Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Once-weekly albiglutide in the management of type 2 diabetes: patient considerations

This review describes the pharmacologic, pharmacokinetic, and pharmacodynamic properties of albiglutide, as well as its clinical efficacy and safety. Albiglutide is a novel, once-weekly, injectable glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. The European Commission recently granted marketing authorization for the drug in the European Union and on April 15, 2014, the US Food and Drug Administration approved albiglutide (Tanzeum™ [GlaxoSmithKline LLC, Wilmington, DE, USA]) to improve glycemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes. Albiglutide has been studied in Phase I, II, and III clinical trials. In the Phase III clinical trials, known as the Harmony series, weekly dosing of albiglutide demonstrated reductions in fasting plasma glucose, postprandial plasma glucose, and glycated hemoglobin, and was associated with weight loss. In all phases of the clinical trials, albiglutide administered once weekly showed a safety and tolerability profile similar to that of placebo, with mild gastrointestinal-related complaints and injection site erythema being the most commonly encountered adverse effects. Compared with pioglitazone and liraglutide, albiglutide has been shown to be clinically less effective. However, it offers the benefit of weight loss that pioglitazone does not, with fewer gastrointestinal side effects than liraglutide. As guidelines continue to advocate for patient-centered treatment strategies, once-weekly albiglutide will be an important addition to the growing armamentarium of treatment options for adults with type 2 diabetes needing target glycemic control.
Resource-Based and Property Rights Perspectives on Value Creation: The Case of Oil Field Unitization

Resource-based theory implicitly assumes that property rights to resources are secure. Extant property rights theory enables us to relax this assumption to take into account processes where there are struggles in establishing property rights that enhance the realized economic value of resources. A case study of oil field unitization (where a single firm is designated as unit operator to develop the oil reservoir as a whole) is analyzed to illustrate the following points: a full resource-based analysis of value creation must incorporate the role of property rights to internalize externalities and to solve prisoners' dilemma problems of common-pool resources. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
”Do I really need to help?!” Perceived severity of cyberbullying, victim blaming, and bystanders’ willingness to help the victim

Whether bystanders in cyberbullying help a victim or remain passive is based on multilayered cognitive processes. In particular, perceiving and interpreting an incident as an emergency situation, realizing one’s own responsibility to intervene, and forming the intention to help are crucial preconditions for bystander interventions. The characteristics of information and communication technologies (ICTs) change and hamper these cognitive processes. Information and cues that guide individuals’ reactions to offline victimization are missing in many online environments (e.g., seeing a victim’s suffering). By applying a scenario-based experiment (n = 240; 62% female; Mage = 21.3), we investigate how cyberbullying incidents with differing degrees of severity (insults only vs. insults and threats) affect bystanders’ perception of the incident, their tendency to blame the victim, and finally their reactions to cyber victimization (i.e., willingness to help). Our results showed that participants evaluated an incident that included threats and insults (as compared to insults only) as more severe; this in turn was related to a higher willingness to help the victim. In contrast, a seemingly less severe incident (containing insults only) fostered participants’ tendency to ascribe (at least partial) blame for the incident to the victim. This victim blaming correlated with a lower tendency to support the victim. In conclusion, victims of seemingly less serious incidents in particular are at risk of experiencing prolonged suffering because bystanders fail to identify the emergency character of the situation and refuse to help.
Stem Cell Therapy in Chronic Spinal Cord Injuries

Background: Stem cell therapy has shown to have considerable therapeutic potential for spinal cord injuries (SCIs). The use of bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) is clinically attractive because they have shown therapeutic potential in SCI and can be obtained in patients at bedside, raising the possibility of atutologous transplantation. Objectives: To study the value (BMSCs) injected intra-thecally to enhance the repair process in patients with chronic SCIs. Methods: Sixty three patients with Chronic SCI, 43 patients were given stem cell therapy intra-thecally monthly for six months. Twenty patients were clinically followed up as a control group, all underwent neurological examination,: (Motor and Sensory Indices, Ashwarth Spasticity Scale, Functional Ambulation Categories (FAC) and Classify our patients according to American Spinal Injury Association (A, B, C, D or E). Somatosensory evoked potential [SEP] (pre and post (6 months) injections). Results: We found improvement in the motor power [p = 0.001], bladder [p>0.001] and bowel control [p=0.003], there was a significant change from ASIA A to ASIA B [p=0.001], improvement in the cortical potential of SEP [p=0.04], increase in the tone (spasticity) [p>0.001], improvement in the FAC score in 11/ 43 and increased incidence of neuropathic pain in 24 out of the 43 patients (55.8% p>0.001) in the treated group. In the control group, there was improvement in the bladder control [p = 0.05], increase in the tone [p=0.06], but no significant change in the motor power, bowel control, or the incidence of neuropathic pain. Conclusion: Stem cell therapy is a safe treatment option for patients with chronic SCI, further follow-up and research will be needed to adequately define the role of this new treatment modality in patients with chronic SCI. (Egypt J. Neurol. Psychiat. Neurosurg. 2009, 46(2): 467-478)
Transport characteristics of a novel peptide platform for CNS therapeutics

