Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Association of Interleukin-6 With the Progression of Carotid Atherosclerosis: A 9-Year Follow-Up Study

Background and Purpose— Limited information is available on the long-term effects of interleukin-6 (IL-6) on systemic atherosclerosis. The purpose of the present study was to clarify the relationship between chronic elevation of IL-6 and the long-term progression of carotid atherosclerosis. Methods— We prospectively evaluated 210 patients with ≥1 vascular risk factors for 9.0±1.0 years. Carotid mean-maximal intima-media thickness (mmIMT), the serum high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) level, and the serum IL-6 level were measured at baseline and every 3 years. The associations between the progression of mmIMT and the long-term average levels of hs-CRP and IL-6 were analyzed. Results— Carotid mmIMT increased throughout the study period (0.031±0.026 mm/y). Baseline mmIMT was significantly associated with baseline hs-CRP (P=0.002) and baseline IL-6 (P<0.001) levels. Progression of mmIMT was positively correlated with average hs-CRP (P=0.001) and average IL-6 (P<0.001) levels. When adjusted for age, sex, traditional risk factors, and baseline mmIMT, mmIMT progression remained significantly associated only with the average IL-6 level (standardized &bgr;=0.17; P=0.02), but not with the average hs-CRP level (standardized &bgr;=0.10; P=0.18). Conclusions— Chronic elevation of serum IL-6 was associated with the progression of atherosclerosis in patients with vascular risk factors. IL-6 could be used as a quantitative marker and a potential therapeutic target for accelerated atherosclerosis.
A high-density data path implementation fitting for HTC applications

High Throughput Computing (HTC) applications become the new loadings with the rapid rising of web services. In HTC applications, as we observed, a significant proportion of memory accesses are in small granularity, such as 1B or 2B. However, the link width is usually designed as 128 bits or even larger to achieve high throughput in traditional NoCs. The entire bandwidth is occupied no matter how large the fiit is. Therefore, using traditional NoCs for HTC applications will lead to the waste of bandwidth. In this paper, to address the above-mentioned problem, we proposed High-Density NoC (HD-NoC). In HD-NoC, traditional link is split into several narrow channels, such as 8 or 16 bits. If the slice is 16 bits wide, there will be 8 or more separately self-governed small channels running simultaneously in one direction. Cooperating with our Greedy Transfer Mechanism (GTM), flits in the same direction can be transferred parallel, which will alleviate the congestion and improve effective utilization of bandwidth. Experiments show that for HTC applications, our proposed HD-NoC improves throughput rate by 22.2% in average and 32.4% for Grep application with little extra hardware resources. The HD-NoC is also able to improve throughput rate by 13.5% for traditional SPLASH-2 benchmarks.
Multifaceted Activities of Type I Interferon Are Revealed by a Receptor Antagonist

A variant of type I interferon stimulates expression of only those genes required for an antiviral response. Building a Better Interferon Type I interferons stimulate an antiviral response during infections, inhibit cells from multiplying, and affect the immune system. The multiplicity of interferon actions complicates their use in patients. Interferons activate two distinct sets of genes: one for the protection against viruses and the other for the antiproliferative and immunomodulatory responses. Levin et al. found that the IFN-α2 variant interferon IFN-1ant prevented other forms of interferon from binding to the interferon receptor. However, at certain concentrations, IFN-1ant activated the genes required for antiviral immunity without activating the genes that suppress cell proliferation. Thus, IFN-1ant might be an effective therapy for treating viral infections. Type I interferons (IFNs), including various IFN-α isoforms and IFN-β, are a family of homologous, multifunctional cytokines. IFNs activate different cellular responses by binding to a common receptor that consists of two subunits, IFNAR1 and IFNAR2. In addition to stimulating antiviral responses, they also inhibit cell proliferation and modulate other immune responses. We characterized various IFNs, including a mutant IFN-α2 (IFN-1ant) that bound tightly to IFNAR2 but had markedly reduced binding to IFNAR1. Whereas IFN-1ant stimulated antiviral activity in a range of cell lines, it failed to elicit immunomodulatory and antiproliferative activities. The antiviral activities of the various IFNs tested depended on a set of IFN-sensitive genes (the “robust” genes) that were controlled by canonical IFN response elements and responded at low concentrations of IFNs. Conversely, these elements were not found in the promoters of genes required for the antiproliferative responses of IFNs (the “tunable” genes). The extent of expression of tunable genes was cell type–specific and correlated with the magnitude of the antiproliferative effects of the various IFNs. Although IFN-1ant induced the expression of robust genes similarly in five different cell lines, its antiviral activity was virus- and cell type–specific. Our findings suggest that IFN-1ant may be a therapeutic candidate for the treatment of specific viral infections without inducing the immunomodulatory and antiproliferative functions of wild-type IFN.
Investigation of the viscous heating artefact arising from the use of thermocouples in a focused ultrasound field

