Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Transforming growth factor-beta 2 for the treatment of full-thickness macular holes. A prospective randomized study.

BACKGROUND Full-thickness macular holes generally cause a significant reduction in visual acuity, due in part to a rim of surrounding neurosensory retinal detachment and retinal thickening. Recent studies have suggested that flattening of this narrow rim of neurosensory detachment can result in improved visual acuity. However, the ability to flatten the neurosensory detachment is limited using current surgical techniques. METHODS Transforming growth factor-beta 2 (TGF-beta 2) is a recently discovered potent stimulator of wound healing. The authors, therefore, performed a prospective randomized study of 60 patients to determine if the local application of TGF-beta 2 to the edge of the macular hole can reproducibly induce flattening of the surrounding neurosensory detachment. The results of a study designed to determine the effect of a pars plana vitrectomy, fluid-gas exchange, and intravitreal instillation of TGF-beta 2 in eyes with a full-thickness macular hole and reduced visual acuity are reported. RESULTS After treatment, visual acuity improved 2 lines or more in 5 of 11 eyes treated with 70 ng, in 4 of 12 eyes treated with 330 ng, and in 10 of 11 eyes treated with 1330 ng of TGF-beta 2. In some eyes, hyaluronic acid was added. In these cases, visual acuity improved 2 lines or more in 0 of 9 eyes treated with 70 ng TGF-beta 2, in 2 of 8 eyes treated with 330 ng, and in 4 of 9 eyes treated with 1330 ng. CONCLUSION Logistic regression analysis demonstrated a statistically significant beneficial effect of TGF-beta 2 on visual improvement (P = 0.003).
Hydrophobicity evaluation of silicone rubber insulator using PD-induced electromagnetic wave

Silicone rubber insulators are widely used as outdoor insulation due to their excellent surface performance. However, the decrease even the loss of hydrophobicity will take place under various environments, which causes the essential concern on the hydrophobicity evaluation. Dynamic dropping test (DDT) method is proposed as one of the evaluation methods. In this paper, based on DDT method the PD-induced electromagnetic wave is investigated for the hydrophobicity evaluation. An antenna is utilized to receive the high-frequency electromagnetic wave produced by the surface discharges, which are associated with the hydrophobicity variation. The electromagnetic signals are analyzed by a signal-processing system based on the wavelet-transform theory. The obtained 3-D images of surface discharges contain the relationship among the frequency, the time and the amplitude, which can reveal different ageing condition of the insulators. Based on the 3-D images, the fractal dimension (FD) and the lacunarity of 2-D contour line spectra are discussed to quantitatively give the complexity of surface discharges. It is found that the distribution range of discharge becomes wider and the frequency increases with the ageing time in the 3-D images, and the FD value shows the increasing tendency with the increase of ageing level. Therefore, the PD-induced electromagnetic wave can recognize the characteristics of the surface discharges, which can be utilized to evaluate the hydrophobicity of silicone rubber insulators.
A method of determining the effective axial demagnetizing factor of an irregular hexagonal magnetic insulator

The shape demagnetizing factors of a planar magnetic insulator are of some interest in the design of a number of microwave ferrite components. One means of experimentally evaluating these quantities, in the case of a disk geometry, is to measure the Kittel line and to make use of a standard identity. Another method, introduced here, is to extract the axial demagnetizing factor by having recourse to the intersections of the split branches of a gyromagnetic resonator. The letter includes measurements on the axial demagnetizing factor of an irregular hexagonal geometry for three different values of saturation magnetization.
Contribution à la modélisation mécanique et numérique des édifices maçonnés