New and effective therapeutics that cross the blood‐brain barrier (BBB) are critically needed for treatment of many brain diseases. We characterize here a novel drug development platform that is broadly applicable for the development of new therapeutics with increased brain penetration. The platform is based on the Angiopep‐2 peptide, a sequence derived from ligands that bind to low‐density lipoprotein receptor‐related protein‐1 (LRP‐1), a receptor expressed on the BBB. Fluorescent imaging studies of a Cy5.5Angiopep‐2 conjugate and immunohistochemical studies of injected Angiopep‐2 in mice demonstrated efficient transport across the BBB into brain parenchyma and subsequent co‐localization with the neuronal nuclei‐selective marker NeuN and the glial marker glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP). Uptake of [125I]‐Angiopep‐2 into brain endothelial cells occurred by a saturable mechanism involving LRP‐1. The primary sequence and charge of Angiopep‐2 were crucial for its passage across the BBB. Overall, the results demonstrate the significant potential of this platform for the development of novel neurotherapeutics.
A Smartphone Ecological Momentary Assessment/Intervention “App” for Collecting Real-Time Data and Promoting Self-Awareness

We have designed a flexible ecological momentary assessment/intervention smartphone (EMA/EMI) “app”. We examine the utility of this app for collecting real-time data, and assessing intra-subject variability, by using it to assess how freshman undergraduates spend their time. We also explore whether its use can promote greater self-awareness. Participants were randomly divided into an experimental group, who used the app, and a control group, who did not. We used the app to collect both randomized in-the-moment data as well as end-of-day data to assess time use. Using a posttest survey we asked participants questions about how they spent time throughout the school semester. We also asked the experimental group about their experience with the app. Among other findings, 80.49% participants indicated that they became more aware of how they spent their time using the app. Corroborating this report, among the experimental group, end-of-semester self-assessment of time spent wasted, and time spent using electronics recreationally, predicted semester GPA at a strength comparable to high school GPA and ACT score (two of the best single predictors for first semester college GPA), but had no correlation among controls. We discuss the advantages and limitations of using apps, such as ours, for EMA and/or EMI.
Vitamin D and Reproduction: From Gametes to Childhood

Vitamin D is well recognized for its essentiality in maintaining skeletal health. Recent research has suggested that vitamin D may exert a broad range of roles throughout the human life cycle starting from reproduction to adult chronic disease risk. Rates of vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy remain high worldwide. Vitamin D deficiency has been associated with an increased risk of fertility problems, preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, and allergic disease in the offspring. Vitamin D is found naturally in only a few foods thus supplementation can provide an accessible and effective way to raise vitamin D status when dietary intakes and sunlight exposure are low. However, the possibility of overconsumption and possible adverse effects is under debate. The effect of vitamin D supplementation during pregnancy and early life on maternal and infant outcomes will be of particular focus in this review.
EvenTweet: Online Localized Event Detection from Twitter

Microblogging services such as Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare have become major sources for information about real-world events. Most approaches that aim at extracting event information from such sources typically use the temporal context of messages. However, exploiting the location information of georeferenced messages, too, is important to detect localized events, such as public events or emergency situations. Users posting messages that are close to the location of an event serve as human sensors to describe an event. In this demonstration, we present a novel framework to detect localized events in real-time from a Twitter stream and to track the evolution of such events over time. For this, spatio-temporal characteristics of keywords are continuously extracted to identify meaningful candidates for event descriptions. Then, localized event information is extracted by clustering keywords according to their spatial similarity. To determine the most important events in a (recent) time frame, we introduce a scoring scheme for events. We demonstrate the functionality of our system, called Even-Tweet, using a stream of tweets from Europe during the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship.
MicroRNA-193a-3p suppresses the colorectal cancer cell proliferation and progression through downregulating the PLAU expression