Accurate temperature measurements in therapeutic ultrasound fields are necessary for understanding damage mechanisms, verification of thermal modelling and calibration of non-invasive clinical thermometry. However, artefactual heating, primarily due to viscous forces which result from motion relative to the surrounding tissue, occurs when metal thermocouples are used in an ultrasound field. The magnitude and time dependence of this artefact has been characterized by comparison with novel thin-film thermocouples (TFTs) at 1–2 cm focal depths in fresh degassed ex vivo bovine liver. High-intensity focused ultrasound exposures (1.7 MHz; free-field spatial-peak temporal-average intensities 40–600 W cm−2) were used. Subtraction of the TFT data from that obtained for other thermocouples yielded the time dependence of the viscous heating artefact. This was found to be intensity independent up to 600 W cm−2 (below the threshold for cavitation and lesion formation) and remained significant at radial distances out to the first side lobe in the focal plane. The contribution of viscous heating to cooling was also found to be significant for at least 5 s after the end of insonation. The ratio of viscous artefact to absorptive heating after 5 s was: 1.76 ± 0.07 for a fine-wire, 0.45 ± 0.07 and 1.93 ± 0.07 for two different sheathed-wires and 0.24 ± 0.07 for a needle thermocouple.
Cross-Sectional Dynamics in a Two-Sided Matching Model

This paper studies a dynamic search-theoretic model of two-sided matching with ex ante heterogeneous agents and nontransferable utility. There is a continuum of agents’ types in (0, 1), with both parties to the match (x, y) receiving flow output xy. Foregone wages are the only cost of search, and all productive relationships are mutual ‘tenant-at-will’. Despite a continuum of distinct intertwined dynamic optimizations, I characterize the search equilibrium starting with everyone unmatched: There is a growing pool of permanently employed on [θt, 1), and an elaborate web of temporary matches amongst lower types on (0, θt), where θt ↓ 0. Thus, anyone is eventually is unwilling to accept a temporary match. I develop an equilibrium concept addressing credibility constraints, but argue that no matches are lost due to the absence of binding contracts. I relate this to dynamic properties of flow values that imply that no one ever quits a match more than once in his life. This was first presented in 1992 at Boston University, MIT/Harvard, Michigan, Montreal, Princeton, Windsor, as well as Summer in Tel Aviv 1992 and the 1993 North American Summer Econometric Society Meetings at Boston University. e-mail address: lones.smith@gmail.com
Design of A Universal User Model for Dynamic Crowd Preference Sensing and Decision-Making Behavior Analysis