Du point de son comportement mecanique, la maconnerie apparait comme un geomateriau quasi-fragile composite, caracterise par la coexistence de trois echelles d'etudes (macroscopique, mesocopique et microscopique) et deux comportements intimement couples, l'endommagement fragile et la plasticite non-associee. Suite a une revue bibliographique etendue des nombreuses modelisations deja proposees (approche macroscopique phenomenologique, approche micromecanique, analyse multi-echelle), il semble que deux points importants restent encore difficiles a traiter : la prise en compte de la structure de l'appareil et la localisation de la deformation liee au caractere adoucissant et non-associe des comportements. Afin de repondre a ces problemes, une modelisation micromecanique discrete dans un cadre dynamique non-regulier a ete proposee. La maconnerie est vue comme un milieu divise compose d'une collection de corps deformables relies par des lois non-regulieres. Le modele de base pour les joints vifs, compose du contact unilateral et du frottement de Coulomb est enrichi pour les joints de mortier par des modeles de zone cohesive, fragile ou a endommagement progressif. Le cadre numerique de cette modelisation s'appuie sur la methode ``Non-Smooth Contact Dynamics'' apte a integrer la dynamique non-reguliere en presence de contraintes unilaterales et de frottement sec. Le comportement des corps est traite par des methodes aux elements finis adaptees au caractere discret des structures modelisees. Les lois non-regulieres d'interfaces sont resolues quant a elles par des methodes iteratives dediees aux problemes de complementarite de grande taille. Enfin, une collaboration interdisciplinaire a ete conduite avec les architectes et les archeologues du bâti pour mener a bien des etudes d'edifices monumentaux en utilisant la stereophotogrammetrie numerique.
A visualization method for SAR images

Visual interpretation of SAR images plays a critical role in remote sensing applications. For rapidly obtaining the image suitable for human observation, a new method of visualization for SAR images is proposed in this paper. The statistics of the SAR data, including the single channel data intensity and the span of the Pol-SAR data, are derived. The proposed method is a parameterized method based on the characteristic statistic of the SAR data. Using the AIRSAR data, the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by comparing to the traditional algorithm.
The making of black-hole and nebula clouds for the motion picture “Sphere” with volumetric rendering and the f-rep of solids

Ray tracing through a volume of gas computed the sum of the densities and density-weighted colors, called samples. The contribution of the samples attenuates with the cumulative density as the ray advances away from the camera. The ray tracing proceeds until the opacity clips or the ray leaves the complete volume. The volume rendering approach taken for this project is computationally intensive. The early-version volume renderer developed at Cinesite supports point-like and directional light sources, with full self shadowing and asymmetric scattering. Ray tracing consists of traversal of voxels and cells, accumulating radiance and attenuation. For the purposes of this project however, the gas was lit internally, so it acted as a glowing and attenuating material with a variety of colors and complex structures. To accomodate the artistic design process and be as flexible as possible, the renderer accesses material properties through method calls in an API. This allows artists and technical directors to build volumetric data in procedural codes without dealing directly with the rendering process. The ISM mainly provides the point samples as the ray tracing takes place, and it manages the primitives, sampling and interpolation of these samples, and loading and evaluation of the appropriate shaders for these primitives. The volumetric shaders used to represent nebula-like structures require varying densities and colors. Noise patterns were used in both shading and displacing the isosurfaces. Briefly, the fractals and random patterns are associated with the f-rep of the solids when inside of the clouds (defined as f(x, y, z, t) > = 0) and another atmospheric (ambient) shading when outside of the shape (defined as f(x, y, z, t) < 0). The properties of implicit surfaces were also used to enhance the known shading techniques. We have optimized the f-rep evaluation. The cloudy shapes we needed in order to achieve the desired nebula effects required large databases. A "realistic" look for these gas clouds requires certain shapes based on storyboards from pre-production, as well as examples from real counterparts. Independent of the choice of the implicit functions, the algorithm to solve the f-rep and evaluate the solids was designed to be capable of localizing the data in a smaller volume to reduce the volume of operations. Executing the shader for the whole ray trace was very expensive , and in some cases such as evaluation of gas motion in vectoral fields, it was impossible directly. So we investigated methods …
Clinician Attitudes, Screening Practices, and Interventions to Reduce Firearm-Related Injury

