Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nimotuzumab plus radiotherapy for unresectable squamous-cell carcinoma of the head and neck

The prognosis of patients with advanced head and neck cancer remain dismal. For this tumor type, elevated levels of EGFR are associated with a shorter disease free survival and time to treatment failure, reflecting a more aggressive phenotype. Nimotuzumab is a humanized monoclonal antibody that recognizes domain III of the extracellular region of the EGFR, within an area that overlaps with both the surface patch recognized by cetuximab and the binding site for EGF. In order to assess the efficacy of nimotuzumab in combination with radiotherapy, a controlled, double blind, randomized clinical trial was conducted in 106 advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck patients, mostly, unfit for chemo-radiotherapy. Control patients received a placebo and radiotherapy. Treatment was safe and the most frequent adverse events consisted on grade I or II asthenia, fever, headache and chills. No skin rash was detected. A significant complete response rate improvement was found in the group of patients treated with nimotuzumab as compared to the placebo. In the intent to treat analysis, a trend towards survival benefit for nimotuzumab treated subjects was found. The survival benefit became significant when applying the Harrington-Fleming test, a weighted log-rank that underscores the detection of differences deferred on time. In addition, a preliminary biomarker investigation showed a significant survival improvement for nimotuzumab treated patients as compared to controls for subjects with EGFR positive tumors. All patients showed a quality of life improvement and a reduction of the general and specific symptoms of the disease.
Motion planning for a Diesel Oxidation Catalyst outlet temperature

A simple distributed parameter model is proposed for a Diesel Oxidation Catalyst (DOC). This model focuses on the propagation of the inlet temperature variations. The inlet-to-outlet temperature transfer function is computed. Its inversion allows to derive an open-loop control law corresponding to finite-time transitions of the outlet temperature. However, this straightforward strategy has some shortcomings. In particular, the obtained control histories are, for presented cases of engineering interest, inconsistent with the performance of available actuators. To address this issue, a constrained optimization approach is proposed. The results lead to a surprisingly simple control law.
Claw disorders in dairy cattle – an unexpected association between energy metabolism and sole haemorrhages

The present study investigated whether changes of energy metabolism post-partum (pp) are associated with claw health. For this purpose, back-fat-thickness (BFT) was measured and blood samples were taken from 146 cows at four examination times. The serum levels of free fatty acids (FFA), ß-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) and glucose were measured. Furthermore, in the first week postpartum (pp) and at 8 weeks pp, a claw trimming was done and the presence and extent of sole haemorrhages (SH) was recorded. Animals with high BFT at calving and therefore high fat mobilisation and whose FFA and BHB levels in the first week pp exceeded the reference values had fewer pathological changes of the claws than thinner animals whose FFA and BHB levels stayed within reference ranges. The body condition before calving, represented in this study by BFT, plays an important role in non-infectious claw disorders. Poorer body condition was found to be associated with the SH that develop in the first 2 months of lactation.
Musical experience strengthens the neural representation of sounds important for communication in middle-aged adults

Older adults frequently complain that while they can hear a person talking, they cannot understand what is being said; this difficulty is exacerbated by background noise. Peripheral hearing loss cannot fully account for this age-related decline in speech-in-noise ability, as declines in central processing also contribute to this problem. Given that musicians have enhanced speech-in-noise perception, we aimed to define the effects of musical experience on subcortical responses to speech and speech-in-noise perception in middle-aged adults. Results reveal that musicians have enhanced neural encoding of speech in quiet and noisy settings. Enhancements include faster neural response timing, higher neural response consistency, more robust encoding of speech harmonics, and greater neural precision. Taken together, we suggest that musical experience provides perceptual benefits in an aging population by strengthening the underlying neural pathways necessary for the accurate representation of important temporal and spectral features of sound.
The prostacyclin pathway in pulmonary arterial hypertension: a clinical review

ABSTRACT Introduction: Prostacyclin is produced in vascular endothelial cells and acts via the IP prostacyclin receptor to cause vasodilation and inhibit smooth muscle cell proliferation and platelet aggregation. Prostacyclin production is reduced in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), and drugs targeting the prostacyclin pathway are one of the pharmacotherapeutic options for PAH. Areas covered: The prostacyclin pathway and drugs that target it are discussed, including synthetic prostacyclin (epoprostenol), prostacyclin analogs (iloprost, treprostinil, beraprost) and selective prostacyclin IP receptor agonists (selexipag). An overview of the development of these therapies, from the earlier agents requiring parenteral administration, through inhaled formulations, to oral products, is provided, together with a summary of data from key clinical trials and registries. Expert commentary: Synthetic prostacyclin and prostacyclin analogs are beneficial for patients with PAH, but they tend to be underused, in part due to the difficulties associated with the administration of parenteral and inhaled formulations. Oral prostacyclin analogs have some limitations with regard to efficacy. The newest agent targeting the prostacyclin pathway, the selective prostacyclin receptor agonist selexipag, is administered orally, and has been shown to reduce a composite morbidity/mortality endpoint. Ongoing studies will help clarify how best to use it in the management of PAH.
Spectroscopy Made Easy: A New Tool for Fitting Observations with Synthetic Spectra

