Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Body mass index, dialysis modality, and survival: analysis of the United States Renal Data System Dialysis Morbidity and Mortality Wave II Study.

BACKGROUND The impact of obesity on survival in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients as related to dialysis modality (i.e., a direct comparison of hemodialysis with peritoneal dialysis) has not been assessed adjusting for differences in medication use, follow-up > or =2 years, or accounting for changes in dialysis modality. METHODS We performed a retrospective cohort study of the United States Renal Data System (USRDS) Dialysis Morbidity and Mortality Wave II Study (DMMS) patients who started dialysis in 1996, and were followed until October 31 2001. Cox regression analysis was used to model adjusted hazard ratios (AHR) for mortality for categories of body mass index (BMI), both as quartiles and as > or =30 kg/m2 vs. lower. Because such a large proportion of peritoneal dialysis patients changed to hemodialysis during the study period (45.5%), a sensitivity analysis was performed calculating survival time both censoring and not censoring on the date of change from peritoneal dialysis to hemodialysis. RESULTS There were 1675 hemodialysis and 1662 peritoneal dialysis patients. Among hemodialysis patients, 5-year survival for patients with BMI > or =30 kg/m2 was 39.8% vs. 32.3% for lower BMI (P < 0.01 by log-rank test). Among peritoneal dialysis patients, 5-year survival for patients with BMI >/=30 kg/m2 was 38.7% vs. 40.4% for lower BMI (P > 0.05 by log-rank test). In adjusted analysis, BMI > or = 30 kg/m2 was associated with improved survival in hemodialysis patients (AHR 0.89; 95% CI 0.81, 0.99; P= 0.042) but not peritoneal dialysis patients (AHR = 0.99; 95% CI, 0.86, 1.15; P= 0.89). Results were not different on censoring of change from peritoneal dialysis to hemodialysis. CONCLUSION We conclude that any survival advantage associated with obesity among chronic dialysis patients is significantly less likely for peritoneal dialysis patients, compared to hemodialysis patients.
Leishmania promastigotes selectively inhibit interleukin 12 induction in bone marrow-derived macrophages from susceptible and resistant mice

Leishmania major promastigotes were found to avoid activation of mouse bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMM0) in vitro for production of cytokines that are typically induced during infection with other intracellular pathogens. Coexposure of BMM0 to the parasite and other microbial stimuli resulted in complete inhibition of interleukin (IL) 12 (p40) mRNA induction and IL-12 release. In contrast, mRNA and protein levels for IL-1(alpha), IL-1(beta), tumor necrosis factor (TNF) alpha, and inducible NO synthase (iNOS) were only partially reduced, and signals for IL-10 and monocyte chemoattractant protein (MCP-1/JE) were enhanced. The parasite could provide a detectable trigger for TNF- alpha and iNOS in BMM0 primed with interferon (IFN) gamma, but still failed to induce IL-12. Thus IL-12 induction is selectively impaired after infection, whereas activation pathways for other monokine responses remain relatively intact. Selective and complete inhibition of IL-12(p40) induction was observed using BMM0 from either genetically susceptible or resistant mouse strains, as well as IL-10 knockout mice, and was obtained using promastigotes from cutaneous, visceral, and lipophosphoglycan-deficient strains of Leishmania. The impaired production of the major physiological inducer of IFN-gamma is suggested to underlie the relatively prolonged interval of parasite intracellular survival and replication that is typically associate with leishmanial infections, including those producing self-limiting disease.
Younger workers’ metastereotypes, workplace mood, attitudes, and behaviors

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of age-related stereotyping processes on younger workers’ mood, attitudes, and impression management behaviors at work. Design/methodology/approach – Using survey data from 281 younger workers, the hypothesized model was tested using structural equation modeling. Findings – As younger workers are more self-conscious about being age stereotyped, they are less likely to be satisfied with older co-workers, which is partly explained by negative mood associated with that metastereotype consciousness. Also, chronological age, age-group identification, and age prejudice, were critical influences on the emergence of metastereotype consciousness. Research limitations/implications – Unexpected findings point to: experiences of younger workers which may not follow the same patterns found with older groups and unique operation of age as a dynamic social category that may not parallel findings regarding other social categories. Practical implications – Th.
Robust Visual Tracking Using Flexible Structured Sparse Representation

In this work, we propose a robust and flexible appearance model based on the structured sparse representation framework. In our method, we model the complex nonlinear appearance manifold and the occlusion as a sparse linear combination of structured union of subspaces in a basis library, which consists of multiple incremental learned target subspaces and a partitioned occlusion template set. In order to enhance the discriminative power of the model, a number of clustered background subspaces are also added into the basis library and updated during tracking. With the Block Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (BOMP) algorithm, we show that the new flexible structured sparse representation based appearance model facilitates the tracking performance compared with the prototype structured sparse representation model and other state of the art tracking algorithms.
A case study in web search using TREC algorithms

