Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deeper S Wave in Lead V5 and Broader Extent of T Wave Inversions in the Precordial Leads are Clinically Useful Electrocardiographic Parameters for Predicting Pulmonary Hypertension.

Electrocardiography (ECG) is used to screen for pulmonary hypertension (PH). However, it is unclear which parameters of ECG are the most useful for screening.ECG parameters related to right ventricular hypertrophy criteria were examined in 145 ECGs of subjects who were suspected to have PH and underwent right heart catheterization (RHC) (age 58.4 ± 17.5 years, 112 women, mean pulmonary arterial pressure [MPAP] 35.4 ± 13.3 mmHg). Based on the results of RHC, 108 subjects had PH (56 pulmonary arterial hypertension [PAH] and 52 chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension [CTEPH]). Fourteen of 17 ECG parameters in the present study were significantly associated with PH on univariate analysis. On multivariable logistic regression analysis, S wave depth in lead V5 (odds ratio [OR] 1.25, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.10-1.47) and depth of T wave inversion in lead V4 (OR 1.21, 95% CI 1.03-1.46) were independent predictors of MPAP ≥ 25 mmHg, and the cut-off values determined by receiver operating characteristic curve analyses were 0.42 mV and -0.28 mV, respectively.In conclusion, a deeper S wave in lead V5 and the presence of a wider extent of negative T waves in the precordial leads may be clinically simple and useful ECG parameters for screening for PH.
Health-Related Physical Fitness in Female Models

The model profession uses the appearance for the representation of products and brands via events. For some individuals that are included in this medium, plus a laboral activity, modeling becomes a lifestyle, the search for the status and work opportunities turn a dream for a thousands of children and teenagers because the profession has particulars experiences. To win this, many girls change physical and eating behaviors which are harmful to health. The objective of this study was to analyze the health-related physical fitness in female models comparing them with non-models. The study was conducted at the Caxias do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Participated of the study female runway and commercial models bokered in Cast One Models, with age between 15 - 25 years old. The non-models were students from public and private schools or university students. The health-related physical fitness, the physical activity levels and dietary intake were assessed of all participants. The data were described as mean and standard deviation. For comparison between models and non-models was used t independent test for variables normally distributed and U Mann-Whitney test for not normally distributed variables, adopting a level of significance (α) of 0.05. It was found difference in total energy between model group and non-model (GM: 1509.78 kcal, NM: 2292.51 Kcal; p = 0.014). There were no differences between groups in the others variables analyzed (p > 0.05). In conclusion, the profession model seems not interfere in variables that make up the health-related physical fitness.
Academic experiences and employability of senior college students

The aim of this study was to explore the associations between academic experiences and employability in senior college students and verifi y if there is any difference in these variabels between Psychology and Business Manageament students. The participants were 60 students in their fi nal year of undergraduate courses from a private university in Sao Paulo, Brazil, being 76.6% female, with a mean age of 26.7 years (SD = 5.0). For data collection we used Questionario de Vivencias Academicas Reduzido (QVA-r) and Escala de Empregabilidade. The results have shown no signifi cant difference between the courses in any of the variables. Regarding the association between academic experiences and employability, all factors QVA-r showed signifi cant correlations with some dimension of Escala de Empregabilidade, highlighting the interpersonal dimension which partnered with all dimensions of employability. It is considered that the academic integration of the student is associated with the abil
Charge-mediated Fab-Fc interactions in an IgG1 antibody induce reversible self-association, cluster formation, and elevated viscosity

ABSTRACT Concentration-dependent reversible self-association (RSA) of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) poses a challenge to their pharmaceutical development as viable candidates for subcutaneous delivery. While the role of the antigen-binding fragment (Fab) in initiating RSA is well-established, little evidence supports the involvement of the crystallizable fragment (Fc). In this report, a variety of biophysical tools, including hydrogen exchange mass spectrometry, are used to elucidate the protein interface of such non-covalent protein-protein interactions. Using dynamic and static light scattering combined with viscosity measurements, we find that an IgG1 mAb (mAb-J) undergoes RSA primarily through electrostatic interactions and forms a monomer-dimer-tetramer equilibrium. We provide the first direct experimental mapping of the interface formed between the Fab and Fc domains of an antibody at high protein concentrations. Charge distribution heterogeneity between the positively charged interface spanning complementarity-determining regions CDR3H and CDR2L in the Fab and a negatively charged region in CH3/Fc domain mediates the RSA of mAb-J. When arginine and NaCl are added, they disrupt RSA of mAb-J and decrease the solution viscosity. Fab-Fc domain interactions between mAb monomers may promote the formation of large transient antibody complexes that ultimately cause increases in solution viscosity. Our findings illustrate how limited specific arrangements of amino-acid residues can cause mAbs to undergo RSA at high protein concentrations and how conserved regions in the Fc portion of the antibody can also play an important role in initiating weak and transient protein-protein interactions.
Robust i-vector extraction tightly coupled with voice activity detection using deep neural networks