Firearm injury is a leading cause of injury-related morbidity and mortality in the United States. We sought to systematically identify and summarize existing literature on clinical firearm injury prevention screening and interventions. We conducted a systematic search of PubMed, Web of Science, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PsycInfo, and ClinicalTrials.gov for English-language original research (published 1992–2014) on clinical screening methods, patient-level firearm interventions, or patient/provider attitudes on the same. Unrelated studies were excluded through title, abstract, and full-text review, and the remaining articles underwent data abstraction and quality scoring. Of a total of 3,260 unique titles identified, 72 were included in the final review. Fifty-three articles examined clinician attitudes/practice patterns; prior training, experience, and expectations correlated with clinicians' regularity of firearm screening. Twelve articles assessed patient interventions, of which 6 were randomized controlled trials. Seven articles described patient attitudes; all were of low methodological quality. According to these articles, providers rarely screen or counsel their patients—even high-risk patients—about firearm safety. Health-care–based interventions may increase rates of safe storage of firearms for pediatric patients, suicidal patients, and other high-risk groups. Some studies show that training clinicians can increase rates of effective firearm safety screening and counseling. Patients and families are, for the most part, accepting of such screening and counseling. However, the current literature is, by and large, not high quality. Rigorous, large-scale, adequately funded studies are needed.
Large Cell Neuroendocrine Carcinoma of the Uterine Cervix: A Clinicopathological Study of Six Cases

&NA; Six cases of cervical large cell neuroendocrine carcinomas (LCNEC) were found among 972 patients (0.6%) with invasive cervical carcinoma. The patients, who were from 27 to 51 (mean 38) years of age, presented with vaginal bleeding or an abnormal Papanicolaou smear. Five tumors were stage Ib and one was IIa. All patients underwent radical hysterectomy and received adjuvant chemotherapy and pelvic radiotherapy. Four patients died of tumor 6 to 19 months (mean 14 months) postoperatively. On histologic examination, the tumor cells were arranged in an organoid growth pattern and were larger than those of typical small cell carcinoma. Glandular differentiation was present in one case. Mitotic figures ranged from 15 to 45 (mean 29) per 10 high‐power fields. Prominent vascular invasion and necrosis was seen in all of the tumors. Each tumor was immunoreactive for chromogranin A and/or synaptophysin. The results of this study confirm the aggressive nature of cervical LCNECs. The recognition of LCNECs is necessary to establish the most effective treatment for these aggressive tumors.
Site of Action of β-Ligands at the Human β1-Adrenoceptor

Antagonist affinity measurements have traditionally been considered important in defining the receptor or receptor subtypes present within cells or tissues. Any change in this value has normally been taken as evidence for the presence of a second receptor. However, highly efficacious ligands induce a time and phosphorylation-dependent change in the β2-adrenoceptor resulting in 10-fold lower affinity for antagonists. Also the β1-adrenoceptor is now considered to exist in two different active conformations which are distinguished by their pharmacological properties. In this study, the site of action of a range of β-agonists and β-antagonists was determined using the human β1-adrenoceptor stably expressed in Chinese hamster ovary cells with cyclic AMP response element reporter genes. Adrenaline and noradrenaline were confirmed as having agonist actions via the catecholamine site, whereas all antagonists had higher affinity for the catecholamine rather than secondary site. However, the rank order of affinity for the two sites was different suggesting that they are indeed separate entities. The measurements of antagonist affinity at the catecholamine site, however, were found to depend upon the agonist present. For example, xamoterol, cimaterol, terbutaline, and formoterol agonist responses were more readily antagonized by CGP 20712A[2-hydroxy-5-(2-[{hydroxy-3-(4-[1-methyl-4-trifluoromethyl-2-imidazolyl]phenoxy)propyl}amino]ethoxy)benzamide] than the catecholamine responses themselves. This, however, was not related to agonist efficacy as has previously been reported for the human β2-adrenoceptor. Therefore, it may be that some agonists (e.g., cimaterol) purely activate the catecholamine site and others purely activate the secondary site (e.g., CGP 12177 [(–)-4-(3-tert-butylamino-2-hydroxypropoxy)-benzimidazol-2-one]), whereas the others (e.g., catecholamines) activate both sites to differing degrees.
Fuzzy Logic Based Maximum Power Point Tracking Designed for 10kW Solar Photovoltaic System with Different Membership Functions