Web search engines rank potentially relevant pages/sites for a user query. Ranking documents for user queries has also been at the heart of the Text REtrieval Conference (TREC in short) under the label ad-hoc retrieval. The TREC community has developed document ranking algorithms that are known to be the best for searching the document collections used in TREC, which are mainly comprised of newswire text. However, the web search community has developed its own methods to rank web pages/sites, many of which use link structure on the web, and are quite di erent from the algorithms developed at TREC. This study evaluates the performance of a state-of-the-art keyword-based document ranking algorithm (coming out of TREC) on a popular web search task: nding the web page/site of an entity, e.g. companies, universities, organizations, individuals, etc. This form of querying is quite prevalent on the web. The results from the TREC algorithms are compared to four commercial web search engines. Results show that for nding the web page/site of an entity, commercial web search engines are notably better than a state-of-the-art TREC algorithm. These results are in sharp contrast to results from several previous studies.
IDAP: a tool for high-level power estimation of custom array structures

While array structures are a significant source of power dissipation, there is a lack of accurate high-level power estimators that account for varying array circuit implementation styles. We present a methodology and a tool, the implementation-dependent array power (IDAP) estimator, that model power dissipation in SRAM-based arrays accurately based on a high-level description of the array. The models are parameterized by the array operations and various technology dependent parameters. The methodology is generic and the IDAP tool has been validated on industrial designs across a wide variety of array implementations in the e500 processor core (e500 is the Motorola processor core that is compliant with the PowerPC Book E architecture). For these industrial designs, IDAP generates high-level estimates for dynamic power dissipation that are accurate with an error margin of less than 22.2% of detailed (layout extracted) SPICE simulations. We apply the tool in three different scenarios: 1) identifying the subblocks that contribute to power significantly; 2) evaluating the effect of bitline-voltage swing on array power; and 3) evaluating the effect of memory bit-cell dimensions on array power.
Age-Adjusted Relative Risks From Proportional Hazards Regression by Sex for All Participants and Stratified by Use of Antihypertensive Medication at the Later Visit

Higher diastolic pressure predicted better survival in men 75 years or older in two prior analyses in the Rancho Bernardo population. Diastolic change was implicated as a possible explanation. We studied this by assessing survival according to blood pressure change in 795 men and women aged 75 years and older at the time of a second measurement taken an average of 11 years after the first, who were then followed for 5 years. Sex-specific analyses compared participants with a diastolic decrease of 5 mm Hg or greater and participants with a systolic decrease of 10 mm Hg or greater with those whose blood pressure levels did not change or increased. In men, after adjustment for baseline pressure, a decrease in diastolic pressure of 5 mm Hg or greater was associated with higher all-cause mortality (relative risk, 2.33; 95% confidence interval, 1.39 to 3.91) and cardiovascular mortality (3.13,1.47 to 6.66). The mortality risk was strongest in men who took antihypertensive medication and had a fall in diastolic pressure (1233,2.73 to 55.72) compared with treated men whose pressures did not decrease. Among men with isolated systolic hypertension, those treated whose diastolic pressure remained stable had the best survival. A systolic fall in men and a decrease in either diastolic or systolic in women was not associated with poorer survival after adjustment for baseline pressure. We conclude that a fall in diastolic pressure of 5 mm Hg was associated with poor survival in men after age 75. This risk was strongest in men who took antihypertensive medication. (Hypertension. 1993;22:551-559.)
THE EFFECTS OF INFANTS’ AND ADULTS’ FACIAL EXPRESSIONS ON APPROACH-AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOR

This study assessed the extent to which happy and sad facial expressions displayed by infants and adults elicit motoric approach and avoidance responses in viewers. Participants were asked to pull a joystick toward (approach response) or put it away from (avoidance response) their body in response to facial stimuli (sadness and happiness expressed by infants, female adults, and male adults) presented on a computer screen. They also rated the degree to which they themselves would want to help/become involved with the stimulus person. The results showed that both sadness and happiness elicited faster approach than avoidance responses, irrespective of participants’ gender and whether the stimulus depicted an infant, female adult, or male adult. We also found that the motivation to help and become involved in response to infants’ sad expressions was linked to delayed avoidance. The different functions of the emotional expressions of infants and adults are discussed.
Valuing Real Options in Incomplete Markets