Sharing economy becomes an emerging issue in urban life. It is not a new phenomenon but an assembling of existing techniques to meet specific demands of users. It also points out a better way to implicitly collect users’ contexts and to understand users than the conventional one that requires much user involvement (e.g., tedious inputs). A universal model, for this purpose, that supports dynamic analysis and mining of user-generated content (or contexts) is designed in this paper. Two major factors, sensing and analysis of crowd preference and their decision-making behavior, are especially targeted. This model formulates the given scenario that comprehensively illustrates the possible actors and correlated actions among them with a set of rules to enhance the machine learning results. This model outlines a detail process on pre-/post-process of the data, and indicates the core techniques for user modeling. The raw data collected from on-service website, i.e., Airbnb, are utilized for the preliminary examination of our proposal. We especially look at internal factors (e.g., nationality, gender, and age) and external factors (e.g., device, social media, and time) that reflect implicitly the difference on crowd’s preference and behavior. Results after statistics-based machine learning reveal that the relation among users’ internal and external factors share high similarity with their behavior patterns, and can be applied, considering particular features, for service provision to a specific type of crowds.
Comparison Study of Noncontact Vital Signs Detection Using a Doppler Stepped-Frequency Continuous-Wave Radar and Camera-Based Imaging Photoplethysmography

In this paper, we compare the performance of radar and optical (camera based) techniques in detecting vital signs such as respiratory rate (RR), heart rate (HR), and blood oxygen saturation (SpO2). Specifically, we investigate the application of ultrawideband stepped-frequency continuous-wave radar and imaging photoplethysmography (iPPG) techniques to measure vital signs. The radar performance can be enhanced by using phase information of backscattered signal instead of its amplitude. On the other hand, the iPPG system can be enhanced by using more than one camera and utilizing very selective narrowband filters coupled with good illumination. In either system, use of advanced signal processing is required to improve accuracy. Generally, HR and RR can be accurately read by either microwave radar or optical techniques with 500 lx illumination level to have < ±2% error up to 2 m distance between the subject and the system, but optical technique errors increase significantly to < ±15% for <200 lx. However, each system has its unique advantages as the radar can be used for seeing-through walls and optical technique is uniquely capable of measuring SpO2).
Clonal Replacement of Epidemic Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Strains in a German University Hospital over a Period of Eleven Years

Worldwide, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) pose an increased risk for healthcare- and community-associated infections. Since the first report of MRSA in England in 1961, several distinct clones or strains have emerged. Changes within the MRSA population of whole countries, small regions or of single hospitals have been observed with some clones replacing others. In this study, the clonal replacement of MRSA isolates in a South-eastern German tertiary care hospital between 2000 and 2010 is described based on microarray analyses of 778 isolates and at least 50 MRSA per year. Within these eleven years, four common epidemic strains, CC22-MRSA-IV, CC45-MRSA-IV, CC5/ST228-MRSA-I (including a variant with a truncated SCCmec element) and CC5-MRSA-II were identified. The PVL-negative CC22-MRSA-IV strain (Barnim Epidemic Strain, UK-EMRSA-15) was detected for the first time in 2001 and its abundance increased since then to 58.6% in 2010. CC5-MRSA-II increased from 2% (2000) to about 30% (2003), and since then it fluctuates between 23 and 37% of isolates. CC5/ST228-MRSA-I decreased from about the half of tested isolates (2000) to 2.3% (2010). A similar trend was observed for CC45-MRSA-IV, which decreased drastically down to 3.4% in 2010 after reaching a maximum of 62.0% in 2002. Seventeen other PVL-negative MRSA strains were identified sporadically with no significant trend being observed. Seven PVL-positive MRSA strains were found, but they remained rare during the study period accounting together for 2.7% of isolates.
Treatment adherence therapy in people with psychotic disorders: randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND Interventions to improve adherence to treatment in people with psychotic disorders have produced inconclusive results. We developed a new treatment, treatment adherence therapy (TAT), whose intervention modules are tailored to the reasons for an individual's non-adherence. AIMS To examine the effectiveness of TAT with regard to service engagement and medication adherence in out-patients with psychotic disorders who engage poorly. METHOD Randomised controlled study of TAT v. treatment as usual (TAU) in 109 out-patients. Most outcome measurements were performed by masked assessors. We used intention-to-treat multivariate analyses (Dutch Trial Registry: NTR1159). RESULTS Treatment adherence therapy v. TAU significantly benefited service engagement (Cohen's d = 0.48) and medication adherence (Cohen's d = 0.43). Results remained significant at 6-month follow-up for medication adherence. Near-significant effects were also found regarding involuntary readmissions (1.9% v. 11.8%, P = 0.053). Symptoms and quality of life did not improve. CONCLUSIONS Treatment adherence therapy helps improve engagement and adherence, and may prevent involuntary admission.
The Co-occurrence of Reading Disorder and ADHD

