Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mars and Venus in the GP's office

Discussions about the differences between men and women are age-old, but usually of great interest to both sexes and, despite our increasing understanding of gender psychology, likely to be prone to bias and misconstruction for centuries to come. The mix of gender differences in the pathogenesis, perception and presentation of disease is a potent brew for confusion, but needs further research if we are to completely understand the variety of ways in which nature and nurture interact in the development and manifestations of obstructive lung disease. For some time, it has been known that men and women perceive and relate their symptoms differently 1. For many diseases, it is also becoming clear that males and females develop different symptoms and clinical manifestations, at different stages of a disease, and respond differently to treatment 2, 3. Traditionally, women have been considered to be more likely to report symptoms and to be more sensitive to changes in underlying disease 4, 5. In relation to the presenting features of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in males and females, two papers published in the present issue of the European Respiratory Journal have some important contributions to make. In the first of these papers, Watson et al. 6 investigated predictors for the presence, development and remission of COPD symptoms in participants completing 3 yrs of the European Respiratory Society Study on Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (EUROSCOP). Over these 3 yrs similar proportions of males and females reported symptoms, although in males better lung function was associated with a reduction in new symptoms of wheeze and dyspnoea, and symptom prevalence reduced with annual improvement of forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1). The prevalence of phlegm was reduced with budesonide treatment, an effect seen only in males. An increase in …
Susceptibilities of Gram-negative bacilli from hospital- and community-acquired intra-abdominal and urinary tract infections: a 2016–2017 update of the Chinese SMART study

Objectives: To update the epidemiology and susceptibility of hospital-acquired (HA) and community-acquired (CA), as well as intensive care unit (ICU) vs non-ICU-derived intra-abdominal infection (IAI) and urinary tract infection (UTI) pathogens in Chinese hospitals. Methods: A total of 2,546 Gram-negative isolates from IAIs and 1,947 isolates from UTIs collected in 16 hospitals and 7 regions of China from 2016 to 2017 were analyzed. Results: E. coli and K. pneumoniae were the most common pathogens identiﬁed in HA (40.7%, 21.9%) and CA (49.2%, 21.3%) IAIs and in HA (59.0%, 17.3%) and CA (64.3%, 12.7%) UTIs, respectively. The overall rates of extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL)-positive strains were 48.2% for E. coli and 26.4% for K. pneumoniae. The rates of ESBL-positive E. coli and K. pneumoniae strains were signiﬁcantly higher in HA than in CA IAIs (51.7% vs 42.4%, P=0.016 and 22.0% vs 20.6%, P<0.001). IAI E. coli ESBL-producing isolates were most susceptible to IPM (97.2%) and AMK (93.9%), and UTI-associated E. coli ESBL-producers were 94.74% susceptible to amikacin (AMK), 97.02% to imipenem (IPM), and 91.4% to ertapenem (ETP). IAI K. pneumoniae ESBL-producing isolates were most susceptible to AMK (84.43%) and IPM (82.79%), and UTI-associated K. pneumoniae ESBL-producers were 88.39% susceptible to AMK, 87.5% to IPM, and 82.14% to ETP. Overall, percentages of susceptible strains to ETP, IPM, AMK, and Piperacillin-Tazobactam (TZP) were in the range of 82.0% to 96.4%, to 5 cephalosporins in the range of 31.4%-69.6% and to 2 fluoroquinolones in the range of 37.8%-45.5% for E. coli and 65.5%-90.7%, 37.7%-75.3%, and 43.9%-73.2% for K. pneumoniae, respectively. Conclusion: E. coli and K. pneumoniae continued to be the main pathogens in Chinese UTIs and IAIs with high ESBL-positive rates between 2016 and 2017. Carbapenem- or amikacin-based therapies were the most effective to combat IAI and UTI pathogens.
The role of individual differences in visual\verbal information processing preferences in visual\verbal source monitoring

