Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Emerging importance of HDL cholesterol in developing high‐risk coronary plaques in acute coronary syndromes

&NA; Cardiovascular disease is the principal cause of death in industrialized countries. Hyperlipidemia, with high low‐density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglycerides, and low high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol levels (<40mg/dL in men and <45 mg/dL in women), is a known major cardiovascular risk factor. Statins are considered the most potent and effective agents to reduce low‐density lipoprotein cholesterol, but they have a variable effect on high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglycerides. Different clinical trials with statins have shown a decrease in low‐density lipoprotein cholesterol by 35% and a reduction of the incidence of coronary events by as much as 30%. However, 60 to 70% of events still occur, despite remarkable reduction of low‐density lipoprotein cholesterol concentration. Recent National Cholesterol Education Program guidelines highlighted the importance of high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol concentration in the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease. High‐density lipoprotein cholesterol is considered an independent risk factor and has an inverse relation with coronary events. The association of low levels of high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol with an increased incidence of cardiovascular events implies a critical role of high‐density lipoprotein in the protection against atherosclerotic disease and in the progression of coronary atherosclerotic disease. High‐density lipoprotein cholesterol appears to exert this protective effect through multiple mechanisms. High‐density lipoprotein is not only involved in reverse cholesterol transport, but also prevents endothelial dysfunction; inhibits the homing of monocytes, apoptosis, platelet activation, and factor X activation; and has antioxidant properties. In this article the authors review the available experimental and clinical evidence supporting the importance of high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol as a protective factor in coronary artery disease, and the strategies developed to increase high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol.
Computing van der Waals energies in the context of the rotamer approximation

The rotamer approximation states that protein side‐chain conformations can be described well using a finite set of rotational isomers. This approximation is often applied in the context of computational protein design and structure prediction to reduce the complexity of structural sampling. It is an effective way of reducing the structure space to the most relevant conformations. However, the appropriateness of rotamers for sampling structure space does not imply that a rotamer‐based energy landscape preserves any of the properties of the true continuous energy landscape. Specifically, because the energy of a van der Waals interaction can be very sensitive to small changes in atomic separation, meaningful van der Waals energies are particularly difficult to calculate from rotamer‐based structures. This presents a problem for computational protein design, where the total energy of a given structure is often represented as a sum of precalculated rigid rotamer self and pair contributions. A common way of addressing this issue is to modify the van der Waals function to reduce its sensitivity to atomic position, but excessive modification may result in a strongly nonphysical potential. Although many different van der Waals modifications have been used in protein design, little is known about which performs best, and why. In this paper, we study 10 ways of computing van der Waals energies under the rotamer approximation, representing four general classes, and compare their performance using a variety of metrics relevant to protein design and native‐sequence repacking calculations. Scaling van der Waals radii by anywhere from 85 to 95% gives the best performance. Linearizing and capping the repulsive portion of the potential can give additional improvement, which comes primarily from getting rid of unrealistically large clash energies. On the other hand, continuously minimizing individual rotamer pairs prior to evaluating their interaction works acceptably in native‐sequence repacking, but fails in protein design. Additionally, we show that the problem of predicting relevant van der Waals energies from rotamer‐based structures is strongly nonpairwise decomposable and hence further modifications of the potential are unlikely to give significant improvement. Proteins 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Carcinoma of the breast. A decade of new results with old concepts.

