Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Patient-clinician agreement on signs and symptoms of 'strep throat': a MetroNet study.

BACKGROUND Despite substantial use of the telephone in health care, only a few studies have formally evaluated the appropriateness of telephone-based management for acute medical problems. The accuracy of patients' report of signs and symptoms remains unknown. OBJECTIVE We compared the agreement between patient self-assessment and clinician assessment on the typical signs and symptoms of group A beta-haemolytic Streptococcus (GABHS) to investigate the potential difficulties of using patient self-report to triage sore throat patients. METHODS In this cross-sectional study, each of 200 adult pharyngitis patients was instructed to examine him/herself and to record the symptoms and physical findings. Two clinicians independently interviewed and examined each patient and recorded their findings. Each patient then had a rapid GABHS antigen test, the results of which were blinded to both clinicians and patients. Each patient self-assessment was compared with the findings of each clinician, and the agreement and disagreement between them computed. RESULTS We found varying levels of agreement (kappa=-0.05 to 0.71) between patients and clinicians on sore throat history and physical assessments. Importantly, there was fair to substantial agreement (kappa=0.20-0.71) on the key signs and symptoms used in GABHS clinical prediction rules. As expected, history items had the highest agreement (kappa=0.52-0.71). Patients were more likely than clinicians to report rather than deny a specific physical sign. CONCLUSION Adult sore throat patients may reliably report their symptoms, but may not be able to assess and report accurately on relevant physical signs of pharyngitis. Patients have a tendency to over-report physical signs. This study indicates the potential difficulties associated with telephone triage of sore throat patients, or other illnesses that require assessment of physical signs.
Secure query processing with data interoperability in a cloud database environment

We address security issues in a cloud database system which employs the DBaaS model. In such a model, a data owner (DO) exports its data to a cloud database service provider (SP). To provide data security, sensitive data is encrypted by the DO before it is uploaded to the SP. Existing encryption schemes, however, are only partially homomorphic in the sense that each of them was designed to allow one specific type of computation to be done on encrypted data. These existing schemes cannot be integrated to answer real practical queries that involve operations of different kinds. We propose and analyze a secure query processing system (SDB) on relational tables and a set of elementary operators on encrypted data that allow data interoperability, which allows a wide range of SQL queries to be processed by the SP on encrypted information. We prove that our encryption scheme is secure against two types of threats and that it is practically efficient.
Introduction to Queueing Theory and Stochastic Teletraffic Models

The aim of this textbook is to provide students with basic knowledge of stochastic models that may apply to telecommunications research areas, such as traffic modelling, resource provisioning and traffic management. These study areas are often collectively called teletraffic. This book assumes prior knowledge of a programming language, mathematics, probability and stochastic processes normally taught in an electrical engineering course. For students who have some but not sufficiently strong background in probability and stochastic processes, we provide, in the first few chapters, background on the relevant concepts in these areas.
Progress in research on laser damage mechanisms and contamination problem

In high power laser systems, the laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) in optical coating is very important parameters for obtaining high performances. Recently, LIDT was found to have strong temperature dependences in the bulk, surface of substrates, and in coatings. These temperature dependences of LIDT were carefully measured, and the damage formation model was constructed regarding to this temperature dependence. To explain this temperature dependence of LIDT, the temperature dependences of the initial electron generation and electron multiplication in the avalanche process were taken into account. On the other hand, LIDT in optical coating is very sensitive to organic contaminations accumulated in coating layers during storage and using condition. This paper also introduces the oil-contamination problem in LFEX laser system for First Ignition scheme in the laser fusion. We have analyzed contaminants and evaluated the effects of the contamination. We also developed new cleaning methods to remove contamination from the coating, and we have succeeded to prevent the degradation in LIDT for the duration of evacuation with Silica-gel in the chamber. The quantitative analysis of contamination on LIDT was made. We have investigated the characteristics of LIDT in dielectric coatings under the controlled contamination with several materials.
A fire station in your body: Metaphors in educational texts on HIV/AIDS