This paper describes an extended framework of i-vector feature extraction for improving speaker recognition under noisy conditions. In such speaker recognition applications, voice activity detection (VAD) has been a pre-processing step independent from the succeeding i-vector extraction, just for excluding noisy sounds other than voice of a target speaker. In the proposed framework, i-vector extraction is tightly coupled with VAD. It first estimates voice quality in an utterance as frame- wise voice posteriors using deep neural network-based sound classification, and then it extracts an i-vector of the utterance on the basis of the voice posteriors. The proposed method is able to produce a reliable speaker feature under noisy conditions with help of LSTM-based soft decision VAD. Speaker verification experiments on NIST 2016 SRE evaluation set demonstrate a 14.7% reduction in equal error rates.
Durability and flexibility of chimpanzee grooming patterns during a period of dominance instability

Growing evidence from studies on primates and other taxa has shown that the maintenance of long‐term affiliative patterns influences fitness. Thus, understanding how individuals regulate social interactions in response to environmental and social factors contributes to our understanding of the evolutionary basis of sociality. We investigated the durability of affiliation patterns in chimpanzees across three 3‐month periods of varying social uncertainty depending on the degree of stability in the male hierarchy, with a 2‐year gap between each period. Periods were unstable (no clear alpha male), recently stable (new alpha male just established) and stable (alpha male in place for 2 years). We focused on three features of social exchange shared by human and non‐human primates: consistency of exchanges across periods, durability of preferred partners, and degree of reciprocity in each period. We compared male‐to‐male, female‐to‐female, male‐to‐female, and female‐to‐male grooming patterns. Overall, more grooming was exchanged in the stable period. Grooming patterns were not consistent across the three periods, but were only consistent between the recently stable and stable periods for female‐to‐female and male‐to‐female dyads. As predicted from the opportunistic nature of male relationships, male‐to‐male grooming was least likely to be correlated across all periods and males had relatively fewer durable (i.e., preferred partners in all periods) same‐sex partners than females. Our predictions that grooming reciprocity would be less likely during the unstable period and in male–male dyads were only partially supported. We found grooming reciprocity in all periods for female–female dyads but only in the stable period for male–male and female–male dyads. Although long‐term affiliative patterns are well studied in primates, this is the first study to investigate the association between social uncertainty and durability of affiliative patterns. Our findings suggest social uncertainty influences social exchange and highlight the importance of considering group instability in studies of social relationships.
National study on natural history of renal allografts in sickle cell disease or trait.

The natural history of renal allograft in recipients who have sickle cell disease or trait has not been widely studied. This survey attempted to collect all the case histories known at present and to assess the relationship of sickle cell disease or trait to the natural history of renal allograft. A questionnaire was sent to 120 transplant centers in North America. 106 centers responded to the study, compliance rate being 88%. 88 centers reported not having any experience with such a case, whereas 18 centers transplanted 34 kidneys in 30 patients with this disease or trait. 9 of these had sickle cell disease and 21 had the trait. Graft survival at 1 year was 23 of 34, i.e., 67%. Mortality was 4 of 30, i.e., 13% in the first year. Sickle cell crisis was noted in 8 patients during the first year, 7 of whom had sickle cell disease. Thus, sickle cell crisis is very common in sickle cell transplant patients. From the points of view of patient survival and graft survival, recipients of kidneys who have the disease or the trait do just as well after transplant as the remaining patient population.
Copper and cobalt accumulation in plants: a critical assessment of the current state of knowledge.

This review synthesizes contemporary understanding of copper-cobalt (Cu-Co) tolerance and accumulation in plants. Accumulation of foliar Cu and Co to > 300 μg g-1 is exceptionally rare globally, and known principally from the Copperbelt of Central Africa. Cobalt accumulation is also observed in a limited number of nickel (Ni) hyperaccumulator plants occurring on ultramafic soils around the world. None of the putative Cu or Co hyperaccumulator plants appears to comply with the fundamental principle of hyperaccumulation, as foliar Cu-Co accumulation is strongly dose-dependent. Abnormally high plant tissue Cu concentrations occur only when plants are exposed to high soil Cu with a low root to shoot translocation factor. Most Cu-tolerant plants are Excluders sensu Baker and therefore setting nominal threshold values for Cu hyperaccumulation is not informative. Abnormal accumulation of Co occurs under similar circumstances in the Copperbelt of Central Africa as well as sporadically in Ni hyperaccumulator plants on ultramafic soils; however, Co-tolerant plants behave physiologically as Indicators sensu Baker. Practical application of Cu-Co accumulator plants in phytomining is limited due to their dose-dependent accumulation characteristics, although for Co field trials may be warranted on highly Co-contaminated mineral wastes because of its relatively high metal value.
Human blood MAIT cell subsets defined using MR1 tetramers