We describe a new software package that may be used to determine stellar and atomic parameters by matching observed spectra with synthetic spectra generated from parameterized atmospheres. A nonlinear least squares algorithm is used to solve for any subset of allowed parameters, which include atomic data (loggf and van der Waals damping constants), model atmosphere specications (Te ,l og g), elemental abundances, and radial, turbulent, and rotational velocities. LTE synthesis software handles discontiguous spectral intervals and complex atomic blends. As a demonstration, we t 26 Fe I lines in the NSO Solar Atlas (Kurucz et al. 1984), determining various solar and atomic parameters.
A distributional memory for German

This paper describes the creation of a Distributional Memory (Baroni and Lenci 2010) resource for German. Distributional Memory is a generalized distributional resource for lexical semantics that does not have to commit to a particular vector space at the time of creation. We induce a resource from a German corpus, following the original design decisions as closely as possible, and discuss the steps necessary for a new language. We evaluate the German DM model on a synonym selection task, finding that it can compete with existing models.
Towards a Measurement Model of Corporate Social Software Success - Evidences from an Exploratory Multiple Case Study

In many organizations, social software is well established and no longer just a trend topic, which means that benefits are expected. As with any other type of information systems (IS), assessing social software success is an important and challenging task for both practitioners and researchers. This motivated us to present a conceptual model for measuring social software success. This model is based on Gable et al.'s IS Impact Measurement Model, a review of the related research, as well as data gained from three case studies. Our findings indicate that modifications have to be made to existing IS success measurement models regarding the peculiarities of social software. The results reveal that new measures are necessary. Furthermore, social factors concerning the organization and the individuals can specifically influence social software success positively.
Presence of High-Risk HPV mRNA in Relation to Future High-Grade Lesions among High-Risk HPV DNA Positive Women with Minor Cytological Abnormalities

Objective Continuous expression of E6- and E7-oncogenes of high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) types is necessary for the development and maintenance of the dysplastic phenotype. The aim of the study was to determine the sensitivity and specificity of the APTIMA HPV mRNA assay (Hologic) in predicting future development of high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) among high-risk HPV-DNA-positive women with atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASCUS) or low-grade squamous epithelial lesion (LSIL) cytology. Methods Archived SurePath cervical samples of women ≥ 35 years of age with high-risk HPV DNA-positive ASCUS (n = 211) or LSIL, (n = 131) were tested for the presence of high-risk HPV E6/E7 mRNA using the APTIMA HPV assay, and the women were monitored for development of histopathologically verified CIN2+. Results Twenty-nine percent (61/211) of the women in the ASCUS group, and 34.3% (45/131) in the LSIL group developed CIN2+ within 4.5 years of follow-up. The prevalence of HPV mRNA was 90.0% (95% CI 85.9-94.0) among women with ASCUS and 95.4% (95% CI 91.8-99.0) among women with LSIL. The presence of HPV E6/E7 mRNA was associated with future development of CIN2+ among women with ASCUS and LSIL (p=0.02). The mRNA assay demonstrated high sensitivity in predicting future CIN2+ and CIN3 for index ASCUS (96.7%; 95% CI 87.6-99.4 and 100%; 95% CI 82.2-100, respectively) and LSIL (97.8%, 95% CI 86.8-99.9 and 100%, 95% CI 79.9-100, respectively). The corresponding specificity was low, 12.7% (95% CI 7.9-19.3) and 5.8% (95% CI 2.2-13.6), for future CIN2+, respectively. The negative predictive value of the HPV mRNA assay for detecting future CIN3 was 100%, since no mRNA-negative woman developed CIN3 (0/27) as compared to 13.6% (43/315) of the mRNA-positive women (p = 0.03). Conclusion The APTIMA mRNA assay demonstrated high sensitivity but low specificity in predicting future CIN2+ among women with minor cytological abnormalities. The assay had high negative predictive value for future CIN3, indicating that HPV-mRNA-negative women are at low risk of progression to high grade CIN.
Bitbots: Simple Robots Solving Complex Tasks

Sensing uncertainty is a central issue in robotics. Sensor limitations often prevent accurate state estimation, and robots find themselves confronted with a complicated infonnation (belief) space. In this paper we define and characterize the information spaces of very simple robots, called Bitbots, which have severe sensor limitations. While complete estimation of the robot's state is impossible, careful consideration and management of the uncertainty is presented as a search in the information space. We show that these simple robots can solve several challenging online problems, even though they can neither obtain a complete map of their environment nor exactly localize themselves. However, when placed in an unknown environment, Bitbots can build a topological representation of it and then perform pursuit-evasion (i.e., locate all moving targets inside this environment). This paper introduces Bitbots, and provides both theoretical analysis of their information spaces and simulation results.
Journal of Memory and Language