Abstract—The electric power supplied by a photovoltaic power generation systems depends on the solar irradiation and temperature. The PV system can supply the maximum power to the load at a particular operating point which is generally called as maximum power point (MPP), at which the entire PV system operates with maximum efficiency and produces its maximum power. Hence, a Maximum power point tracking (MPPT) methods are used to maximize the PV array output power by tracking continuously the maximum power point. The proposed MPPT controller is designed for 10kW solar PV system installed at Cape Institute of Technology. This paper presents the fuzzy logic based MPPT algorithm. However, instead of one type of membership function, different structures of fuzzy membership functions are used in the FLC design. The proposed controller is combined with the system and the results are obtained for each membership functions in Matlab/Simulink environment. Simulation results are decided that which membership function is more suitable for this system.
The phrasal implicature theory of metaphors and slurs

This thesis develops a pragmatic theory of metaphors and slurs. In the pragmatic literature, theorists mostly hold the view that the framework developed by Grice is only applicable to the sentence-level pragmatic phenomena, whereas the subsentential pragmatic phenomena require a different approach. In this thesis, I argue against this view and claim that the Gricean framework, after some plausible revisions, can explain subsentential pragmatic phenomena, such as metaphors and slurs. In the first chapter, I introduce three basic theses I will defend and give an outline of the argument I will develop. The second chapter discusses three claims on metaphor that are widely discussed in the literature. There I state my aim to present a theory of metaphor which can accommodate these three claims. Chapter 3 introduces the notion of "phrasal implicature", which will be used to explain phrase-level pragmatic phenomena with a Gricean approach. In Chapter 4, I present my theory of metaphor, which I call "phrasal implicature theory of metaphor" and discuss certain aspects of the theory. The notion of phrasal implicature enables a new conception of what-is-said and a different approach to the semantics-pragmatics distinction. Chapter 5 looks into these issues. In Chapter 6, I compare my theory of metaphor with three other theories. Finally, in Chapter 7, I develop a phrasal implicature theory of slurs, which I argue outperforms its rivals in explaining various uses of slurs.
Sterol Regulatory Element-binding Protein Negatively Regulates Microsomal Triglyceride Transfer Protein Gene Transcription*

We herein report that mRNA expression of microsomal triglyceride transfer protein (MTP) and its protein synthesis decline in response to sterol depletion in HepG2 cells, and we functionally characterized the MTP gene promoter in an effort to investigate the molecular mechanisms by which MTP gene transcription is regulated. Luciferase assays using truncated versions of the reporter gene revealed that the region at −124 to +33 base pairs of the human promoter contains the elements required for the suppression of transcription by sterol depletion. Enforced expression of an active form of sterol regulatory element-binding protein (SREBP)-1 (amino acids 1–487) or -2 (amino acids 1–481), both of which are activated under sterol-depleted conditions, is able to mimic sterol-mediated down-regulation. Either further truncation of the promoter region or mutation of the putative SREBP-binding sequence (5′-GCAGCCCAC-3′, −124 to −116 base pairs) abolishes the sterol- and SREBP-dependent transcriptional regulation. Gel mobility shift assay showed that recombinant SREBP-2-(1–481) is able to bind the sequence. Enforced expression of a truncated form of SREBP-2 (amino acids 31–481), which acts as an inhibitor of transcription of the low density lipoprotein receptor gene because it lacks the transcriptional activation domain, also diminishes the luciferase activity, suggesting that direct binding to the promoter region might be sufficient and that the mechanism by which SREBPs inhibit MTP gene expression is distinct from that for the transcriptional stimulation of sterol-regulated genes. Although the SREBP-binding site overlaps a negative insulin-responsive element, insulin negatively regulates MTP gene expression even when the amount of the active form of SREBPs is quite low under the sterol-loaded conditions, indicating that SREBPs only slightly mediate, if at all, the insulin effects. Overall, we conclude that SREBPs are responsible for regulation of lipoprotein secretion via their control of MTP gene expression. Moreover, our results describe for the first time a novel mechanism by which SREBPs negatively regulate expression of the gene encoding the protein involved in lipid metabolism.
LONG-TERM MONITORING OF RENAL FUNCTION IN POLY-TRAUMATIZED INTENSIVE CARE PATIENTS