ABSTRACT Researchers have long sought to understand individual differences in false memory susceptibility. One particularly interesting direction in this area looks at individual differences in visual versus verbal styles of information processing. Prior work linking individual differences in these cognitive styles with false memory susceptibility has been mixed, likely due to a lack of research that distinguishes between visual and verbal styles as independent factors. The current study addresses this issue by linking independent visual and verbal scores on the Style of Processing scale with performance on a Picture-Word source-monitoring task in which 82 participants indicated if various objects were previously presented to them as words or images. The results of this study show that higher visual style of processing preferences are associated with improved levels of visual source-monitoring ability as indexed by a reduced number of source-monitoring errors involving the misattribution of verbally presented items to a visual source.
Trapped Factors and China&Apos;S Impact on Global Growth

In a general equilibrium product-cycle model, lower trade barriers increase Southern purchasing power, which lifts long-run growth by increasing the profit from innovation. In the short run, factors of production must be reallocated inside firms, which lowers the opportunity cost of innovation, generating an additional trapped factor effect. Starting from a baseline OECD growth rate of 2% we find that trade integration with low-wage countries in the decade around China's WTO accession could have increased long-run growth to 2.4%. There is an additional short-run trapped factors effect, raising growth to 2.7%. China accounts for about half of these growth increases.
Incremental Web Page Template Detection by Text Segments

Template detection technique is important for many applications. Most template detection methods utilize content repetition as a hint to detect template blocks that lots of Web pages are required as input. So they usually process Web pages in batches that a newly crawled page can not be processed until enough pages are collected. This consumes large storage consumption to cache Web pages and results in a huge delay in data refreshing. In this paper, we present an incremental framework to detect templates in which a page is processed as soon as it has been crawled. Under this framework, we donpsilat need to cache any Web page. Experiments show that our framework consumes less than 7% storage than traditional methods. And also the delay of data refreshing induced by the batch process is completely eliminated.
Estimating Local Intrinsic Dimensionality

This paper is concerned with the estimation of a local measure of intrinsic dimensionality (ID) recently proposed by Houle. The local model can be regarded as an extension of Karger and Ruhl's expansion dimension to a statistical setting in which the distribution of distances to a query point is modeled in terms of a continuous random variable. This form of intrinsic dimensionality can be particularly useful in search, classification, outlier detection, and other contexts in machine learning, databases, and data mining, as it has been shown to be equivalent to a measure of the discriminative power of similarity functions. Several estimators of local ID are proposed and analyzed based on extreme value theory, using maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), the method of moments (MoM), probability weighted moments (PWM), and regularly varying functions (RV). An experimental evaluation is also provided, using both real and artificial data.
A study on the influence of plasma concentrations of adriamycin, cyclophosphamide and paclitaxel on the clinical outcome of patients with breast cancer in a tertiary care hospital