This study focuses on metaphors used in South African HIV/AIDS education to explain the struggle of the immune system when it becomes infected with HIV. Three versions of an educational text on HIV/AIDS were presented to a total of 543 learners from secondary schools in the Western Cape. Each learner was given either a text version including a deliberate metaphor that had been selected with the purpose of changing the reader’s perspective on the immune system (the immune system being presented metaphorically either as an army or as a fire brigade), or a text version without such a deliberate metaphor. The effects of these three text versions on understanding as perceived by the learners themselves, on attractiveness and on persuasiveness were investigated. Distinctions were made between respondents who apparently had recognised a metaphor in the text version with which they were presented and those who had not. No effects of text version on perceived understanding, attractiveness and persuasiveness were found. There were clear effects, however, of metaphor recognition. Readers who appeared to have recognised a metaphor found the text version they had read more understandable, attractive and persuasive than other readers. No interaction effects of text version and metaphor recognition were found. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2010, 28(2): 133–139
Exercise counteracts the homeostatic decrease in thermogenesis caused by caloric restriction in sheep

Caloric restriction causes a homeostatic reduction in thermogenesis. We aimed to determine whether exercise could counteract this. We studied four groups of normal‐weight ewes (n = 5), including control sedentary fed ad libitum, exercise fed ad libitum (30 min/d, 5 d/wk), diet‐restricted (70% of ad libitum food intake), and combined diet and exercise. Temperature probes implanted in sternal and retroperitoneal adipose tissue and skeletal muscle measured thermogenesis. After the 4‐wk intervention, hypothalami were collected for in situ hybridization, and fat and muscle biopsies were collected for real‐time PCR and Western blotting. Combined diet and exercise reduced adiposity (P > 0.05). Caloric restriction alone reduced overnight temperatures in sternal and retroperitoneal fat (P > 0.05), which was counteracted by exercise (P > 0.05). Exercise did not induce expression of cellular markers of browning in adipose tissue. There was no effect of diet or exercise on skeletal muscle thermogenesis. Combined diet and exercise increased the expression of neuropeptide Y and agouti‐related protein in the hypothalamic arcuate nucleus (P > 0.05), consistent with reduced adiposity. Gene expressions of key hypothalamic appetite‐regulating peptides were not associated with altered thermogenesis. We demonstrate that exercise counteracts the inhibitory effect of caloric restriction to restore thermogenesis in adipose tissue of sheep. —Fuller‐Jackson, J.‐P., Clarke, I. J., Rao, A. , Henry, B. A. Exercise counteracts the homeostatic decrease in thermogenesis caused by caloric restriction in sheep. FASEB J. 32, 3859–3869 (2018). www.fasebj. org
Endocytosis and Recycling of the HIV Coreceptor Ccr5

The chemokine receptor CCR5 is a cofactor for the entry of R5 tropic strains of human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV)-1 and -2 and simian immunodeficiency virus. Cells susceptible to infection by these viruses can be protected by treatment with the CCR5 ligands regulated on activation, normal T cell expressed and secreted (RANTES), MIP-1α, and MIP-1β. A major component of the mechanism through which chemokines protect cells from HIV infection is by inducing endocytosis of the chemokine receptor. Aminooxypentane (AOP)-RANTES, an NH2-terminal modified form of RANTES, is a potent inhibitor of infection by R5 HIV strains. AOP-RANTES efficiently downmodulates the cell surface expression of CCR5 and, in contrast with RANTES, appears to prevent recycling of CCR5 to the cell surface. Here, we investigate the cellular basis of this effect. Using CHO cells expressing human CCR5, we show that both RANTES and AOP-RANTES induce rapid internalization of CCR5. In the absence of ligand, CCR5 shows constitutive turnover with a half-time of 6–9 h. Addition of RANTES or AOP-RANTES has little effect on the rate of CCR5 turnover. Immunofluorescence and immunoelectron microscopy show that most of the CCR5 internalized after RANTES or AOP-RANTES treatment accumulates in small membrane-bound vesicles and tubules clustered in the perinuclear region of the cell. Colocalization with transferrin receptors in the same clusters of vesicles indicates that CCR5 accumulates in recycling endosomes. After the removal of RANTES, internalized CCR5 recycles to the cell surface and is sensitive to further rounds of RANTES-induced endocytosis. In contrast, after the removal of AOP-RANTES, most CCR5 remains intracellular. We show that these CCR5 molecules do recycle to the cell surface, with kinetics equivalent to those of receptors in RANTES-treated cells. However, these recycled CCR5 molecules are rapidly reinternalized. Our results indicate that AOP-RANTES–induced changes in CCR5 alter the steady-state distribution of the receptor and provide the first evidence for G protein–coupled receptor trafficking through the recycling endosome compartment.
Visualisation of material flow in autogenous friction stir welds

