Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performance requirements for glucose assays in intensive care units.

Treatment of patients in the intensive care unit (ICU)2 with intravenous insulin became popular after initial reports suggesting that such treatment led to decreased in-hospital and 30-day mortality (1–3). Such treatment became controversial when several subsequent studies failed to confirm the improved clinical outcomes (4–6). The latter studies, however, used different methods for glucose measurement, and the measurements typically were made less frequently (7). If we wish to optimize glucose monitoring in patients being treated with intravenous insulin while in the intensive care unit, we need answers to several questions: 1) How frequently should glucose be measured? 2) What quality of glucose measurement is needed? 3) What protocol should be used to guide insulin treatment? 4) How much nursing time will be required to conduct such monitoring? 5) Will such monitoring lead to improved outcomes? This editorial concerns itself primarily with the first 3 of these, but the last 2 are extremely important considerations in the clinical arena. Computer simulation studies offer several advantages for answering such questions. First, they entail no risk to patients. Second, many thousands (or millions) of patient-care episodes can be simulated; moreover, various treatment protocols and the effects of different measurement frequencies can be considered simultaneously with evaluation of the analytical requirements for glucose assays. Finally, simulations can predict surrogate markers of patient outcomes such as rates of hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia, time in range, and within-patient variation of glycemia. This issue of Clinical Chemistry contains 2 reports of novel computer simulation studies of glycemic control in ICU patients (8, 9). These studies may help to answer questions regarding what analytical quality is required of glucose assays, and what impact more-frequent measurement has on patient outcomes and/or the analytical performance requirements of glucose measurement. Although earlier modeling studies of …
Recent mathematical developments in quantum general relativity”, to appear in The

After a brief chronological sketch of developments in non-perturbative canonical quantum gravity, some of the recent mathematical results are reviewed. These include: i) an explicit construction of the quantum counterpart of Wheeler's super-space; ii) a rigorous procedure leading to the general solution of the diffeomorphism constraint in quantum geometrodynamics as well as connection dynamics; and, iii) a scheme to incorporate the reality conditions in quantum connection dynamics. Furthermore, there is a new language to formulate the central questions and techniques to answer them. These developments put the program on a sounder footing and, in particular, address certain concerns and reservations about consistency of the overall scheme.
Formulas for Quantitative Emission Targets

Start from three premises: (1) Global Climate Change is a genuine problem; (2) the Kyoto Protocol constitutes the only multilateral framework we have to address it; and (3) the Protocol is inadequate, particularly with regard to incomplete coverage across countries (no participation of US or developing countries) and across time (nothing agreed after 2012). This paper argues that – given the combination of political, economic and scientific realities as they are – Kyoto is a good foundation, a good first stepping stone on the most practical path if we are to address Climate Change seriously. A constructive approach asks what are the requirements for the design of a second step in the process, a successor to the Kyoto regime of 2008-2012, one that would build on what is good about it and fix what is most lacking. This paper offers a proposal that seeks realistically to bring in all countries and to look far into the future. It argues that the path of emission targets for the 21st century must be selected sequentially, perhaps one decade at a time, all within a common framework. An analogy for the framework would be the post-war General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which gave us 50 years of successful rounds negotiating trade liberalization, even though the original signers did know what specifics would emerge. The paper proposes allocating relative targets across countries by means of a formula that is fairly general at first but that becomes increasingly specific as the decade in question approaches. New joiners would be obligated to adopt emissions targets, but these paths need not immediately fall below their “business as usual” growth path. Allowing new joiners to sell permits in the initial budget period would then provide them with an economic incentive to join, or at least would not penalize them. It would carry economic benefits for both rich and poor countries, while also bringing environmental benefits to all. Countries would be required in subsequent budget periods of their participation to adopt steeper reductions in their emissions targets relative to their “business as usual” paths. The extent of relative cuts across countries would depend on such factors in the formulas as the per capita income and past emission levels of the country in question. The extent of cuts in aggregate global emissions would depend – as is inevitable -- on how strong is the international political consensus for aggressive action at that point in history. Such a scheme provides the necessary flexibility and incentives to appeal to both industrialized and developing countries.
Accurate Simulations of Electric Double Layer Capacitance of Ultramicroelectrodes