BACKGROUND: Chemotherapy is a well-established therapeutic modality known for ages for the treatment of breast cancer. Both adjuvant and neoadjuvant chemotherapy has significantly reduced the morbidity and mortality associated with breast cancer. However, chemotherapy is associated with an increased incidence of adverse effects attributed to the drug as well as patient characteristics. In majority of patients, the dose which produces the therapeutic effect may also be responsible for toxic effects. Therefore, optimizing the drug dosage to reduce the exposure may have the therapeutic advantage of maximizing the efficacy of the drug while reducing the adverse effects. AIM OF THE STUDY: To study the influence of plasma concentration of Adriamycin, Cyclophosphamide and Paclitaxel on the liver and renal functions, tumour size reduction, receptor status (ER/PR) and adverse drug effects of patients with breast cancer. METHODOLOGY: This study was done in the Department of Pharmacology, PSG Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (PSG IMS&R), Coimbatore during the period of November 2016 to October 2017. A total of 30 patients with breast cancer on AC/T regimen (Adriamycin and Cyclophosphamide 4 cycles followed by Paclitaxel 4 cycles) were enrolled and were grouped into 3, with 10 patients for each drug under study. The data pertaining to the treatment of breast cancer such as tumour size, drug and dosage, Estrogen/Progesterone receptor (ER/PR) status, laboratory parameters including liver and renal function test and complete blood count (CBC), nature of chemotherapy (adjuvant /neoadjuvant) and number of cycles completed were obtained from the medical records of the patient. Patients were also asked about the occurrence of adverse effects like nausea, vomiting, etc. About two ml of venous blood was collected from the study participants at the end of infusion of the drug and centrifuged to separate plasma. The samples were then analyzed using HPLC and the plasma concentration of the drugs was determined. RESULTS: The mean plasma concentration of Adriamycin, Cyclophosphamide and Paclitaxel was found to be 3460.50, 1592.44 and 3038.29 ng/ml respectively. We found that the plasma concentration of the drugs showed inter-individual variations which were consistent with the previous studies. The statistical analysis was done using Pearson correlation. No significant correlation of plasma concentration of these chemotherapeutic drugs was found with the other clinical, biochemical and hormonal parameters. CONCLUSION: From our study we conclude that the plasma concentration alone is not a determinant of clinical outcome or toxicities in these patients. Dose optimisation has to be validated prospectively in a large group of patients with more pharmacokineticpharmacodynamic parameters.
Evolutionarily stable dispersal rate in a metapopulation with extinctions and kin competition

We derive an analytic expression for the evolutionarily stable dispersal rate that formalizes the balance between the effects of four factors: the cost of dispersal, the extinction rate, the coefficient of relatedness and the mode of dispersal (i.e. the probability of common origin of immigrants). This result allows us to study the effects of each factor and, more interestingly, the interactions between them. In particular, we show that the evolutionarily stable dispersal rate is not always a decreasing function of the cost of dispersal and an increasing function of relatedness. These counter-intuitive results are discussed in the light of kin selection theory. We also present the results of numerical simulations in which relatedness is not a fixed parameter but depends on different parameters including dispersal itself. We discuss these results and show how the evolutionarily stable dispersal rate is affected by the environment and the life history traits of the species. More generally, this paper presents a simple formalism allowing the study of the effects of kin selection in unstable environments (i.e. with extinctions and recolonizations). The implications of this formalism for the understanding of the evolution of other life history traits is briefly discussed. Copyright 1999 Academic Press.
Examination of flood runoff reproductivity for different rainfall sources in central vietnam

This paper presents the combination of different precipitation data sets and the distributed hydrological model, in order to examine the flood runoff reproductivity of scattered observation catchments. The precipitation data sets were obtained from observation using rain-gages, satellite based estimate (TRMM), and numerical weather prediction model (NWP), then were coupled with the super tank model. The case study was conducted in three basins (small, medium, and large size) located in Central Vietnam. Calculated hydrographs based on ground observation rainfall showed best fit to measured stream flow, while those obtained from TRMM and NWP showed high uncertainty of peak discharges. However, calculated hydrographs using the adjusted rainfield depicted a promising alternative for the application of TRMM and NWP in flood modeling for scattered observation catchments, especially for the extension of forecast lead time. Keywords—Flood forecast, rainfall-runoff model, satellite rainfall estimate, numerical weather prediction, quantitative precipitation forecasting.
Differential Response of Human Ovarian Cancer Cells to Induction of Apoptosis by Vitamin E Succinate and Vitamin E Analogue, α-TEA

