Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Arterial stiffness: intermediate or surrogate endpoint for cardiovascular events?

This editorial refers to ‘Carotid stiffness and the risk of new vascular events in patients with manifest cardiovascular disease. The SMART study’† by J.M. Dijk et al. , on page 1213 Identification of cardiovascular (CV) risk is mandatory to determine the intensity of interventions. Despite the recognized advantages of classical algorithms for global risk assessment, important limitations have been noticed, and current research is focusing on subclinical markers of arterial disease accessible to non-invasive investigation, including arterial stiffness, carotid intima-media thickness, and endothelial dysfunction. The current growing interest in arterial stiffness originates from the repeated demonstration of its predictive value for CV events, including CV mortality, myocardial infarction, and stroke. An indirect argument for the influence of arterial stiffness on the occurrence of CV events comes from cross-sectional studies showing that arterial stiffness and CV risk factors for atherosclerotic lesions are correlated. A major limitation of these studies is their cross-sectional feature. This is a crucial point. These studies showed that aortic stiffness was associated with other markers of CV risk or with the extent of atherosclerosis, but could not conclude that arterial stiffness was predictive of CV events as patients were not followed-up. In other words, these studies showed that arterial stiffness was a marker of CV risk, but did not demonstrate its predictive value as an intermediate endpoint. Only recently have longitudinal studies directly demonstrated that arterial stiffness, measured through carotid–femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV) ratio, was an independent predictor of all-cause and CV mortality,1 coronary events,2 and stroke,3 in patients with uncomplicated essential hypertension. Additional evidences were provided in patients with endstage renal disease (ESRD), with diabetes, and in elderly subjects. Thus, arterial stiffness is now well accepted as an intermediate endpoint for CV events. In some studies,1–3 arterial stiffness was … *Corresponding author. Tel: +33 1 56 09 39 91; fax +33 1 56 09 39 92. E-mail address : stephane.laurent{at}egp.ap-hop-paris.fr
Bladder tumor antigen stat test in non-urothelial malignant urologic conditions.

BACKGROUND The bladder tumor antigen stat is a simple and fast one-step immunochromatographic assay for the detection of bladder tumor-associated antigen in urine. OBJECTIVES To evaluate the BTA stat in non-bladder cancer patients in order to identify the categories contributing to its low specificity. METHODS A single voided urine sample was collected from 45 patients treated in the urology clinic for conditions not related to bladder cancer. Each urine sample was examined by the BTA stat test and cytology. RESULTS The overall specificity of the BTA stat test was 44%, which was significantly lower than that of urine cytology, 90%. The false positive rates for the BTA stat test varied among the different clinical categories, being highest in cases of urinary tract calculi (90%), and benign prostatic hypertrophy (73%). Exclusion of these categories from data analysis improved BTA stat specificity to 66%. CONCLUSIONS Clinical categories contributing to low BTA stat specificity can be identified, and their exclusion improves the specificity of this test.
The Use of Smart Tokens in Cleaning Integrated Warehouse Data

Identifying integrated records that represent the same real-world object in numerous ways is just one form of data disparity (dirt) to be resolved in a data warehouse. Data cleaning is a complex process, which uses multidisciplinary techniques to resolve conflicts in data drawn from different data sources. There is a need for initial cleaning at the time a data warehouse is built, and incremental cleaning whenever new records are brought into the data warehouse during refreshing. Existing work on data cleaning have used pre-specified record match thresholds and multiple scanning of records to determine matching records in integrated data. Little attention has been paid to incremental matching of records. Determining optimal record match score threshold in a domain is hard. Also, direct long record string comparison is highly inefficient and intolerant to typing errors. Thus, this article proposes two algorithms, the first of which uses smart tokens defined from integrated records to match and identify duplicate records during initial warehouse cleaning. The second algorithm uses these tokens for fast, incremental cleaning during warehouse refreshing. Every attribute value forms either a special token like birth date or an ordinary token, which can be alphabetic, numeric, or alphanumeric. Rules are applied for forming tokens belonging to each of these four classes. These tokens are sorted and used for record match. The tokens also form very good warehouse identifiers for future faster incremental warehouse cleaning. This approach eliminates the need for match threshold and multiple passes at data. Experiments show that using tokens for record comparison produces a far better result than using the entire or greater part of a record.
Impact of nurse staffing mandates on safety-net hospitals: lessons from California.