Introduction: For the long-term monitoring of kidney function, polytraumatized patients were examined and routine as well as specialized parameters were compared. Materials and methods: 30 patients of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (ICU) were examined daily over the entire period they stayed in the ICU. The patients were retrospectively classified as either survivors or deceased patients. Group 1 consisted of 20 patients who resided in the ICU for 11–15 (Median 14) days before they could be transferred to a normal hospital unit. Group 2 consisted of 10 patients who had passed away after 13–18 (Median 16) days in the ICU. In addition to the routine parameters diuresis, serum creatinine and serum urea, specialized parameters for kidney function including the excretion rates of α1-microglobulin (α1-MG), N-Acetyl-β-d-glucosaminidase (NAG), angiotensinase A (ATA) and immunoglobulin G (IgG) were determined. Results: Similar biometric data were shown by all patients at admission into the ICU, but differences did exist regarding the Revised Trauma Score, Injury Severity Score and the APACHE-II-Score. In the period between the 5th and 8th day of intensive treatment almost all patients showed pathological excretion rates of tubular and glomerular parameters whereby no increased frequency of unusual events could be determined at these time-points. Conclusion: During treatment in the ICU, all examined patients showed at times pathological excretion rates of specialized kidney function parameters. Such transient damage was only apparent in a few of the patients when the standard parameters serum creatinine and serum urea were employed. In 90% of the surviving patients the kidney parameters had normalized until the time they were transferred, indicating that such parameters reflected the general state of health of these patients.
A ‘fair innings’ for efficiency in health services?

This paper reviews the severe visual focus problems of health economists–they have developed a one-sided fixation with equity issues, neglecting the efficiency agenda. The problems of meeting need are not just about access–they will vary with cost and supply. Economists in fact developed a more balanced agenda in the 1970s but have failed to follow it up. The paper defines the triple nationalisation of the National Health Service (NHS), and presents evidence that pluralism, using the purchaser/provider split, has become more efficient in long term care, home care and services for people with learning difficulties. Health economics has failed to explore options for using the dynamic forces of choice and competition for improving health services. The paper makes the case for a decision rule that “we should seek the process of health care service supply and development which maximises the delivery of high quality, lower cost user relevant services”.
Assessing the Effects of Continuous Theta Burst Stimulation Over the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex on Human Cognition: A Systematic Review

Theta burst stimulation is increasingly growing in popularity as a non-invasive method of moderating corticospinal networks. Theta burst stimulation uses gamma frequency trains applied at the rhythm of theta, thus, mimicking theta–gamma coupling involved in cognitive processes. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex has been found to play a crucial role in numerous cognitive processes. Here, we include 25 studies for review to determine the cognitive effects of continuous theta burst stimulation over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; 20 of these studies are healthy participant and five are patient (pharmacotherapy-resistant depression) studies. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the included studies, only a descriptive approach is used and meta-analytics ruled out. The cognitive effect is measured on various cognitive domains: attention, working memory, planning, language, decision making, executive function, and inhibitory and cognitive control. We conclude that continuous theta burst stimulation over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex mainly inhibits cognitive performance. However, in some instances, it can lead to improved performance by inhibiting the effect of distractors or other competing irrelevant cognitive processes. To be precise, continuous theta burst stimulation over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex impaired attention, inhibitory control, planning, and goal-directed behavior in decision making but also improved decision making by reducing impulsivity. Conversely, continuous theta burst stimulation over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex impaired executive function, working, auditory feedback regulation, and cognitive control but accelerated the planning, decision-making process. These findings constitute a useful contribution to the literature on the cognitive effects of continuous theta burst stimulation over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.