In this paper, we develop a framework for valuing real options and portfolios of real options in incomplete markets and show that it is a consistent generalization of contingent claims analysis, which is conventionally used for real option valuation in complete markets. The development of a framework for incomplete markets is motivated by the difficulty to construct replicating portfolios in practice, especially for projects that lead to innovative new products, which seldom share similarities with existing market-traded assets. The framework relies on (i) a decision-tree-based mixed asset portfolio selection model, which is able to capture managerial flexibility and relevant opportunity costs, and (ii) the concepts of opportunity buying and selling prices, which are extended from the notions of breakeven buying and selling prices. The use of a portfolio model is necessary, because in incomplete markets the value of a real option depends on the investor’s preference model, the available budget, and on other assets in the portfolio, including the real options they contain. We demonstrate the use of the model through a series of numerical experiments and compare the results to Capital Asset Pricing Model prices and Black-Scholes values.
Effect of diet and infusion of volatile fatty acids into the rumen on the concentration of plasma free amino acids in sheep

1. The effect of supplementing barley diets with urea (U), extracted decorticated groundnut meal (GNM) or Peruvian fish meal (PFM) on plasma free amino acid concentrations in sheep have been examined and the first limiting amino acid has been indicated by measuring the changes in the concentration of the plasma essential amino acids (PEAA) during a rumen infusion of a volatile fatty acid (VFA) mixture. 2. Three wethers fitted with rumen and re-entrant duodenal cannulas were given isonitrogenous, isoenergetic diets containing (g/kg dry matter (DM)) U 20, GNM 106 or PFM 78, the crude protein (nitrogen × 6.25) contents being 139, 145 and 148 respectively. The sheep were fed hourly, the mean daily dm intake being 0.634 kg. 3. Plasma concentrations of valine, threonine, lysine, isoleucine and leucine were linearly related to their concentrations in duodenal digesta. 4. A VFA mixture was infused into the rumen for 6 h to supply (mmol/min) acetate 1.47, propionate 0.22 and n-butyrate 0.27. Blood samples were taken 6 h before, during and 12 h after the end of the infusion. 5. The concentration of all PEAA decreased relative to the pre-infusion and post-infusion controls but there were no significant differences between diets. 6. The mean decreases in concentration averaged over all three diets showed that the decrease in concentration of methionine (41.5%) was far greater than for any other essential amino acid suggesting that under these conditions methionine was the first limiting amino acid.
Cryptic Variation in the Human Mutation Rate

The mutation rate is known to vary between adjacent sites within the human genome as a consequence of context, the most well-studied example being the influence of CpG dinucelotides. We investigated whether there is additional variation by testing whether there is an excess of sites at which both humans and chimpanzees have a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). We found a highly significant excess of such sites, and we demonstrated that this excess is not due to neighbouring nucleotide effects, ancestral polymorphism, or natural selection. We therefore infer that there is cryptic variation in the mutation rate. However, although this variation in the mutation rate is not associated with the adjacent nucleotides, we show that there are highly nonrandom patterns of nucleotides that extend ∼80 base pairs on either side of sites with coincident SNPs, suggesting that there are extensive and complex context effects. Finally, we estimate the level of variation needed to produce the excess of coincident SNPs and show that there is a similar, or higher, level of variation in the mutation rate associated with this cryptic process than there is associated with adjacent nucleotides, including the CpG effect. We conclude that there is substantial variation in the mutation that has, until now, been hidden from view.
WW Domains of the Yes-Kinase-Associated-Protein (YAP) Transcriptional Regulator Behave as Independent Units with Different Binding Preferences for PPxY Motif-Containing Ligands

YAP is a WW domain-containing effector of the Hippo tumor suppressor pathway, and the object of heightened interest as a potent oncogene and stemness factor. YAP has two major isoforms that differ in the number of WW domains they harbor. Elucidating the degree of co-operation between these WW domains is important for a full understanding of the molecular function of YAP. We present here a detailed biophysical study of the structural stability and binding properties of the two YAP WW domains aimed at investigating the relationship between both domains in terms of structural stability and partner recognition. We have carried out a calorimetric study of the structural stability of the two YAP WW domains, both isolated and in a tandem configuration, and their interaction with a set of functionally relevant ligands derived from PTCH1 and LATS kinases. We find that the two YAP WW domains behave as independent units with different binding preferences, suggesting that the presence of the second WW domain might contribute to modulate target recognition between the two YAP isoforms. Analysis of structural models and phage-display studies indicate that electrostatic interactions play a critical role in binding specificity. Together, these results are relevant to understand of YAP function and open the door to the design of highly specific ligands of interest to delineate the functional role of each WW domain in YAP signaling.
Action recognition using Randomised Ferns