CONTEXT California is the first and only state to implement a patient-to-nurse ratio mandate for hospitals. Increasing nurse staffing is an important organizational intervention for improving patient outcomes. Evidence suggests that staffing improved in California hospitals after the mandate was enacted, but the outcome for hospitals bearing a disproportionate share of uncompensated care-safety-net hospitals-remains unclear. One concern was that California's mandate would burden safety-net hospitals without improving staffing or that hospitals would reduce their skill mix, that is, the proportion of registered nurses of all nursing staff. We examined the differential effect of California's staffing mandate on safety-net and non-safety-net hospitals. METHODS We used a time-series design with Annual Hospital Disclosure data files from the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) for the years 1998 to 2007 to assess differences in the effect of California's mandate on staffing outcomes in safety-net and non-safety-net hospitals. FINDINGS The mandate resulted in significant staffing improvements, on average nearly a full patient per nurse fewer (-0.98) for all California hospitals. The greatest effect was in those hospitals with the lowest staffing levels at the outset, both safety-net and non-safety-net hospitals, as the legislation intended. The mandate led to significantly improved staffing levels for safety-net hospitals, although there was a small but significant difference in the effect on staffing levels of safety-net and non-safety-net hospitals. Regarding skill mix, a marginally higher proportion of registered nurses was seen in non-safety-net hospitals following the mandate, while the skill mix remained essentially unchanged for safety-net hospitals. The difference between the two groups of hospitals was not significant. CONCLUSIONS California's mandate improved staffing for all hospitals, including safety-net hospitals. Furthermore, improvement did not come at the cost of a reduced skill mix, as was feared. Alternative and more targeted designs, however, might yield further improvement for safety-net hospitals and reduce potential disparities in the staffing and skill mix of safety-net and non-safety-net hospitals.
Muscle MRI in Bethlem myopathy

A 44-year-old man presented with progressive limb girdle weakness from 10 years of age. The inheritance pattern was autosomal dominant; two siblings, his mother and maternal grandfather were similarly affected. On examination there was an exaggerated lumbar lordosis, wasting of proximal limb musculature, and contractures at elbows, wrists and finger flexors. There was moderate symmetrical proximal upper and lower limb weakness without facial weakness or cardiorespiratory involvement. Previous investigations included electromyography which was myopathic, …
Pattern search in the presence of degenerate linear constraints

This paper deals with generalized pattern search (GPS) algorithms for linearly constrained optimization. At each iteration, the GPS algorithm generates a set of directions that conforms to the geometry of any nearby linear constraints. This set is then used to construct trial points to be evaluated during the iteration. In a previous work, Lewis and Torczon developed a scheme for computing the conforming directions, however, the issue of degeneracy merits further investigation. The contribution of this paper is to provide a detailed algorithm for constructing the set of directions whether or not the constraints are degenerate. One difficulty in the degenerate case is the classification of constraints as redundant or nonredundant. We give a short survey of the main definitions and methods for treating redundancy and propose an approach to identify nonredundant ϵ-active constraints. We also introduce a new approach for handling nonredundant linearly dependent constraints, which maintains GPS convergence properties without significantly increasing computational cost. Some simple numerical tests illustrate the effectiveness of the algorithm.
Objective measurement of muscle rigidity in parkinsonian patients treated with subthalamic stimulation