A vitamin E derivative, vitamin E succinate (VES; RRR-α-tocopheryl succinate), and a vitamin E analogue, 2,5,7,8-tetramethyl-2R-(4R,8R,12-trimethyltridecyl)chroman-6-yloxy acetic acid (α-TEA), induce human breast, prostate, colon, lung, cervical, and endometrial tumor cells in culture to undergo apoptosis but not normal human mammary epithelial cells, immortalized, nontumorigenic breast cells, or normal human prostate epithelial cells. Human ovarian and cervical cancer cell lines are exceptions, with α-TEA exhibiting greater proapoptotic effects. Although both VES and α-TEA can induce A2780 and subline A2780/cp70 ovarian cancer cells to undergo DNA synthesis arrest within 24 h of treatment, only α-TEA is an effective inducer of apoptosis. VES or α-TEA treatment of cp70 cells with 5, 10, or 20 μg/ml for 3 days induced 5, 6, and 19% versus 9, 36, and 71% apoptosis, respectively. Colony formation data provide additional evidence that cp70 cells are more sensitive to growth inhibition by α-TEA than VES. Differences in stability of the ester-linked succinate moiety of VES versus the ether-linked acetic acid moiety of α-TEA were demonstrated by high-performance liquid chromatography analyses that showed α-TEA to remain intact, whereas VES was hydrolyzed to the free phenol, RRR-α-tocopherol. Pretreatment of cp70 cells with bis-(p-nitrophenyl) phosphate, an esterase inhibitor, before VES treatment, resulted in increased levels of intact VES and apoptosis. Taken together, these data show α-TEA to be a potent and stable proapoptotic agent for human ovarian tumor cells and suggest that endogenous ovarian esterases can hydrolyze the succinate moiety of VES, yielding RRR-α-tocopherol, an ineffective apoptotic-inducing agent.
Time synchronization for underwater sensor networks based on multi-source beacon fusion

Time synchronization is the foundation for collaboration among sensor nodes. Acoustic communication and restricted mobility of sensor nodes are two unique characteristics of underwater sensor networks (UWSNs), negating the effect of terrestrial synchronization schemes. Existing UWSN time synchronization protocols focus on point to point synchronization, incompatible for large-scale networks. Moreover, some of them require special hardwares and deployment conditions. In this paper, we propose MulSync, a scalable synchronization protocol for multi-hop UWSNs. MulSync includes the synchronization communication scheme to exploit acoustic communication nature of broadcast. The skew and offset are estimated by performing linear regression three times over a set of time stamp pairs gathered through message exchange. Three linear regressions are exploited to make full use of the time reference information delivered from multi-source beacons. Simulation results demonstrate that MulSync achieves high accuracy at low message overhead and time cost.
Musical Expertise and the Ability to Imagine Loudness

Most perceived parameters of sound (e.g. pitch, duration, timbre) can also be imagined in the absence of sound. These parameters are imagined more veridically by expert musicians than non-experts. Evidence for whether loudness is imagined, however, is conflicting. In music, the question of whether loudness is imagined is particularly relevant due to its role as a principal parameter of performance expression. This study addressed the hypothesis that the veridicality of imagined loudness improves with increasing musical expertise. Experts, novices and non-musicians imagined short passages of well-known classical music under two counterbalanced conditions: 1) while adjusting a slider to indicate imagined loudness of the music and 2) while tapping out the rhythm to indicate imagined timing. Subtests assessed music listening abilities and working memory span to determine whether these factors, also hypothesised to improve with increasing musical expertise, could account for imagery task performance. Similarity between each participant’s imagined and listening loudness profiles and reference recording intensity profiles was assessed using time series analysis and dynamic time warping. The results suggest a widespread ability to imagine the loudness of familiar music. The veridicality of imagined loudness tended to be greatest for the expert musicians, supporting the predicted relationship between musical expertise and musical imagery ability.
Gender Differences in Cognitive Development and School Readiness: Findings from a Randomised Controlled Trial of Children from Communities of Socio-economic Disadvantage in Ireland

In recent years, through collaborations between Atlantic Philanthropies and the Irish Government, there has been ever-increasing attention on early intervention and prevention programmes in Ireland, which are targeted at geographic areas that have been designated as socio-economically disadvantaged (McAvoy, Purdy, Sneddon and Mac Evilly, 2013). These programmes aim to reduce the negative effects of childhood adversities. In understanding developmental trajectories in early childhood, one factor that requires careful consideration is gender and whether differences exist between boys and girls in early childhood development (Ertem et al., 2018). This is of particular importance in light of recent findings by Garcia, Heckman and Ziff (2017), who argued that boys have greater vulnerability to lower quality environments than girls. While an extensive review of the research literature on gender differences in early childhood development is beyond the scope of this short research article, evidence of gender differences across the domains of cognitive development and school readiness during early childhood is briefly discussed below.
Turbulence modelling and it's impact on CFD predictions for cooling of electronic components