Abstract Material flow in friction stir welds has been visualised using embedded marker materials. The fidelity of the visualisation technique has also been demonstrated. Results from the flow visualisation show that the friction stir welding process can be roughly described as an in situ extrusion process wherein the tool shoulder, the weld backing plate, and the cold base metal outside the weld zone form an ‘extrusion chamber’ which moves relative to the workpiece. Deviation from this description occurs primarily at the top surface of the weld where significant material transport occurs owing to the action of the rotating tool shoulder. The transport caused by the shoulder leads to a small amount of circulation about the longitudinal axis of the weld with material moving primarily from trailing to leading sides at the top of the weld and primarily from leading to trailing near the middle and bottom of the weld.
'Functional relaxation' reduces acute airway obstruction in asthmatics as effectively as inhaled terbutaline.

BACKGROUND 'Functional relaxation' (German: 'Funktionelle Entspannung') has been developed since 1944 by the German physiotherapist M. Fuchs. It is based on concentrating on body perception while moving the joints of the skeleton smoothly and at the same time breathing out. This procedure induces a physical and emotional relaxation in many cases. The aim of the study was to compare the efficiency of standardized elements of a somatopsychotherapy (eFE) and a standardized bronchodilatative test using terbutaline (IT). METHODS Seventeen asthmatic patients with acute airway obstruction had either IT or eFE on 2 consecutive days. Airway resistance (R(aw)) was measured before and after IT and eFE. It was used for statistical evaluation as it is independent of the patient's will. RESULTS Although both therapies lead to a significant mean decrease in R(aw) (p < 0.01), the comparison revealed no superiority of one over the other (ANOVA on repeated measurements, p > 0.78). CONCLUSIONS This study supports the benefit of psychosomatic therapy in the relief of asthma and the procedure can be used as an easy-to-learn relaxation technique to be used during acute asthmatic airway obstruction.
Which Training Methods for GANs do actually Converge?

Recent work has shown local convergence of GAN training for absolutely continuous data and generator distributions. In this paper, we show that the requirement of absolute continuity is necessary: we describe a simple yet prototypical counterexample showing that in the more realistic case of distributions that are not absolutely continuous, unregularized GAN training is not always convergent. Furthermore, we discuss regularization strategies that were recently proposed to stabilize GAN training. Our analysis shows that GAN training with instance noise or zero-centered gradient penalties converges. On the other hand, we show that Wasserstein-GANs and WGAN-GP with a finite number of discriminator updates per generator update do not always converge to the equilibrium point. We discuss these results, leading us to a new explanation for the stability problems of GAN training. Based on our analysis, we extend our convergence results to more general GANs and prove local convergence for simplified gradient penalties even if the generator and data distribution lie on lower dimensional manifolds. We find these penalties to work well in practice and use them to learn high-resolution generative image models for a variety of datasets with little hyperparameter tuning.
Transplantation of Living Nuclei From Blastula Cells into Enucleated Frogs' Eggs.