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) has been shown to be an effective treatment for Parkinson's disease (PD). The intraoperative positioning of DBS electrodes and postoperative adjustment of the stimulation parameters, however, require continuous, precise evaluation. Moreover, ambulatory measurements of the symptoms would also help to evaluate changes in the progression of PD in these patients. To this aim, we objectified rigidity measurements via surface EMG recordings of the Mm. biceps (bic) and triceps brachii (tric) in patients treated with chronic stimulation of the STN. We show that cessation and initiation of DBS have effects on the EMG profile during standardized extension and flexion movements in the elbow joint. These data correlate significantly with clinical ratings. Thus, EMG recordings of the Mm. bic and tric during this standardized extension‐flexion movement can be used to objectively measure rigidity and to monitor its course over time. In view of its low technical requirements, this technique lends itself to use during DBS implantation surgery and in the clinical environment. © 2008 Movement Disorder Society
Induction of differentiation and apoptosis by ligands of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma in non-small cell lung cancer.

The peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARgamma) is a ligand-activated transcription factor belonging to the steroid receptor superfamily. It is a key regulator of adipogenic differentiation, the ligands of which have also been demonstrated to induce differentiation in human breast and colon cancer cell lines. This study examined PPARgamma, in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). PPARgamma mRNA and protein were expressed in NSCLC cell lines, with highest levels in adenocarcinomas. PPARgamma protein was also expressed in 50% of primary lung cancers by immunohistochemistry. Treatment of multiple cell lines with two distinct PPARgamma ligands in the presence of serum resulted in growth arrest, irreversible loss of capacity for anchorage-independent growth, decreased activity and expression of matrix metalloproteinase 2, and modulation of multiple markers in a manner consistent with differentiation. Specifically, there was up-regulation of general markers of the differentiated state such as gelsolin, Mad, and p21. Down-regulation of specific markers of progenitor lineages for the peripheral lung, i.e., the type II pneumocyte lineage markers MUC1 and surfactant protein-A and the Clara cell lineage marker CC10, also occurred. In addition, HTI56, a marker of terminally differentiated type I pneumocytes, was also induced. Consistent with a more mature, less malignant phenotype, ligand treatment also inhibited the expression of cyclin D1 and led to hypophosphorylation of the retinoblastoma protein. In contrast, in the absence of serum, ligand treatment rapidly resulted in apoptosis and substantially earlier onset of differentiation. Taken together, these results show that depending on the growth milieu, ligands of PPARgamma induce differentiation and apoptosis in NSCLC, suggesting clinical utility for these agents.
Meta-Analysis Antipsychotics for Primary Alcohol Dependence : A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Placebo-Controlled Trials

Objective: We sought to meta-analytically assess the utility of antipsychotics in patients with primary alcohol dependence. Data Sources: We searched PubMed, Cochrane Library, and PsycINFO without language restrictions from database inception until December 2012, using the following keywords: (randomized, random, OR randomly) AND (placebo) AND (alcohol dependence) AND (neuroleptic OR antipsychotic OR antidopaminergic OR the names of 34 individual
Pseudo Force Display that Applies Pressure to the Forearms

Conventional force display systems provide a force sensation by applying force to the operator's body via actuators such as electric motors. These systems can potentially harm the operator, especially when providing a large force sensation. This study shows that constrictive pressure on the distal part of the forearms provides a force sensation such as holding a heavy object or pushing a wall when the pressure changes in accordance with the hand motion. This force display provides a large force sensation of ∼10 N without applying real force to the operator's hand, which makes the system intrinsically safe and suitable as a wearable force display system. Experimental results show that the discrimination thresholds are consistent with Weber's Law. It was demonstrated that an operator could sort virtual objects by weight using this system.
Look-Ahead Compile-Time Scheduling