Mucosal‐associated invariant T (MAIT) cells represent up to 10% of circulating human T cells. They are usually defined using combinations of non‐lineage‐specific (surrogate) markers such as anti‐TRAV1‐2, CD161, IL‐18Rα and CD26. The development of MR1‐Ag tetramers now permits the specific identification of MAIT cells based on T‐cell receptor specificity. Here, we compare these approaches for identifying MAIT cells and show that surrogate markers are not always accurate in identifying these cells, particularly the CD4+ fraction. Moreover, while all MAIT cell subsets produced comparable levels of IFNγ, TNF and IL‐17A, the CD4+ population produced more IL‐2 than the other subsets. In a human ontogeny study, we show that the frequencies of most MR1 tetramer+ MAIT cells, with the exception of CD4+ MAIT cells, increased from birth to about 25 years of age and declined thereafter. We also demonstrate a positive association between the frequency of MAIT cells and other unconventional T cells including Natural Killer T (NKT) cells and Vδ2+ γδ T cells. Accordingly, this study demonstrates that MAIT cells are phenotypically and functionally diverse, that surrogate markers may not reliably identify all of these cells, and that their numbers are regulated in an age‐dependent manner and correlate with NKT and Vδ2+ γδ T cells.
Expression, regulation and function of intestinal drug transporters: an update

Abstract Although oral drug administration is currently the favorable route of administration, intestinal drug absorption is challenged by several highly variable and poorly predictable processes such as gastrointestinal motility, intestinal drug solubility and intestinal metabolism. One further determinant identified and characterized during the last two decades is the intestinal drug transport that is mediated by several transmembrane proteins such as P-gp, BCRP, PEPT1 and OATP2B1. It is well-established that intestinal transporters can affect oral absorption of many drugs in a significant manner either by facilitating their cellular uptake or by pumping them back to gut lumen, which limits their oral bioavailability. Their functional relevance becomes even more apparent in cases of unwanted drug-drug interactions when concomitantly given drugs that cause transporter induction or inhibition, which in turn leads to increased or decreased drug exposure. The longitudinal expression of several intestinal transporters is not homogeneous along the human intestine, which may have functional implications on the preferable site of intestinal drug absorption. Besides the knowledge about the expression of pharmacologically relevant transporters in human intestinal tissue, their exact localization on the apical or basolateral membrane of enterocytes is also of interest but in several cases debatable. Finally, there is obviously a coordinative interplay of intestinal transporters (apical–basolateral), intestinal enzymes and transporters as well as intestinal and hepatic transporters. This review aims to give an updated overview about the expression, localization, regulation and function of clinically relevant transporter proteins in the human intestine.
Impact to Longitude Velocity Control of Autonomous Vehicle from Human Driver's Distraction Behavior

Driver distraction behaviors are usually blind to autonomous vehicles (AVs), leading to probable late preparation for AVs to take emergency measures. Hence, this paper aims to build a bridge between AV control and driver behavior detection, to assist AVs to predict the potential risk and avoid abnormal drivers carefully like experienced drivers. Our main contributions of this paper consist: i) put forward a practicable system framework integrating driver distraction monitoring, vehicle-to-vehicle communication and AV velocity control; ii) provide a real-time driver distraction monitoring implementation building on convolutional neural network trained offline; iii) propose a method of longitude velocity control of AV considering the risk of driver distraction behavior based on model predictive control strategy. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of our work.
Developmental expression of the genes encoding transforming growth factor alpha and its receptor in the hypothalamus of female rhesus macaques.

Studies in female rats have shown that transforming growth factor alpha (TGF alpha) stimulates release of luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH), the neuropeptide controlling sexual maturation, and that expression of the TGF alpha gene in the hypothalamus increases during both the initiation of normal puberty and after hypothalamic lesions that induce sexual precocity. Since blockade of epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFR), which mediate TGF alpha actions, delayed the normal timing of puberty, it was postulated that TGF alpha/EGFR contributes to the neuroendocrine process that underlies the initiation of normal female puberty. The present study was undertaken to examine the hypothesis that hypothalamic expression of the TGF alpha gene and its receptor changes in relation to the stage of sexual development in nonhuman primates, and to determine whether these changes are accompanied by corresponding alterations in LHRH gene expression. DNA fragments complementary to the coding regions of the rhesus monkey TGF alpha, EGFR and LHRH genes were cloned by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), sequenced and used to prepare monkey-specific antisense RNA probes. A quantitative RT-PCR was developed in which the cloned sequences were utilized to prepare RNA standards for the quantitation of tissue mRNA levels. Both TGF alpha and EGFR mRNA levels in the medial basal hypothalamus and preoptic area of female monkeys were elevated during neonatal life (1 week to 6 months of age), when FSH secretion is also high, decreased during juvenile development (8-18 months of age), when secretion of both FSH and LH is low, and markedly increased during the expected time of puberty (30-36 months of age). No such changes were observed in either the cerebellum or the cerebral cortex, two brain regions irrelevant to neuroendocrine reproductive control. In contrast to the pronounced alterations in hypothalamic TGF alpha/EGFR gene expression observed during sexual development, LHRH mRNA levels did not vary significantly during this time. Hybridization histochemistry revealed the presence of both TGF alpha and EGFR mRNAs in cells scattered throughout the hypothalamus, but more predominantly in the median eminence, suprachiasmatic nuclei, optic chiasm and cells along the wall of the third ventricle. These results demonstrate that increases in TGF alpha and EGFR gene expression, specific to the neuroendocrine brain, occur during developmental phases in which gonadotropin output is also elevated--most noticeably at the time of puberty. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Differential role of estrogen receptor modulators in depression-like behavior and memory impairment in rats with postmenopausal diabetes