The role of the nucleus in embryonic differentiation has been the subject of investigations dating back to the beginnings of experimental embryology. At first it was supposed by Roux, Weismann and others that differentiation is the result of qualitative nuclear divisions, different blastomeres thereby receiving the different kinds of nuclei which determine their subsequent differentiation. Later on this theory was disproved by numerous experiments showing that, during early cleavage at least, the distribution of the nuclei can be changed at will without altering the pattern of development. The cleavage nuclei have, therefore, been regarded as identical, and differentiation has been ascribed primarily to the well-known localizations in the egg cytoplasm. This evidence, it should be emphasized, relates only to the early phases of development. During this time it is definitely true that the nuclei in the various blastomeres are equivalent. However, whether they remain equivalent or become differentiated as the various parts of the embryo differentiate has never been tested. The possibility that nuclei might differentiate in response to regional differences in the cytoplasm, and that such nuclear changes might have reciprocal effects on the cytoplasm during cell differentiation, was suggested by Morgan.1 More recently Schultz2– 4 has discussed the problem more fully, indicating the known cytogenetical mechanisms that could account for nuclear differentiation, and Weisz5 has reviewed it in relation to ciliate morphogenesis. Obviously this problem can be solved only by the development of a method for testing directly whether nuclei of differentiating embryonic cells are or are not themselves differentiated. This sort of test could be obtained, as suggested to us several years ago by Schultz, if it were possible to transplant nuclei. Ideally, this type of experiment should be carried out by transplanting the nucleus …
Physicians' perceptions of the value of prognostic models: the benefits and risks of prognostic confidence

The communication of prognosis in end‐of‐life (EOL) care is a challenging task that is limited by prognostic uncertainty and physicians' lack of confidence in their prognostic estimates. Clinical prediction models (CPMs) are increasingly common evidence‐based tools that may mitigate these problems and facilitate the communication and use of prognostic information in EOL care; however, little is known about physicians' perceptions of the value of these tools.
Use of intravitreal rituximab for treatment of vitreoretinal lymphoma

Aim Vitreoretinal lymphoma is a diffuse large B cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Targeting malignant cells with rituximab is being used increasingly as local chemotherapy, but information on this treatment is scant. We aimed to describe current therapeutic approaches, as well as responses to and complications of, intravitreal rituximab in patients with vitreoretinal lymphoma. Methods Clinical data were collected in a standardised manner retrospectively on patients with vitreoretinal lymphoma treated with intravitreal rituximab. Results 48 eyes (34 patients) with vitreoretinal lymphoma were treated with a median of 3.5 intravitreal injections of rituximab (1 mg/0.1 mL) for new diagnosis (68.8%), progressive disease (29.9%) and maintenance therapy (2.1%). Intravitreal rituximab±methotrexate was the sole treatment in 19 eyes (39.6%). 31 eyes (64.6%) eyes achieved complete remission, after a median of 3 injections; 7 of these eyes developed recurrent disease. 11 eyes (22.9%) achieved partial remission. Although rituximab may have contributed to complications reported in 12 eyes (25.0%), a 2-line loss of Snellen visual acuity occurred in only 2 of those eyes (4.2%). Conclusions Approaches in rituximab-based intravitreal chemotherapy vary widely, but our findings suggest that this treatment may be safe and effective in inducing remission in a majority of eyes with vitreoretinal lymphoma.
1 Effects of Oxidized Brown Coal Humic Acid 2 Fertilizer on the Relative Height Growth Rate of 3 Several Tree Species 4