This reports data on 473 breast cancer patients for whom follow-up study was complete from January 1 1954 to June 30 1965 at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. There were 4 males. First treatment was given at the hospital to 248 (PBBH primary cases) although 29 were already advanced cases when first seen. Radical mastectomy was done for 167. There were 3 hospital deaths among these. 135 of the 245 remaining PBBH cases were free of cancer for the follow-up period or died of other causes. In addition 221 patients were referred for treatment having undergone primary treatment elsewhere. Of these 213 had recurrent cancer of the breast. These plus the 110 PBBH primary cases who had recurrences made a total of 323 patients treated for secondary disease during the 10-year period. Of the total group of 473 patients 343 had died and 131 were alive when the study period closed; 45 deaths were from other causes and 297 from breast cancer. 77 hypophysectomies and 86 adrenalectomies were done. There has been increasing use of postoperative radiation and extensive use of corticosteroids and 5-fluorouacil. In the United States approximately 1/4 of the female population develops some form of cancer during a lifetime and about 1/4 of these will be breast cancer. Close female relatives are at an increased risk and a hereditary tendency is noted for breast cancer though not for cancer in general. About 10% of patients who have mastectomy for cancer and survive 3 years will develop cancer in the opposite breast. Failure to nurse for longer than 3 months is associated with higher risk although factors of age gravidity and parity may also be important. The menopausal years are a high risk period. Oral contraceptives have not been shown to have any direct association; however with a family history of breast cancer prolonged use of such drugs is questionable. Also after removal of a breast for cancer oral contraceptive pills are contraindicated lest they exacerbate a dormant metastasis. Previous oophorectomy may reduce risk of breast cancer but should cancer occur it is more likely to be advanced. Among the 458 cases for which the delay factor was determined in 282 it was not significant in 163 it was excessive in 133 of these it was patient-based. Most breast cancers are discovered by the patient. Biopsy is recommended for all palpable breast masses with x-ray studies of chest and bones and mammography. A brief interval between biopsy and surgery does not produce an adverse effect. About 6 negative biopsies are expected for each cancer found.
Vehicular positioning enhancement using DSRC

Road transportation injuries, environmental pollution, and wasted energy and time in traffic congestion cause considerable cost to society. Some examples are the $115 billion cost of United States traffic congestion in 2009 and its predicted $23 billion annual cost in Australia by 2020. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are increasingly being considered to mitigate these impacts. The benefit-cost ratio of 9-1 for ITS has led to significant investment in this industry. Therefore, there is an increased need for research in fields such as vehicular positioning, a fundamental part of many ITS applications. Although Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are applicable for navigation and fleet management, the accuracy does not meet the requirements for the systems such as collision avoidance and lane-level positioning. Limited availability of GNSS in urban canyons is another challenge for positioning. These issues create a gap between the positioning performance required for ITS and that which GNSS provides. Bridging this gap, this research considers Cooperative Positioning (CP) based on vehicular communication. The applicability of vehicular CP techniques proposed in the literature is questionable due to different viability issues. Focusing on viability, techniques are proposed here for different situations in terms of the availability of GNSS, specifically the Global Positioning System (GPS). Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC), the standard medium for vehicular communication, is considered for CP purposes. CP techniques proposed in the literature tend to rely on range estimates among participating nodes. The infeasibility of this approach in vehicular environment is demonstrated. Range-rate-based CP is introduced as an alternative using DSRC Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO). Typical achievable performance for different CP approaches is investigated. Range-rate-based CP techniques and new methods without ranging or rangerating are proposed. For full GPS coverage, two CP techniques, loose and tight integration, are introduced which can improve GPS-based accuracy and precision by up to 47%. For low numbers of visible satellites, a CP method is proposed for 3D positioning using two GPS satellites. A CFO-based CP method is presented for the situations without GPS coverage. This technique provides an instantaneous lane-level positioning which can improve the performance and functionality of many ITS applications.
Respiratory Muscle 18F-FDG Uptake

TO THE EDITOR: I read with great interest the recent article of Osman et al. entitled “Does 18F-FDG Uptake by Respiratory Muscles on PET/CT Correlate with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease? ” (1). Although the article is informative and educational, I would like to add my personal points of view to it. The final goal of all imaging modalities is the benefit and health of patients, and therefore there is no doubt that all the information that can be obtained from the images should be evaluated and reported. In this regard, imaging findings from the respiratory muscles could be potentially helpful to inform the referring physician of the status of the patient’s respiratory effort. From this perspective, the results of the current study are important and should proceed to clinical practice. The authors have stated that “patterns of 18F-FDG muscle uptake may help identify, at least qualitatively, the presence of [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)]. ” In my opinion, such a conclusion potentially could be modified, as increased 18FFDG uptake by respiratory muscles does not necessarily translate to the presence of COPD. Such uptake could just represent respiratory effort and the level of function of respiratory muscles. Therefore, such a marker of respiratory effort can be affected by a remarkable number of confounding factors, such as patients’ level of anxiety (which is not uncommon for patients who are not familiar with the medical environment of a nuclear medicine facility). The increased respiratory effort is also not limited to COPD, as other diseases such as restrictive lung disorders and even pleural effusions can manifest with the same feature. The authors have used mediastinum as the reference tissue. Although this choice is a good strategy to reduce the confounding factors, I would like to recommend adding one of the other body muscles as a point of reference, too. If another muscle is considered as the reference tissue for comparison, we can easily determine whether uptake is increased in the body muscles overall or only in the respiratory muscles, as a distinctive PET study finding.
Cross-sectional associations between metabolic syndrome and performance across cognitive domains: A systematic review