To enhance the performance of memory-bound applications, hardware designs have been developed to hide memory latency, such as the out-of-order (OoO) execution engine, at the price of increased energy consumption. Contemporary processor cores span a wide range of performance and energy efficiency options: from fast and power-hungry OoO processors to efficient, but slower in-order processors. The more memory-bound an application is, the more aggressive the OoO execution engine has to be to hide memory latency. This proposal targets the middle ground, as seen in a simple OoO core, which strikes a good balance between performance and energy efficiency and currently dominates the market for mobile, hand-held devices and high-end embedded systems. We show that these simple, more energy-efficient OoO cores, equipped with the appropriate compile-time support, considerably boost the performance of single-threaded execution and reach new levels of performance for memorybound applications. Clairvoyance generates code that is able to hide memory latency and better utilize the OoO engine, thus delivering higher performance at lower energy. To this end, Clairvoyance overcomes restrictions which yielded conventional compile-time techniques impractical: (i) statically unknown dependencies, (ii) insufficient independent instructions, and (iii) register pressure. Thus, Clairvoyance achieves a geomean execution time improvement of 7% for memory-bound applications with a conservative approach and 13% with a speculative but safe approach, on top of standard O3 optimizations, while maintaining compute-bound applications’ high-performance.
Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide / Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase-activating Peptide Receptor Subtypes in Human Tumors and Their Tissues of Origin 1

The evaluation of peptide receptors in man is needed not only to discover the physiological target tissues of a given peptide but also to identify diseases with a sufficient receptor overexpression for diagnostic or therapeutic interventions. Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) and pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating peptide (PACAP) receptors have been evaluated in human tumors and in their tissues of origin usingin vitro receptor autoradiography with I-VIP or I-acetyl-PACAP-27 in tissue sections. The VIP/PACAP receptor subtypes VPAC1, VPAC2, and PAC1 were evaluated in these tissues by determining the rank order of potencies of VIP and PACAP as well as VPAC1and VPAC2-selective analogues. The VIP/PACAP receptors expressed in the great majority of the most frequently occurring human tumors, including breast (100% receptor incidence), prostate (100%), pancreas (65%), lung (58%), colon (96%), stomach (54%), liver (49%), and urinary bladder (100%) carcinomas as well as lymphomas (58%) and meningiomas (100%), are predominantly of the VPAC1 type. Their cells or tissues of origin,i.e., hepatocytes, breast lobules and ducts, urothelium, prostate glands, pancreatic ducts, lung acini, gastrointestinal mucosa, and lymphocytes, also predominantly express VPAC1. Leiomyomas predominantly express VPAC2 receptors, whereas paragangliomas, pheochromocytomas, and endometrial carcinomas preferentially express PAC1 receptors. Conversely, VPAC2 receptors are found mainly in smooth muscle (i.e., stomach), in vessels, and in stroma (e.g.,of the prostate), whereas PAC1 receptors are present in the adrenal medulla and in some uterine glands. Whereas the very wide distribution of VIP/PACAP receptors in the normal human body is indicative of a key role of these peptides in human physiology, the high VIP/PACAP receptor expression in tumors may represent the molecular basis for clinical applications of VIP/PACAP such asin vivo scintigraphy and radiotherapy of tumors as well as VIP/PACAP analogue treatment for tumor growth inhibition.
Radiation proctitis in the rat: Sequential changes and effects of anti‐inflammatory agents

Female Wistar rats were treated with single exposure irradiation to 2 cm of distal colon to cause radiation proctitis. All animals were evaluated by examination, colonoscopy and histologic evaluation for changes post‐irradiation. Exposures of 10,12.5,15,17.5,20, 22.5, 25, 27.5 and 30 Gy caused dose‐related clinical and histologic changes peaking at 7 to 15 days post‐exposure. Rats treated with 20 Gy were colonoscoped and biopsied daily and showed sequential post‐irradiation endoscopic changes ranging from mucosal edema and mild inflammatory changes to erosion and ulcers. Histologically, crypt abscess and mural wall necrosis similar to changes found in the human rectum after radiotherapy were noted. Treatment with nonsteroidal anti‐inflammatory agents, (aspirin, indomethacin, piroxicam), misoprostol (a prostaglandin E1 analogue), or sucralfate (an anti‐ulcer agent) did not ameliorate nor exacerbate radiation proctitis in rats exposed to 22.5 Gy. We conclude from these data that the female Wistar rat is a good model for studying radiation proctitis because endoscopic, histologic, and clinical changes seen post‐exposure closely resemble those found in man.
Genome-wide Association Study of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Abstract Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common, debilitating neuropsychiatric illness with complex genetic etiology. The International OCD Foundation Genetics Collaborative (IOCDF-