The co-occurrence of reading disorder (RD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has received increasing attention. This review summarizes the epidemiology, treatment strategies, psychosocial impact, and economic burden associated with the co-occurrence of these conditions. Common genetic and neuropsychological deficits may partially explain the high degree of overlap between RD and ADHD. Children who face the additive problems of both disorders are at greater risk for academic failure, psychosocial consequences, and poor long-term outcomes that persist into adulthood. However, few studies have evaluated interventions targeted to this patient population, underscoring the importance of identifying effective multimodal treatments that address the neuropsychological deficits of RD and ADHD through carefully planned clinical research.
Detrimental effects of an autosomal selfish genetic element on sperm competitiveness in house mice

Female multiple mating (polyandry) is widespread across many animal taxa and indirect genetic benefits are a major evolutionary force favouring polyandry. An incentive for polyandry arises when multiple mating leads to sperm competition that disadvantages sperm from genetically inferior mates. A reduction in genetic quality is associated with costly selfish genetic elements (SGEs), and studies in invertebrates have shown that males bearing sex ratio distorting SGEs are worse sperm competitors than wild-type males. We used a vertebrate model species to test whether females can avoid an autosomal SGE, the t haplotype, through polyandry. The t haplotype in house mice exhibits strong drive in t heterozygous males by affecting spermatogenesis and is associated with homozygous in utero lethality. We used controlled matings to test the effect of the t haplotype on sperm competitiveness. Regardless of mating order, t heterozygous males sired only 11% of zygotes when competing against wild-type males, suggesting a very strong effect of the t haplotype on sperm quality. We provide, to our knowledge, the first substantial evidence that polyandry ameliorates the harmful effects of an autosomal SGE arising through genetic incompatibility. We discuss potential mechanisms in our study species and the broader implications for the benefits of polyandry.
A frequency domain equalizer for amplify-and-forward underwater acoustic relay communication systems

In this paper, we apply the amplify-and-forward relay technique to simultaneously increase the range and data rate of underwater acoustic communication by dividing the channel between transmitter and receiver into two hops. Due to the application of the relay node, the delay spread of the effective transmitter-relay-receiver multipath channel is longer than that of the direct transmitter-receiver channel, which increases the complexity of channel equalization at the receiver. To reduce the computational complexity of channel equalization, a fractionally-spaced frequency domain equalizer (FS-FDE) is designed in this paper. Simulation results illustrate that compared with the direct path communication, significant bit-error-rate performance improvement can be achieved through using relay technique in underwater acoustic communication.
Methane production and soluble carbohydrates in the rumen of sheep in relation to the time of feeding and the effects of short-term intraruminal infusions of unsaturated fatty acids

1. The daily methane production of sheep given sugar-beet pulp was greater than that of sheep given hay. The rates of methane production on both diets increased during feeding and then decreased to an apparently steady value. When no food was given the rates of methane production continued to fall exponentially with a half-life of about 24 h. 2. Mixtures of unsaturated long-chain fatty acids infused into the rumen during feeding inhibited the production of methane. The inhibition was greater when the sheep were given hay than when they were given sugar-beet pulp. 3. In general the concentration of soluble carbohydrates in the rumen increased during feeding and fell rapidly to the values found before feeding as soon as the sheep finished eating. The infusion of unsaturated fatty acids during feeding did not result in an accumulation of soluble carbohydrate in the rumen. 4. It is suggested that the rapid methane production during feeding was associated with fermentation of the more soluble part of the diet and that the fermentation of carbohydrate was not inhibited by the infused fatty acids. The results are consistent with specific inhibition of methanogenesis by unsaturated fatty acids.
STING: A Statistical Information Grid Approach to Spatial Data Mining