Background Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the leading causes of cancer-related death in China. Dysregulation of microRNAs (miRNAs) is involved in cancer development and progression. Our previous study showed an inverse relationship between miR-193a-3p expression and the prognosis of CRC. However, the exact biological functions of miR-193a-3p in CRC are still poorly understood. This study aimed to explore the role and mechanism of miR-193a-3p in CRC. Methods Real-time PCR and Western blotting were used to examine the expression levels of RNA and protein, respectively. A dual luciferase assay was performed to validate predicted targets of miR-193a-3p. Loss and gain-of-function studies were carried out to reveal the effects and potential mechanism of the miR-193a-3p in the proliferation, metastasis and angiogenesis of CRC cells. Results The expression levels of miR-193a-3p in human CRC cell lines were significantly decreased compared with that in normal colonic epithelium cell line. Furthermore, plasminogen activator urokinase (PLAU) was validated as a direct target gene of miR-193a-3p. Over-expression of miR-193a-3p inhibited proliferation, migration and angiogenesis of HT-29 cell, whereas forced expression of PLAU could rescue the inhibitory effects. Conclusion miR-193a-3p might inhibit CRC cell growth, migration and angiogenesis partly through targeting PLAU. MiR-193a-3p/PLAU axis might provide a potent therapeutic opportunity for aggressive CRC.
Segregation and the Quality of Government in a Cross-Section of Countries

This paper has three goals. The first (and perhaps the most important one) is to provide a new compilation of data on ethnic, linguistic and religious composition at the sub-national level for a large number of countries. This data set allows us to measure segregation of different ethnic, religious and linguistic groups within the same country. The second goal is to correlate measures of segregation with measures of quality of the polity and policymaking. The third is to construct an instrument that helps to overcome the endogeneity problem due to the fact that groups move within country borders, partly in response to policies. Our results suggest that more segregated countries in terms of ethnicity and language, i.e., those where groups live more spatially separately, have a substantially lower quality of government. In contrast, there is no relationship between religious segregation and the government quality.
Optimizing Data Locality by Array Restructuring

It is increasingly important that optimizing compilers restructure programs for data locality to obtain high performance on today's powerful architectures. In this paper, we focus on array restructuring , a technique that improves the spatial locality exhibited by array accesses in nested loops. Speci cally, we address the following question: Given a set of such accesses, how should the array elements be laid out in memory to match the access pattern and thus maximize locality? Our approach is based on an invertible linear transformation of array index vectors. We present algorithms to choose a suitable transformation, and hence array layout, given the set of array accesses. Our analysis places no restrictions on the loop's nesting structure or dependence pattern. Although we focus on cases where the array indexing expressions are a ne functions of loop variables, our techniques can be applied to the non-a ne case as well. We have implemented our technique in the SUIF compiler [17]. Experimental results show that array restructuring improves loop execution performance substantially, often with no or little runtime overhead. Moreover, the performance improvement of array restructuring compares favorably with that achieved by loop restructuring.
Scrap your nameplate: (functional pearl)

Recent research has shown how boilerplate code, or repetitive code for traversing datatypes, can be eliminated using generic programming techniques already available within some implementations of Haskell. One particularly intractable kind of boilerplate is nameplate, or code having to do with names, name-binding, and fresh name generation. One reason for the difficulty is that operations on data structures involving names, as usually implemented, are not regular instances of standard map, fold, or zip operations. However, in nominal abstract syntax, an alternative treatment of names and binding based on swapping, operations such as α-equivalence, capture-avoiding substitution, and free variable set functions are much better-behaved.In this paper, we show how nominal abstract syntax techniques similar to those of FreshML can be provided as a Haskell library called FreshLib. In addition, we show how existing genericmprogramming techniques can be used to reduce the amount of nameplate code that needs to be written for new datatypes involving names and binding to almost nothing—in short, how to scrap your nameplate.
Binaural Noise Reduction Algorithms for Hearing Aids That Preserve Interaural Time Delay Cues

Binaural hearing aids use microphone inputs from both the left and right hearing aid to generate an output for each ear. On the other hand, a monaural hearing aid generates an output by processing only its own microphone inputs. This correspondence presents a binaural extension of a monaural multichannel noise reduction algorithm for hearing aids based on Wiener filtering. In addition to significantly suppressing the noise interference, the algorithm preserves the interaural time delay (ITD) cues of the speech component, thus allowing the user to correctly localize the speech source. Unfortunately, binaural multichannel Wiener filtering distorts the ITD cues of the noise source. By adding a parameter to the cost function the amount of noise reduction performed by the algorithm can be controlled, and traded off for the preservation of the noise ITD cues
Mass Incarceration, Macrosociology, and the Poor

The U.S. prison and jail population has grown fivefold in the 40 years since the early 1970s. The aggregate consequences of the growth in the penal system are widely claimed but have not been closely studied. We survey evidence for the aggregate relationship among the incarceration rate, employment rates, single-parenthood, public opinion, and crime. Employment among very low-skilled men has declined with rising incarceration. Punitive sentiment in public opinion has also softened as imprisonment increased. Single-parenthood and crime rates, however, are not systematically related to incarceration. We conclude with a discussion of the conceptual and empirical challenges that come with assessing the aggregate effects of mass incarceration on American poverty.
The halo sign: HRCT findings in 85 patients