This paper aims to develop rigorous and accurate numerical tools for simulating electric double layers formed near ultramicroelectrodes. It also aims to assess the validity of existing models and to identify the dominant physical phenomena that must be accounted for. The electric double layer capacitance was numerically predicted for spherical ultramicroelectrodes of various radii in aqueous electrolyte. The model accounted for the Stern and diffuse layers, the finite size of ions, and the dependency of the electrolyte dielectric permittivity on the local electric field. This study reveals that models reported in the literature suffer from severe limitations. First, it demonstrates that the electrolyte field-dependent dielectric permittivity significantly affects the predicted Stern layer and total specific capacitances and must be accounted for. The finite ion size and the Stern layer also need to be considered in simulating electric double layers under high concentrations and surface potential. This stu.
Possible Involvement of Tight Junctions, Extracellular Matrix and Nuclear Receptors in Epithelial Differentiation

Tight junctions are intercellular junctions localized at the most apical end of the lateral plasma membrane. They consist of four kinds of transmembrane proteins (occludin, claudins, junctional adhesion molecules, and tricellulin) and huge numbers of scaffolding proteins and contribute to the paracellular barrier and fence function. The mutation and deletion of these proteins impair the functions of tight junctions and cause various human diseases. In this paper, we provide an overview of recent studies on transmembrane proteins of tight junctions and highlight the functional significance of tight junctions, extracellular matrix, and nuclear receptors in epithelial differentiation.
A Two-fold PCA-Approach for Inter-Individual Recognition of Emotions in Natural Walking

This paper describes recognition of emotions of an unkown person during natural walking. As gait data is redundant, high dimensional and variable, effective feature extraction is essential. A combination of two consecutive Principal Component Analyses (PCA) and Fourier Transformation is used for data reduction. Naive Bayes, 1-Nearest Neighbor and Support Vector Machine (SVM) are compared for classification. Best accuracy is achieved for Naive Bayes with 72% for the four emotions sad, neutral, happy and angry within 1.65 seconds recording time. Slight increase in recognition accuracy is achieved, if the first PCA is replaced by Kernel PCA for SVM classification. The emotions angry and sad, both with high contrast in arousal, are better recognizable than neutral and happy. It is concluded that gait is capable to reveal the emotional state of a walker above chance level.
Chemotherapy for elderly patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer: the Multicenter Italian Lung Cancer in the Elderly Study (MILES) phase III randomized trial.

BACKGROUND Vinorelbine prolongs survival and improves quality of life in elderly patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Some studies have also suggested that gemcitabine is well tolerated and effective in such patients. We compared the effectiveness and toxicity of the combination of vinorelbine plus gemcitabine with those of each drug given alone in an open-label, randomized phase III trial in elderly patients with advanced NSCLC. METHODS Patients aged 70 years and older, enrolled between December 1997 and November 2000, were randomly assigned to receive intravenous vinorelbine (30 mg/m(2) of body surface area), gemcitabine (1200 mg/m(2)), or vinorelbine (25 mg/m(2)) plus gemcitabine (1000 mg/m(2)). All treatments were delivered on days 1 and 8 every 3 weeks for a maximum of six cycles. The primary endpoint was survival. Survival curves were drawn using the Kaplan-Meier method and analyzed by the Mantel-Haenszel test. Secondary endpoints were quality of life and toxicity. RESULTS Of 698 patients available for intention-to-treat analysis, 233 were assigned to receive vinorelbine, 233 to gemcitabine, and 232 to vinorelbine plus gemcitabine. Compared with each single drug, the combination treatment did not improve survival. The hazard ratio of death for patients receiving the combination treatment was 1.17 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.95 to 1.44) that of patients receiving vinorelbine and 1.06 (95% CI = 0.86 to 1.29) that of patients receiving gemcitabine. Although quality of life was similar across the three treatment arms, the combination treatment was more toxic than the two drugs given singly. CONCLUSION The combination of vinorelbine plus gemcitabine is not more effective than single-agent vinorelbine or gemcitabine in the treatment of elderly patients with advanced NSCLC.
Using a DSGE model to look at the recent Boom-Bust Cycle in the US