Experiment 1, dividing attention at study or test decreased old word recognition but did not influence fea conjunction recognition errors after correcting for false alarms to new words (baseline). In Experiment sponse deadline manipulation influenced old word recognition but not feature and conjunction effects ( ture or conjunction error rate minus baseline). Across Experiments 3 and 4, study repetitions increased abilities of feature and conjunction errors for participants under strong pressure to respond quickly. How such increases were observed for participants who were given more time to respond, providing evidenc familiarity underlying feature and conjunction errors can be countered with recollection. Thus study repet creased both familiarity and recollection. Feature and conjunction errors are based on familiarity in the of recollection. An approach that combines an item–associative distinction with a dual-process framewo Yonelinas, 1997) also can account for these errors. However, an approach that uses a feature-configur tinction must be modified to account for these results. © 2001 Academic Press
Classifying easy-to-read texts without parsing

Document classification using automated linguistic analysis and machine learning (ML) has been shown to be a viable road forward for readability assessment. The best models can be trained to decide if a text is easy to read or not with very high accuracy, e.g. a model using 117 parameters from shallow, lexical, morphological and syntactic analyses achieves 98,9% accuracy. In this paper we compare models created by parameter optimization over subsets of that total model to find out to which extent different high-performing models tend to consist of the same parameters and if it is possible to find models that only use features not requiring parsing. We used a genetic algorithm to systematically optimize parameter sets of fixed sizes using accuracy of a Support Vector Machine classi- fier as fitness function. Our results show that it is possible to find models almost as good as the currently best models while omitting parsing based features.
Numerical simulation of motion and deformation of healthy and sick red blood cell through a constricted vessel using hybrid lattice Boltzmann-immersed boundary method

Abstract In the present article, hybrid lattice Boltzmann-immersed boundary method is utilized to simulate two-dimensional incompressible viscous flow involving flexible immersed red blood cell (RBC) in a microchannel. The main focus of the present research is to study motion and deformation of both healthy and sick RBCs in a vessel with different sizes of stenosis. The presented computational results consent reasonably well with the available data in the literature. Two different channels i.e. a simple and a constricted channel are investigated in the present manuscript. The results show that the RBC transfer and deform without any lift force and rotation induced when it is located on the symmetry axis of the microchannel. However, when the RBC is located off the symmetry axis, the pressure difference produced in the flow around the RBC would apply lift forces on them and expel them towards the center of the channel. The healthy RBC always shows more deformation related to the sick one along the channel. Another important result of the present research is that for the ratio of a sick RBC cannot pass the stenosis, and it reasons serious difficulties for body. The present results have been compared with the available experimental and numerical results which show good agreements.
A theoretical framework of caring in the Chinese context: a grounded theory study.

AIM This paper is a report of a study describing the components of nurse caring in the Chinese cultural context. BACKGROUND The expressions, dimensions and patterns of caring vary in different cultures. Caring is deeply embedded in the Chinese culture and nurses are told to care for patients as if they were related by blood. However, to put caring in a professional and practical context, it must extend meaning with a deeper philosophical inspiration that is transcendent and described to guide nursing practices. METHODS A grounded theory research design and the Delphi method were adopted. First, a total of 16 individual non-structured interviews were conducted with noted scholars on nursing education, clinical nursing, nursing administration, medical education and the humanities between January 2006 and June 2007. All interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and analysed using constant comparative data analysis. Secondly, 20 experts with the same inclusion criteria were recruited to conduct a two-round Delphi study to enrich and validate the theoretical framework of caring. Experts were asked to score 0 = disagree or 1 = agree for each listed item and its description in a scale. Consensus was considered when 90% or more agreement was reached. Data were collected from May 2007 to February 2009 and calculated for the agreement rates using SPSS version 11.0. RESULTS Four attributes of caring including attitude of caring, knowledge of caring, ability of caring and perceptions of caring were determined, along with 8 associated subcategories and 22 statements. Among them, caring attitude is central for presenting care in daily practice. Professional knowledge of nursing, the humanities and social science give the basic theoretical guidance for nurses to exhibit caring behaviour. In the education process, perceptions of giving and receiving care are the key factors for cultivating care. CONCLUSIONS The framework could be interpreted as a list of teaching objectives and could contribute to the further development of an integrated approach for teaching care in nursing curricula. It would also be beneficial for applying and evaluating care in the practice of clinical nursing and nursing education in the Chinese culture.
A study of machine learning classifiers for spam detection