This paper will discuss Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) results from an investigation into the accuracy of several turbulence models to predict air cooling for electronic packages and systems. Also new transitional turbulence models will be proposed with emphasis on hybrid techniques that use the k-/spl epsiv/ model at an appropriate distance away from the wall and suitable models, with wall functions, near wall regions. A major proportion of heat emitted from electronic packages can be extracted by air cooling. This flow of air throughout an electronic system and the heat extracted is highly dependent on the nature of turbulence present in the flow. The use of CFD for such investigations is fast becoming a powerful and almost essential tool for the design, development and optimization of engineering applications. However turbulence models remain a key issue when tackling such flow phenomena. The reliability of CFD analysis depends heavily on the turbulence model employed together with the wall functions implemented. In order to resolve the abrupt fluctuations experienced by the turbulent energy and other parameters located at near wall regions and shear layers a particularly fine computational mesh is necessary which inevitably increases the computer storage and run-time requirements. The PHYSICA Finite Volume code was used for this investigation. With the exception of the k-/spl epsiv/ and k-/spl omega/ models which are available as standard within PHYSICA, all other turbulence models mentioned were implemented via the source code by the authors. The LVEL, LVEL CAP, Wolfshtein, k-/spl epsiv/, k-/spl omega/, SST and k/spl epsiv//kl models are described and compared with experimental data.
The near-infrared properties of the host galaxies of radio quasars

We present K-band images of 31 radio quasars selected from the B3-VLA quasar sample. A new method has been developed to detect and restore the host galaxies of these quasars. We have detected the host galaxies of 16 of them. Using these data together with previous data from the B3-VLA quasars (Carballo et al. 1998, hereafter Paper I) and literature data from other samples, we have analyzed a sample of 69 hosts of radio quasars, covering a redshift range between 0 < z < 3. The host galaxies are large (r e ∼ 15 kpc) and luminous elliptical galaxies (∼75% of them brighter than L* K ), with an evolution similar to that of radio galaxies. A significant fraction (∼40%) of them shows evidence of a possible collision/merging process. They follow a μ e -r e relation similar to that of normal elliptical galaxies. The morphological and photometric similarities between these galaxies and radio galaxies in this wide range of redshifts is a good test of the reliability of unification schemes. All of them show little evolution from z = 3 to the present epoch. Their K - z distribution is consistent with a no-evolution model, with a fraction of the dispersion due to differences in radio power. We have found a correlation between the quasar radio power and the host luminosity. We have also found a correlation between the host and nuclear source luminosities. These correlations could be induced by a physical relation between the central black hole and the bulge mass (Magorrian et al. 1998).
Architecture for area-efficient 2-D transform in H.264/AVC

As the VLSI technology advances continuously, ASIC can easily achieve the required performance and most of them are actually over-designed. Thus, architecture shrinking is inevitable in optimal designs especially when supply voltages are getting lower. However, conventional designs starting from minimization of algorithmic operations (e.g. multiply) may not always lead to optimal architectures, for the wires and the interconnection complexity significantly grow and have become predominant. This paper explores algorithms and architectures for the 2-D transform in H.264/AVC, of which the operations are very simple (i.e. only shift and add). We have shown that fewer operations do not always result in more compact designs. In our experiments with the UMC 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS technology, the most straightforward matrix multiplication without separable 2-D operation or any fast algorithm has the best area efficiency for DI-size (720/spl times/480) video at 30 fps. It saves 48%, 34%, and 16% silicon area of the previous works respectively.