Field experiments were carried out during 2011-2014 at the Research and Experimental 13 Center to Combating Desertification located in the Elsen Tasarkhai station of central Mongolia. The 14 study was aimed to identify the effects of oxidized brown coal humic acid fertilizer on the relative 15 growth rate of several trees for forest rehabilitation. The trees used were Populus sibirica, Salix 16 ledebouriana and Acer tataricum. The experiment was carried out with the concentrations of 2,000, 17 10,000 and 20,000 mg L-1 of humic acid fertilization treatments. The measurement of relative height 18 growth rate (RHGR) was conducted for a period of 4 years. The treatments showed significant 19 differences within humic fertilizer concentrations which differed depending on the species. 20 Compared to the monthly RHGR over the study, the treatment of fertilizers were significantly better 21 for tree growth. P. sibirica in the 10,000 and 20,000 mg L-1 humic acid fertilizers had significant height 22 growth rates. In addition, when the humic acid treatments were compared to control, A. tataricum 23 decreased over the years which were statistically significant for high growth rate and a positive 24 effect of humic acid fertilization treatments was observed. Furthermore, results showed that 25 oxidized brown coal humic acid fertilizers as organic fertilizer can have a positive effect for the 26 growth of A. tataricum during the study years. The results showed that the soil chemical properties 27 EC, CO2, NO3, and K2O were significant among all the treatments compared to the control. The effect 28 on P2O5 statistically significantly increased among all the treatments. However, pH and Mg were 29 not significant effect among all the treatments. Combining the results obtained from the oxidized 30 brown coal humic acid fertilization with sustainable land management practices can help improve 31 soil organics for environmental issues in degraded sandy soil regions. 32
High-Risk HPV DNA Detection Rate in Patients with Atypical Squamous Cells and Its Relationship to the Atypical Squamous Cell:Squamous Intraepithelial Lesion Ratio

OBJECTIVE To determine if there is any relationship between the atypical squamous cell (ASC):squamous intraepithelial lesion (SIL) ratio and high-risk HPV DNA detection rate. STUDY DESIGN Data on the frequency of various cytologic diagnoses for each pathologist were retrieved from 2002 to 2003. ASC:SIL ratio for each pathologist was calculated. In addition, data related to high-risk HPV detection rate was obtained during the study period. HPV DNA testing was performed using HC II (Digene, Gaithersburg, Maryland U.S.A). Cases with insufficient quantity were excluded. RESULTS Five pathologists, with experience ranging from 2 to 15 years, reviewed Pap tests during the study period. For the entire laboratory, the ASC:SIL ratio was 2.0, and the high-risk HPV DNA detection rate in ASC specimens was 31%. For individual pathologists, ASC:SIL ratio ranged from 1.2 to 4.0 and high-risk HPV DNA detection rate from 31% to 38%. No significant correlation was noted between the ASC:SIL ratio and high-risk HP DNA detection rate. CONCLUSION Our ASC:SIL ratios (except for 1 pathologist) and high-risk HPV DNA detection rates were within an acceptable range. We did not observe any association between ASC:SIL ratio and high-risk HPV detection rate.
Dilated Recurrent Neural Networks

Learning with recurrent neural networks (RNNs) on long sequences is a notoriously difficult task. There are three major challenges: 1) complex dependencies, 2) vanishing and exploding gradients, and 3) efficient parallelization. In this paper, we introduce a simple yet effective RNN connection structure, the DilatedRNN, which simultaneously tackles all of these challenges. The proposed architecture is characterized by multi-resolution dilated recurrent skip connections and can be combined flexibly with diverse RNN cells. Moreover, the DilatedRNN reduces the number of parameters needed and enhances training efficiency significantly, while matching state-of-the-art performance (even with standard RNN cells) in tasks involving very long-term dependencies. To provide a theory-based quantification of the architecture's advantages, we introduce a memory capacity measure, the mean recurrent length, which is more suitable for RNNs with long skip connections than existing measures. We rigorously prove the advantages of the DilatedRNN over other recurrent neural architectures. The code for our method is publicly available at this https URL
Effects of Multiple Delaminations on Compressive Buckling Behaviors of Composite Panels

Compressive buckling stability of composite panels with through-width, equally spaced multiple delaminations are investigated analytically and experimentally. An analytical method is formulated on the basis of Rayleigh-Ritz approximation tech nique. Timoshenko type shear effects are included. An experiment and a finite element analysis are also conducted on the present model. The analytical results agree very well with the experimental and finite element results. The buckling load, which is the com pressive strength of the panel in the case of the present model, reduces significantly due to the existence of multiple delaminations. The mechanism causing the significant loss of the compressive buckling load due to the delaminations is well explained.