This paper presents a DSGE model with residential investment and credit-constrained households estimated with US data over the period 1980Q1-2008Q4. In order to better understand speculative movements of house prices, we model land as an exhaustible resource, implying that house prices have asset market characteristics.We conduct an event study for the US over the period 1999Q1-2008Q4 which has been characterised by a housing boom and bust and examine which shocks have contributed to the evolution of GDP and its components over this period. We devote special attention to the contribution of non-fundamental shocks to asset prices over this episode.
Problem frames approach for e-business systems

We propose a Problem Frames approach for ebusiness systems that incorporates a business strategy dimension as a means of describing the e-business problem domain. To achieve this, we employ both goal modeling and the Problem Frames approach. Jackson’s context diagrams, which are used to represent the business model context, are integrated with goal-models to describe the complete business strategy. As a means of simultaneously decomposing both the optative and indicative parts of a requirements problem, from an abstract business level to concrete system requirements, we leverage the paradigm of projection in both approaches while maintaining traceability to high-level business objectives. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach via a proof-of-concept case study from the literature.
A Unified Approach to Extremal Multiplicative Zagreb Indices for Trees, Unicyclic and Bicyclic Graphs ∗

For a (molecular) graph, the (first or second) multiplicative Zagreb index ( 1 or ( 2 is a multiplicative variant of ordinary Zagreb index (M1 or M2). Gutman [6] determined that among all trees of order n ≥ 4, the extremal trees with respect to these multiplicative Zagreb indices are n-vertex path (with maximal ( 1 and with minimal ( 2 )a ndn-vertex star (with maximal ( 2 and with minimal ( 1). Regarding these new topological indices, there is no further results reported so far. In this paper we investigate extremal properties of these indices along the same line of [6]. We first introduce some graph transformations which increase or decrease these two indices. As an application, we obtain a unified approach to characterize extremal (maximal and minimal) trees, unicyclic graphs and bicyclic graphs with respect to multiplicative Zagreb indices, respectively.
Towards Multimodal Affective Feedback: Interaction between Visual and Haptic Modalities

We explored how emotional cues presented in visual and haptic modalities interact. We constructed an affective haptic dataset, and used the emotional visual stimuli from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Participants were asked to rate the visual stimuli, haptic stimuli and visualhaptic stimuli. Analysis of the results indicates that the presence of haptic stimulus affects the arousal of the visual stimulus, but does not affect the valence significantly. We further explored this interaction in terms of the intensity, frequency, waveform and rhythm of the haptic stimuli. We then provide a set of guidelines on visual-haptic interaction that could be used in design of multimodal affective feedback.
Information and American Democracy: Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

1. Information and political change 2. Information revolutions in American political development 3. The fourth information revolution and post-bureaucratic pluralism 4. Political organizations in the fourth information revolution 5. Political individuals in the fourth information revolution 6. Information, equality, and integration in the public sphere.
Philopatry drives genetic differentiation in an island archipelago: comparative population genetics of Galapagos Nazca boobies (Sula granti) and great frigatebirds (Fregata minor)