]This paper presents a generic method for recognising and localising human actions in video based solely on the distribution of interest points. The use of local interest points has shown promising results in both object and action recognition. While previous methods classify actions based on the appearance and/or motion of these points, we hypothesise that the distribution of interest points alone contains the majority of the discriminatory information. Motivated by its recent success in rapidly detecting 2D interest points, the semi-naive Bayesian classification method of Randomised Ferns is employed. Given a set of interest points within the boundaries of an action, the generic classifier learns the spatial and temporal distributions of those interest points. This is done efficiently by comparing sums of responses of interest points detected within randomly positioned spatio-temporal blocks within the action boundaries. We present results on the largest and most popular human action dataset [20] using a number of interest point detectors, and demostrate that the distribution of interest points alone can perform as well as approaches that rely upon the appearance of the interest points.
Validation of Linear Programming Models

Abstract Systematic approaches to validation of linear programming models are discussed for prescriptive and predictive applications to economic problems. Specific references are made to a general linear programming formulation, however, the approaches are applicable to mathematical programming applications in general. Detailed procedures are outlined for validating various aspects of model performance given complete or partial sets of observed, real world values of variables. Alternative evaluation criteria are presented along with procedures for correcting validation problems.
The Tec Kinase–Regulated Phosphoproteome Reveals a Mechanism for the Regulation of Inhibitory Signals in Murine Macrophages

Previous work has shown conflicting roles for Tec family kinases in regulation of TLR-dependent signaling in myeloid cells. In the present study, we performed a detailed investigation of the role of the Tec kinases Btk and Tec kinases in regulating TLR signaling in several types of primary murine macrophages. We demonstrate that primary resident peritoneal macrophages deficient for Btk and Tec secrete less proinflammatory cytokines in response to TLR stimulation than do wild-type cells. In contrast, we found that bone marrow–derived and thioglycollate-elicited peritoneal macrophages deficient for Btk and Tec secrete more proinflammatory cytokines than do wild-type cells. We then compared the phosphoproteome regulated by Tec kinases and LPS in primary peritoneal and bone marrow–derived macrophages. From this analysis we determined that Tec kinases regulate different signaling programs in these cell types. In additional studies using bone marrow–derived macrophages, we found that Tec and Btk promote phosphorylation events necessary for immunoreceptor-mediated inhibition of TLR signaling. Taken together, our results are consistent with a model where Tec kinases (Btk, Tec, Bmx) are required for TLR-dependent signaling in many types of myeloid cells. However, our data also support a cell type–specific TLR inhibitory role for Btk and Tec that is mediated by immunoreceptor activation and signaling via PI3K.
The Centre Acknowledges Financial Support from the Leverhulme Trust under Programme Grant F114/bf Centre for Research on Globalisation and Labour Markets Sectoral and Firm-specific Determinants of Export Performance: Evidence from the United Kingdom Sectoral and Firm-specific Determinants of Export 

Acknowledgements The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from a Marie Curie Fellowship, number ERBFMBICT950105, from DG XII of the European Commission and through Leverhulme programme number F114/BF. Abstract Trade-theoretic and firm-specific determinants of the share of output exported are investigated for a sample of British manufacturing firms. Export shares are higher in sectors with higher R&D expenditures as a proportion of output. We find that R&D expenditures allocated by first application of the innovation (e.g. through purchases of new capital goods produced in another sector) perform better than the standard measure. There is only weak evidence in support of factor endowment theories of trade. The firm-specific influences emerge as important and are consistent with previous research that finds better-performing firms to be more likely to export.
Efficient Decoding of the UAG Triplet as a Full-Fledged Sense Codon Enhances the Growth of a prfA-Deficient Strain of Escherichia coli

ABSTRACT We previously reassigned the amber UAG stop triplet as a sense codon in Escherichia coli by expressing a UAG-decoding tRNA and knocking out the prfA gene, encoding release factor 1. UAG triplets were left at the ends of about 300 genes in the genome. In the present study, we showed that the detrimental effect of UAG reassignment could be alleviated by increasing the efficiency of UAG translation instead of reducing the number of UAGs in the genome. We isolated an amber suppressor tRNAGln variant displaying enhanced suppression activity, and we introduced it into the prfA knockout strain, RFzero-q, in place of the original suppressor tRNAGln. The resulting strain, RFzero-q3, translated UAG to glutamine almost as efficiently as the glutamine codons, and it proliferated faster than the parent RFzero-q strain. We identified two major factors in this growth enhancement. First, the sucB gene, which is involved in energy regeneration and has two successive UAG triplets at the end, was expressed at a higher level in RFzero-q3 than RFzero-q. Second, the ribosome stalling that occurred at UAG in RFzero-q was resolved in RFzero-q3. The results revealed the importance of “backup” stop triplets, UAA or UGA downstream of UAG, to avoid the deleterious impact of UAG reassignment on the proteome.