ABSTRACT This review aimed to systematically evaluate associations between the Metabolic Syndrome and domain specific cognitive performance from cross-sectional studies. PsycINFO and Medline were searched on 12 January 2017 with the terms “Metabolic Syndrome” and “cogni*. ” A total of 973 articles were identified, with 26 meeting inclusion criteria. Individuals with Metabolic Syndrome were consistently reported to have poorer performance on executive function tasks that were not adaptations of the verbal fluency task, including the Stockings of Cambridge test, Color-Word Inference Test and Frontal Assessment Battery; findings from adaptations of the verbal fluency test showed less consistent results. Associations with performance in attention/working memory/information processing, memory, language, and construction/motor performance domains were mixed. All studies reporting on perception showed nonsignificant results. Non-language based executive function tasks appear to be the most sensitive tests of Metabolic Syndrome, and hold promise as a cognitive screen and for the tracking of interventions in this group.
Cryptosporidiosis in Wellnourished and Malnourished Children

ABSTRACT. During a 5‐month period, 513 stool samples submitted to the enteric laboratory at the University Hospital of the West Indies were examined for Cryptosporidium. Oocysts were detected in 4.9% of all stools, 7.3% of diarrhoeal stools, 19.5% of stools from malnourished children and 23.7% of stools from malnourished children with diarrhoea, Cryptosporidium was the sole pathogen detected in all 25 positive stools, and was the second most frequent enteric isolate. All cases of cryptosporidiosis occurred in children less than 2.5 years of age. All 15 malnourished children were admitted to hospital where they presented with dehydration (87%), vomiting (93%), fever (100%) and diarrhoea which lasted an average of 15.3 days. Two of these children died. In contrast, dehydration (20%), vomiting (40%) and fever (50%) were less common and diarrhoea less protracted in well‐nourished children, four of whom were admitted to hospital. This preliminary report suggests that Cryptosporidial gastroenteritis presents with increased frequency and severity in malnourished compared with well‐nourished Jamaican children.
Towards Incremental Disambiguation with a Generalized Discrimination Network

Semantic disambiguation is a difficult problem in natural language analysis. A better strategy for semantic disambiguation is to accumulate constraints obtained during the analytical process of a sentence, and disambiguate as early as possible the meaning incrementally using the constraints. We propose such a computational model of natural language analysis, and call it the 'incremental disambiguation model. ' The semantic disambiguation process can be equated with the downward traversal of a discrimination network. However, the discrimination network has a problem in that it cannot be traversed unless constraints are entered in an a priori-fixed order. In general, the order in which constraints are obtained cannot be a priori fixed, so it is not always possible to traverse the network downward during the analytical process. In this paper, we propose a method which can traverse the discrimination network according to the order in which constraints are obtained incrementally during the analytical process. This order is independent of the a priori-fixed order of the network.
Compensation of backlash for geared drive systems and thrust wires used in teleoperation

This paper presents a unique method to cancel the backlash present in geared drive systems and thrust-wire systems. Large-sized robots need larger actuators with a high inertia to obtain the desired amount of torque. However, the use of large actuators will increase the effect of gravity. To compensate for the gravitational effect, motors with a high torque are again necessary. Therefore, geared drive systems are used to obtain higher torques and decrease the actuator size. However, adding gears will create a backlash problem. Moreover, when it is necessary to make lighter robots, thrust wires can be used to transmit the motion from the motor to the end effector while keeping them separated. However, the mechanical backlash inside the thrust wire is again a matter of concern. If geared systems and thrust-wire systems are used for the transmission of haptic information in bilaterally controlled systems, the backlash will greatly deteriorate the performance of the system and necessitate compensation. Therefore, a novel method is proposed to uniquely cancel the backlash in the gears and thrust wires used in bilateral teleoperation with twist control. This method uses two identical counter-operating drives per joint to compensate for the backlash effect with a unique control structure that can be used in both geared systems and thrust-wire systems. Experiments have been carried out for the proposed method to validate its accuracy.
Effective intervention strategies combining Mediterranean diet and exercise for reducing obesity, metabolic and cardiovascular risks in high-risk populations: mini review