Seabirds are considered highly mobile, able to fly great distances with few apparent barriers to dispersal. However, it is often the case that seabird populations exhibit strong population genetic structure despite their potential vagility. Here we show that Galapagos Nazca booby (Sula granti) populations are substantially differentiated, even within the small geographic scale of this archipelago. On the other hand, Galapagos great frigatebird (Fregata minor) populations do not show any genetic structure. We characterized the genetic differentiation by sampling five colonies of both species in the Galapagos archipelago and analyzing eight microsatellite loci and three mitochondrial genes. Using an F-statistic approach on the multilocus data, we found significant differentiation between nearly all island pairs of Nazca booby populations and a Bayesian clustering analysis provided support for three distinct genetic clusters. Mitochondrial DNA showed less differentiation of Nazca booby colonies; only Nazca boobies from the island of Darwin were significantly differentiated from individuals throughout the rest of the archipelago. Great frigatebird populations showed little to no evidence for genetic differentiation at the same scale. Only two island pairs (Darwin – Wolf, N. Seymour – Wolf) were significantly differentiated using the multilocus data, and only two island pairs had statistically significant φST values (N. Seymour – Darwin, N. Seymour – Wolf) according to the mitochondrial data. There was no significant pattern of isolation by distance for either species calculated using both markers. Seven of the ten Nazca booby migration rates calculated between island pairs were in the south or southeast to north or northwest direction. The population differentiation found among Galapagos Nazca booby colonies, but not great frigatebird colonies, is most likely due to differences in natal and breeding philopatry.
How transposons drive evolution of virulence in a fungal pathogen

Genomic plasticity enables adaptation to changing environments, which is especially relevant for pathogens that engage in arms races with their hosts. In many pathogens, genes mediating aggressiveness cluster in highly variable, transposon-rich, physically distinct genomic compartments. However, understanding of the evolution of these compartments, and the role of transposons therein, remains limited. We now show that transposons are the major driving force for adaptive genome evolution in the fungal plant pathogen Verticillium dahliae. Highly variable genomic regions evolved by frequent segmental duplications mediated by erroneous homologous recombination, often utilizing transposons, leading to genetic material that is free to diverge. Intriguingly, the duplicated regions are enriched in active transposons that further contribute to local genome plasticity. Thus, we provide evidence for genome shaping by transposons, both in an active and passive manner, which impacts the evolution of pathogen aggressiveness.
Over-Optimistic Official Forecasts in the Eurozone and Fiscal Rules

Why do countries find it so hard to get their budget deficits under control? Systematic patterns in the errors that official budget agencies make in their forecasts may play an important role. Although many observers have suggested that fiscal discipline can be restored via fiscal rules such as a legal cap on the budget deficit, forecasting bias can defeat such rules. The members of the eurozone are supposedly constrained by the fiscal caps of the Stability and Growth Pact. Yet ever since the birth of the euro in 1999, members have postponed painful adjustment by making overly optimistic forecasts of future growth and budget positions and arguing that the deficits will fall below the cap within a year or two. The new fiscal compact among the euro countries is supposed to make budget rules more binding by putting them into laws and constitutions at the national level. But what is the record with such national rules? Our econometric findings are summarized as follows: -Governments' budget forecasts are biased in the optimistic direction, especially among the Eurozone countries, especially when they have large contemporaneous budget deficits, and especially during booms. -Governments' real GDP forecasts are similarly over-optimistic during booms. -Despite the well-known tendency of eurozone members to exceed the 3% cap on budget deficits, often in consecutive years, they almost never forecast that they will violate the cap in the coming years. This is the source of the extra bias among eurozone forecasts. If euro area governments are not in violation of the 3% cap at the time forecasts are made, forecasts are no more biased than other countries. -Although euro members without national budget balance rules have a larger over-optimism bias than non-member countries, national fiscal rules help counteract the wishful thinking that seems to come with euro membership. The reason is that when governments are in violation of the 3% cap the national rules apparently constrain them from making such unrealistic forecasts. -Similarly, the existence of an independent fiscal institution producing budget forecasts at the national level reduces the over-optimism bias of forecasts made when the countries are in violation of the 3% cap.
Oleanolic Acid Diminishes Liquid Fructose-Induced Fatty Liver in Rats: Role of Modulation of Hepatic Sterol Regulatory Element-Binding Protein-1c-Mediated Expression of Genes Responsible for De Novo Fatty Acid Synthesis

