l 0 norm to measure the sparsity. Then a single loop step is used instead of two loop layers in SL0 method which increases the searching density of variable parameter to ensure the recovery accuracy without increasing computation amount, the cost function is undated in every loop for the next loop until the termination is satisfied. Finally, the new set of solution is projected into the feasible set. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is superior to the several popular methods both in terms of the reconstruction performance and computation time. Real data ISAR imaging obtained by the proposed algorithm is competitive to several other methods.
Determinants for Membrane Association and Permeabilization of the Coxsackievirus 2B Protein and the Identification of the Golgi Complex as the Target Organelle*

The 2B protein of enterovirus is responsible for the alterations in the permeability of secretory membranes and the plasma membrane in infected cells. The structural requirements for the membrane association and the subcellular localization of this essential virus protein, however, have not been defined. Here, we provide evidence that the 2B protein is an integral membrane protein in vivo that is predominantly localized at the Golgi complex upon individual expression. Addition of organelle-specific targeting signals to the 2B protein revealed that the Golgi localization is an absolute prerequisite for the ability of the protein to modify plasma membrane permeability. Expression of deletion mutants and heterologous proteins containing specific domains of the 2B protein demonstrated that each of the two hydrophobic regions could mediate membrane binding individually. However, the presence of both hydrophobic regions was required for the correct membrane association, efficient Golgi targeting, and the membrane-permeabilizing activity of the 2B protein, suggesting that the two hydrophobic regions are cooperatively involved in the formation of a membrane-integral complex. The formation of membrane-integral pores by the 2B protein in the Golgi complex and the possible mechanism by which a Golgi-localized virus protein modifies plasma membrane permeability are discussed.