Objective:Diabetes and menopause are frequent comorbidities. The objective of the present study was to delineate the effects of nonselective and selective estrogen receptor (ER) agonists (&agr; and &bgr;) on cognitive function and depressive behavior in ovariectomized diabetic (Ovx-Dia) rats. Methods:Bilateral ovariectomy was performed in female Sprague-Dawley rats (200-250 g), and streptozotocin was used to induce experimental diabetes. Rats were administered (10 &mgr;g/kg SC) a nonselective ER agonist, 17&bgr;-estradiol (E2); a selective ER-&agr; agonist, propionitrile (PPT; 4,4′,4″-(4-propyl-[1H] pyrazole-1,3,5-triyl) tris phenol); and a selective ER-&bgr; agonist, 2,3-bis(4-hydroxyphenyl)-propionitrile (DPN) for 4 weeks after streptozotocin injection. Results:Marked impairment in memory indicated by increased transfer latency on the fifth day (363%) and increased immobility time (90.5%), coupled with a marked decrease in brain-derived neurotrophic factors (22.5%) and increase in acetylcholinesterase activity (58.1%), were observed in Ovx-Dia rats compared with sham rats. However, a partial change in all these parameters was observed in ovariectomized or diabetic rats compared with sham rats. Treatment with DPN and E2 markedly prevented—whereas treatment with PPT partially prevented—changes induced in Ovx-Dia rats. To assess feminizing action, we measured serum estradiol levels and uterine weights. E2 reversed the ovariectomy-induced decrease in serum estradiol levels and uterine weights, but PPT and DPN treatment did not show any effect. Conclusions:Results reveal that specific ER-&bgr; agonists can ameliorate memory dysfunction and depressive behavior associated with postmenopausal diabetes and are devoid of the feminizing adverse effects of nonselective ER agonists.
Pre-transplant cytomegalovirus immunoglobulin G antibody levels could prevent severe cytomegalovirus infections post-transplant in liver transplant recipients: Experience from a tertiary care liver centre

Background: Humoral immune responses in cytomegalovirus (CMV) are not studied well. Pre-transplant CMV immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibody levels (Pre-Tx IgG) could influence the occurrence of post-transplant CMV infections. Objective: Correlation between pre-Tx IgG and post-Tx risk of acquiring CMV infection was investigated. Materials and Methods: A total of 146 liver Tx recipients, not on CMV prophylaxis, were included. Pre-Tx IgG in donor (D) and recipient (R) were estimated and all the recipients were followed up for 1 year for CMV infections. Results: D+ R+ serostatus was seen in 142 (97.3%) and D− R+ in 4 (2.7%). A total of 113 (77.4%) recipients had pre-Tx IgG of ≥250 AU/ml. Overall, post-Tx CMV infections were seen in 54 (36.9%) recipients. In 32 (59.2%) patients, CMV infection was seen during the 1st month after TX. Incidences of post-Tx CMV infection in recipients with pre-Tx IgG <250 AU/mL and ≥250 AU/mL were 42.4% and 34.5%, respectively (P = 0.99). Median viral load was significantly higher in patients with pre-Tx IgG <250 AU/ml: 4log10 (R: 2.8–6.6 log 10) copies/ml than those with ≥250 AU/ml: 2.2 log10 (R: 1.6–3.8 log10) copies/ml, P = 0.04. There was no difference in the time of occurrence of CMV infection in both the groups. Concurrent occurrence of rejection and CMV infection was seen in significantly more patients 18/54 (32.7%) than in patients without CMV infection (12/99, 12%, P = 0.002). Conclusions: Higher pre-Tx CMV IgG levels might prevent severe CMV infections post-Tx. Recipients with low pre-Tx CMV titre might be benefitted by CMV prophylaxis or aggressive pre-emptive treatment.