In the present world, there is a need of emails communication but unsolicited emails hamper such communications. The present research emphasises to build a spam classification model with/without the use of ensemble of classifiers methods have been incorporated. Through this study, the aim is to distinguish between ham emails and spam emails by making an efficient and sensitive classification model that gives good accuracy with low false positive rate. Greedy Stepwise feature search method has been incorporated for searching informative feature of the Enron email dataset. The comparison has been done among different machine learning classifiers (such as Bayesian, Naïve Bayes, SVM (support vector machine), J48 (decision tree), Bayesian with Adaboost, Naïve Bayes with Adaboost). The concerned classifiers are tested and evaluated on metric (such as F-measure (accuracy), False Positive Rate, and training time). By analysing all these aspects in their entirety, it has been found that SVM is the best classifier to be used. It has the high accuracy and the low false positive rate. However, training time of SVM to build the model is high, but as the results on other parameters are positive, the time does not pose such an issue.
O ruído em sala de aula e a percepção dos professores de uma escola de ensino fundamental de Piracicaba

Teachers are among the professionals subjected to health alterations due to inadequate working conditions, such as environmental noise (from students, from the street, from the fan), bad acoustic and bad work organization (long working periods). These conditions may cause hearing and extra-hearing effects, resulting on stress and fatigue, and also possibly resulting on communication problems such as vocal diseases. Goal: to analyze the perception of environmental sounds on teachers' health. Method: thirty-six teachers of the fundamental courses of a public school in Piracicaba - SP, participated on this research. There were conducted classroom sound measurements, interviews about hearing and nonhearing effects caused by noise exposure, and audiometric exams. Results: 75% of the teachers considered the classroom noisy; at sound measuring it was found a variation from 55 to 102 dBA. Most of the teachers (86%) reported non-hearing symptoms (dizziness, digestive and bloodstream system problems), 95% of them reported vocal complaints (fatigue and larynges pain after class), and noise effects over oral communication in the classroom (need of speaking louder, difficulty on making themselves understood and of understanding other people). As to the hearing profile, 29% reported hearing alterations. Conclusion: the noise found on the classrooms may have direct relation to the teachers' health problems. It was proved on this research the urgency on alerting, specially health professionals, about the harm effects of noise exposure.
Bicarbonate exchangers SLC26A3 and SLC26A6 are localized at the apical membrane of porcine vas deferens epithelium

The goal of this study was to test for expression of HCO3− exchangers SLC26A3 and SLC26A6 in primary cultures of porcine vas deferens epithelial cells (1°PVD) and native porcine vas deferens. Quantitative RT‐PCR revealed that mRNA coding for SLC26A6 was six times more abundant than mRNA coding for SLC26A3 in 1°PVD cells. Western blot analyses combined with surface biotinylation of 1°PVD demonstrated SLC26A3 and SLC26A6 immunoreactivities in whole‐cell lysates and apical surfaces of monolayers. Laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM) of the 1°PVD cell monolayers demonstrated that SLC26A3 immunoreactivity was primarily in the apical region but present throughout the basal‐apical cellular axis, whereas SLC26A6 immunoreactivity was present in the apical region and sometimes accumulated in the nuclear region. LSCM also demonstrated SLC26A3 and SLC26A6 immunoreactivities present along the entire apical lining of the native porcine vas deferens epithelium and in basal cells. The patterns and apparent abundance of SLC26A3 and SLC26A6 immunoreactivities in the proximal vas deferens were not different from the corresponding immunoreactivities in the distal region. There is no evidence of preferential expression of SLC26A3 or SLC26A6 in any portion of the vas deferens, as has been proposed for epithelia that secrete HCO3− in other duct systems. Thus, vas deferens epithelia express transporters throughout the duct that can contribute to rapid alkalinization of the luminal contents as it has been demonstrated in vivo.
Augmenting Feature-driven fMRI Analyses: Semi-supervised learning and resting state activity

Resting state activity is brain activation that arises in the absence of any task, and is usually measured in awake subjects during prolonged fMRI scanning sessions where the only instruction given is to close the eyes and do nothing. It has been recognized in recent years that resting state activity is implicated in a wide variety of brain function. While certain networks of brain areas have different levels of activation at rest and during a task, there is nevertheless significant similarity between activations in the two cases. This suggests that recordings of resting state activity can be used as a source of unlabeled data to augment discriminative regression techniques in a semi-supervised setting. We evaluate this setting empirically yielding three main results: (i) regression tends to be improved by the use of Laplacian regularization even when no additional unlabeled data are available, (ii) resting state data seem to have a similar marginal distribution to that recorded during the execution of a visual processing task implying largely similar types of activation, and (iii) this source of information can be broadly exploited to improve the robustness of empirical inference in fMRI studies, an inherently data poor domain.