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common, debilitating neuropsychiatric illness with complex genetic etiology. The International OCD Foundation Genetics Collaborative (IOCDFGC) is a multi-national collaboration established to discover the genetic variation predisposing to OCD. A set of individuals affected with DSM-IV OCD, a subset of their parents, and unselected controls, were genotyped with several different Illumina SNP microarrays. After extensive data cleaning, 1,465 cases, 5,557 ancestry-matched controls and 400 complete trios remained, with a common set of 469,410 autosomal and 9,657 X-chromosome SNPs. Ancestry-stratified case-control association analyses were conducted for three geneticallydefined subpopulations and combined in two meta-analyses, with and without the trio-based analysis. In the case-control analysis, the lowest two p-values were located within DLGAP1 (p=2.49x10 and p=3.44x10), a member of the neuronal postsynaptic density complex. In the trio analysis, rs6131295, near BTBD3, exceeded the genome-wide significance threshold with a p-value=3.84 x 10. However, when trios were meta-analyzed with the combined case-control samples, the p-value for this variant was 3.62x10, losing genome-wide significance. Although no SNPs were identified to be associated with OCD at a genome-wide significant level in the combined trio-case-control sample, a significant enrichment of methylation-QTLs (p<0.001) and frontal lobe eQTLs (p=0.001) was observed within the top-ranked SNPs (p<0.01) from the triocase-control analysis, suggesting these top signals may have a broad role in gene expression in the brain, and possibly in the etiology of OCD. Introduction Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by obsessions and/or compulsions that are distressing, time consuming or significantly impairing.
Integrating Particle Dispersion Models into Real-time Virtual Environments

We present a system for interacting with fast response particle dispersion models in a real-time virtual envi- ronment. The particle simulation system is used as both an engineering tool for modeling and understanding turbulence in flow fields and as an integral part of an atmospheric, wind display for real-time virtual environ- ments. The focus of this paper is on the use of virtual environment visualization and interaction as a means for providing deeper insight about the underlying turbulence and flow field models in the dispersion simulations. The use of immersive virtual environment displays, as opposed to standard computer display screens, allows engineers to acquire novel view points and interact with the data in novel ways. We present our current visualization and interaction methods. Our goal is to develop a tool for interacting with, controlling, and manipulating the model parameters of fast response particle dispersion systems while immersed within the simulation environment.
High-order harmonic generation using intense femtosecond pulses.

Neon gas excited by 800-nm laser pulses (15 mJ, 125 fsec) at an intensity near 10 15 W/cm 2 generates harmonics up to the 109th order. The appareance of successively higher harmonics as the laser intensity is increased is compared to recent calculations of the strong-field atomic response. Blueshifting of the laser and harmonic wavelengths indicates a small degree of ionizatoin until the threshold for highest harmonics (>91 st) is reacthed
Flucelvax (Optaflu) for seasonal influenza

Conventional egg-based manufacturing technology for seasonal influenza vaccines has several drawbacks, including its inflexibility, reliance on egg supplies, risk of contamination, absence of growth of some isolates and egg-adaptive viral mutations that threaten vaccine matching. To overcome these limitations, cell culture-derived vaccines have been designed, including the trivalent inactivated vaccine Flucelvax®/Optaflu® (brand names in the US/EU, respectively). Flucelvax/Optaflu has gained wide regulatory approval and is currently implemented in several countries. Non-clinical studies have assuaged hypothetical concerns regarding oncogenicity and use in persons allergic to dogs. Ample clinical data suggest the non-inferiority of Flucelvax/Optaflu to egg-based vaccines in terms of immunogenicity, safety and tolerability, and it has fulfilled American and European mandatory requirements. Although Flucelvax/Optaflu is currently indicated only for adults and the elderly, pediatric data indicate its good immunogenicity and safety. This paper provides an update on the clinical development of Flucelvax/Optaflu, its seasonal trials and available post-marketing surveillance data.