The global rise in obesity and cardiovascular disease is not showing any sign of slowing down, and effective health interventions may provide an important part of the solution. Whilst comprehensive evidence about the health benefits of the Mediterranean Diet (MD) continues to emerge for obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, the combined MD benefits with physical activity and exercise benefits remain under-investigated. Recent evidence suggests a cardio metabolic risk improvement through combining aerobic exercise with MD, though the problems related to dropout, remain critical. Many interventions conducted in populations at high Cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk such as older patients, postmenopausal women, obese patients and those with metabolic syndrome have shown promising effects when combining exercise training strategies with MD, particularly in improving vascular endothelial function, markers of inflammation, glucose control and cardiorespiratory capacity. However, it is still unknown whether the specific benefits are attributable to exercise alone or to MD alone. Various physical activity and exercise training protocols including moderate aerobic, high-intensity interval training and strength training have shown effectiveness in reversing the cardiovascular risk in a variety of high-risk populations. Nonetheless, combining the exercise-dependent health effects with MD requires further investigation, particularly in considering the independent or joint changes in the CVD risk-biomarkers associated with either exercise training, MD compliance, or joint effectiveness on endothelial vascular function disease pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory biomarkers, and the identification of the most appropriate exercise training protocols in terms of mode, duration and intensity in high-risk populations.
CLINICAL AND LABORATORY EVALUATION OF ADRENOMEDULLIN AS A BIOMARKER IN MODERATE CHRONIC PERIODONTITIS.

Shahawi M. Salim 1 , Jilan M. Youssef 2 , Shereen Salah 3 and Mohamed M. Anees 4 . 1. B.D. S. Faculty of Dentistry Sirte University, Libya. 2. Professor of Oral Medicine and Periodontology, Faculty of Dentistry, Mansoura University. 3. Professor of Clinical Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Mansoura University. 4. Ass. Professor of Oral Medicine and Periodontology, Faculty of Dentistry, Mansoura University. Manuscript Info Abstract . Manuscript History
Competitive intelligence practice challenges in the South African property sector

Competitive intelligence is a critical success factor for businesses of different forms and sizes. It helps businesses to survive in the midst of fierce competition. Competitive intelligence offers competitive advantage to firms. However, firms find it challenging to practice CI. Whilst competitive intelligence practice challenges have been identified in other sectors in South Africa, no research has been conducted to establish competitive intelligence challenges in the South African property sector. This study aims to establish challenges faced by property practitioners in practising competitive intelligence. The study was quantitative in nature and a web-based questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents. The analysis was descriptive in nature.
Methodology for building an intelligent tutoring system

Over the past 6 years we have been developing a computer program to teach medical diagnosis. Our research synthesizes and extends results in artlficlal intelligence (Al), medicine, and cognitive psychology. This paper describes the progression of the research, and explalns how theories from these fields are combined in a computational model. The general problem has been to develop an "intelligent tutoring system" by adapting the MYCIN "expert system. " Thls conversion requires a deeper understanding of the nature of expertise and explanatlon than origlnally requlred for developlng MYCIN, and a concomitant shift in perspective from slmple performance goals to attaining psychologlcal validity in the program''s reasoning process. Others have written extensively about the relatlon of artificlal intelligence to cognltive sclence (e.g., [Pylyshyn, 1978] [Boden, 1977]). Our purpose here is not to repeat those arguments, but to present a case study which will provide a common point for further dlscusslon. To this end, to help evaluate the state of cognitive science, we will outline our methodology and survey what resources and viewpoints have helped our research. We will also discuss pitfalls that other Al-oriented cognitive scientists may encounter. Finally, we will present some questions coming out of our work whlch might suggest possible collaboration with other fields of research.