Spatial data mining, i.e., discovery of interesting characteristics and patterns that may implicitly exist in spatial databases, is a challenging task due to the huge amounts of spatial data and to the new conceptual nature of the problems which must account for spatial distance. Clustering and region oriented queries are common problems in this domain. Several approaches have been presented in recent years, all of which require at least one scan of all individual objects (points). Consequently, the computational complexity is at least linearly proportional to the number of objects to answer each query. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical statistical information grid based approach for spatial data mining to reduce the cost further. The idea is to capture statistical information associated with spatial cells in such a manner that whole classes of queries and clustering problems can be answered without recourse to the individual objects. In theory, and confirmed by empirical studies, this approach outperforms the best previous method by at least an order of magnitude, especially when the data set is very large.
Evaluation of Firewall Effects on Network Performance

This paper evaluates firewalls, their importance in protecting networks and their functions such as performance, efficiency and security. The relation between the security and performance efficiency is presented through different scenarios and the relationship between security and performance in firewalls is evaluated. Emphasis is on the relationship between network security and performance; the effects of firewalls on network performance. Various scenarios were evaluated through simulations using OPNET to show the effects of firewalls on network performance.
Functional Cis-Heterodimers of N- and R-Cadherins

Classical cadherins form parallel cis-dimers that emanate from a single cell surface. It is thought that the cis-dimeric form is active in cell–cell adhesion, whereas cadherin monomers are likely to be inactive. Currently, cis-dimers have been shown to exist only between cadherins of the same type. Here, we show the specific formation of cis-heterodimers between N- and R-cadherins. E-cadherin cannot participate in these complexes. Cells coexpressing N- and R-cadherins show homophilic adhesion in which these proteins coassociate at cell–cell interfaces. We performed site- directed mutagenesis studies, the results of which support the strand dimer model for cis-dimerization. Furthermore, we show that when N- and R-cadherins are coexpressed in neurons in vitro, the two cadherins colocalize at certain neural synapses, implying biological relevance for these complexes. The present study provides a novel paradigm for cadherin interaction whereby selective cis-heterodimer formation may generate new functional units to mediate cell–cell adhesion.
Added value of regional climate modeling over areas characterized by complex terrain—Precipitation over the Alps

We present an analysis of the added value (AV) of downscaling via regional climate model (RCM) nesting with respect to the driving global climate models (GCMs). We analyze ensembles of driving GCM and nested RCM (two resolutions, 0.44° and 0.11°) simulations for the late 20th and late 21st centuries from the CMIP5, EURO‐CORDEX, and MED‐CORDEX experiments, with a focus on the Alpine region. Different metrics of AV are investigated, measuring aspects of precipitation where substantial AV can be expected in mountainous terrains: spatial pattern of mean precipitation, daily precipitation intensity distribution, and daily precipitation extremes tails. Comparison with a high‐quality, fine‐scale (5 km) gridded observational data set shows substantial AV of RCM downscaling for all metrics selected, and results are mostly improved compared to the driving GCMs also when the RCM fields are upscaled at the scale of the GCM resolution. We also find consistent improvements in the high‐resolution (0.11°) versus medium‐resolution (0.44°) RCM simulations. Finally, we find that the RCM downscaling substantially modulates the GCM‐produced precipitation change signal in future climate projections, particularly in terms of fine‐scale spatial pattern associated with the complex topography of the region. Our results thus point to the important role that high‐resolution nested RCMs can play in the study of climate change over areas characterized by complex topographical features.