Oleanolic acid (OA), contained in more than 1620 plants and as an aglycone precursor for naturally occurred and synthesized triterpenoid saponins, is used in China for liver disorders in humans. However, the underlying liver-protecting mechanisms remain largely unknown. Here, we found that treatment of rats with OA (25 mg/kg/day, gavage, once daily) over 10 weeks diminished liquid fructose-induced excess hepatic triglyceride accumulation without effect on total energy intake. Attenuation of the increased vacuolization and Oil Red O staining area was evident on histological examination of liver in OA-treated rats. Hepatic gene expression profile demonstrated that OA suppressed fructose-stimulated overexpression of sterol regulatory element-binding protein-(SREBP-) 1/1c mRNA and nuclear protein. In accord, overexpression of SREBP-1c-responsive genes responsible for fatty acid synthesis was also downregulated. In contrast, overexpressed nuclear protein of carbohydrate response element-binding protein and its target genes liver pyruvate kinase and microsomal triglyceride transfer protein were not altered. Additionally, OA did not affect expression of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma- and -alpha and their target genes. It is concluded that modulation of hepatic SREBP-1c-mediated expression of the genes responsible for de novo fatty acid synthesis plays a pivotal role in OA-elicited diminishment of fructose-induced fatty liver in rats.
Escherichia coli Enteropathogenic and Enterohemorrhagic Non-LEE-Encoded Virulence Factors in Expression of Both LEE-and ( LEE )-Encoded Regulator Controls The Locus of Enterocyte Effacement

10.1128/IAI.68. 11.6115-6126.2000. 2000, 68(11):6115. DOI: Infect. Immun. Hutcheson, Timothy K. McDaniel and James B. Kaper Shin, Jay L. Mellies, Leslie Wainwright, Steven W. Simon J. Elliott, Vanessa Sperandio, Jorge A. Girón, Sooan Escherichia coli Enteropathogenic and Enterohemorrhagic Non-LEE-Encoded Virulence Factors in Expression of Both LEEand (LEE)-Encoded Regulator Controls The Locus of Enterocyte Effacement
Response of maize (Zea mays) and okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) intercrop relayed with cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) to different levels of cow dung amended phosphate rock

Field trial was conducted at the Institute of Agricultural Research and Training, Moor Plantation, Ibadan, Nigeria in 2002 and 2003 to assess the effect of Ogun rock phosphate (ORP) amended with cow dung (CD) manure on the growth and yields of maize and okra in intercrop relayed with cowpea on an Aquic Arenic Haplustalf. Significant treatment effects were observed in plant height and leaf area of maize and okra whereas stem girth was not significantly affected in either crop. The percentage leaf P concentration of maize, okra and cowpea were significantly (P The percentage ranged from 0.18 - 0.48 and 0.24 - 0.45 in maize, 0.20 - 0.39% and 0.21 - 0.40% in okra and 0.16 - 0.40 and 0.18 - 0.42% in cowpea in 2002 and 2003, respectively. Increase in available P in amended ORP over sole ORP ranged from 44 - 71%, 40 - 71%, and 50 - 67% in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th sampling period. The ORP + 4 t/ha CD gave the highest P content of leaf in all the crops and in both years. The complementary use of Ogun rock phosphate with 3 t ha-1 cow dung manure produced the highest yields of maize (3.2 and 2.3 t ha-1), okra (1.6 and 2.5 t ha-1), and cowpea (1.8 and 1.9 t ha-1) in 2002 and 2003, respectively.
IMPACT OF FINANCIAL CRISIS ON STOCK RETURNS: EVIDENCE FROM SINGAPORE

This paper investigates the role of macroeconomic factors and firm characteristics in explaining stock return in Singapore. The factors model is employed for two time intervals, namely, sub-period A (from July 2003 to June 2007) and sub-period B (from July 2007 to June 2011) to examine the changes in pre and post Global Financial Crisis of 2007. Our empirical findings showed that the significance relationship between macroeconomic variables and portfolio stock returns were not consistent for both sub-periods. The result is highly dependent on portfolio and sub-period.