ABSTRACT Objective: The halo sign consists of an area of ground-glass opacity surrounding pulmonary lesions on chest CT scans. We compared immunocompetent and immunosuppressed patients in terms of halo sign features and sought to identify those of greatest diagnostic value. Methods: This was a retrospective study of CT scans performed at any of seven centers between January of 2011 and May of 2015. Patients were classified according to their immune status. Two thoracic radiologists reviewed the scans in order to determine the number of lesions, as well as their distribution, size, and contour, together with halo thickness and any other associated findings. Results: Of the 85 patients evaluated, 53 were immunocompetent and 32 were immunosuppressed. Of the 53 immunocompetent patients, 34 (64%) were diagnosed with primary neoplasm. Of the 32 immunosuppressed patients, 25 (78%) were diagnosed with aspergillosis. Multiple and randomly distributed lesions were more common in the immunosuppressed patients than in the immunocompetent patients (p < 0.001 for both). Halo thickness was found to be greater in the immunosuppressed patients (p < 0.05). Conclusions: Etiologies of the halo sign differ markedly between immunocompetent and immunosuppressed patients. Although thicker halos are more likely to occur in patients with infectious diseases, the number and distribution of lesions should also be taken into account when evaluating patients presenting with the halo sign.
Host-Defense Activities of Cyclotides

Cyclotides are plant mini-proteins whose natural function is thought to be to protect plants from pest or pathogens, particularly insect pests. They are approximately 30 amino acids in size and are characterized by a cyclic peptide backbone and a cystine knot arrangement of three conserved disulfide bonds. This article provides an overview of the reported pesticidal or toxic activities of cyclotides, discusses a possible common mechanism of action involving disruption of biological membranes in pest species, and describes methods that can be used to produce cyclotides for potential applications as novel pesticidal agents.
The Effects of Skin Tone on the Perception of Discrimination in Young African American Women

This research focuses on the discriminatory experiences that young African American women in the American South report as a function of their actual and perceived skin tone. Participants (N = 76) were given the Pantone Skin Tone guide (Pantone, 2017) and asked to find the best color (varying on undertone and lightness) that matched closely to their skin tone. Following that, an experimenter identified participants’ skin tone and they completed several questionnaires assessing perceived racism, discrimination, and self-esteem. Participants reported discrimination and biases that they regularly experience based on their skin tone and race. While qualitative data suggests that colorism does exist, the quantitative data did not establish a link between lightness of one’s skin tone and levels of perceived discrimination. Individuals who reported a high frequency of experiencing racism in their lives also perceived their skin tone darker without the mirror than with it. This finding establishes a link between negative race-based experiences and one’s self-perception of skin tone. While self-esteem did not moderate or mediate the skin tone-discrimination relationship, it was strongly related to reports of racism and colorism.
Subaru Deep Survey Ii. Luminosity Functions and Clustering Properties of Lyα Emitters at Z = 4.86 in the Subaru Deep Field

We report on early results from very deep and wide-field narrow-band imaging on a 543 arcmin area of the Subaru Deep Field. We find 87 Lyman α emitters (LAEs) at z = 4.86 ± 0.03 which are photometrically selected by a combination of two broad bands (R and i) and one narrow band (NB711; λc = 7126Å, ∆λ = 73Å). We derive the luminosity functions (LFs) of the LAEs at Lyα luminosity and at UV-continuum (rest-frame 1700Å) luminosity. The LFs show little evolution between z=3.4 and z=4.86 either in Lyα or UV-continuum emission. The amplitude of the LAE LF tends to decline at the bright magnitudes more rapidly than that of the LBG LF at similar redshifts. We calculate the angular correlation function of our LAEs up to ∼ 15 arcmin separations. The angular correlation ω(θ) is found to increase with decreasing angular separations, showing a clear signal of clustering. It is also found that the distribution of LAEs shows a large density gradient with a scale of & 15 arcmin, which would indicate the existence of a large-scale structure of LAEs on & 20hMpc scales. We fit the observed correlation function by Aωθ −0.8 to find Aω = 29 arcsec . The estimated correlation length is r0 = 3.5 +0.3 −0.3h Mpc in comoving units (Ωm = 0.3 and ΩΛ = 0.7), which is slightly larger than the value for z ∼ 4 LBGs with i < 26. We calculate the angular correlation function for two sub-samples of the 87 LAEs divided by Lyα luminosity, UV-continuum luminosity, and Lyα equivalent width (EW ). The Lyα-bright sub-sample shows a larger correlation amplitude than the Lyα-faint sub-sample, while no significant difference is found for the sub-samples divided by UV-continuum luminosity or EW . This may indicate that galaxies with bright Lyα emission are possibly biased against the underlying dark matter halos more strongly than those with bright UV continuum. Subject headings: cosmology: observations — cosmology: early universe — cosmology: large-scale structure of universe — galaxies: high-redshift — galaxies: evolution