Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cytokine gene polymorphism in Iranian patients with chronic myelogenous leukaemia

Chronic myelogenous leukaemia (CML) is a disorder of the haematopoietic stem cell that results in malignant expansion of myeloid cells with a cytogenetic abnormality, and translocation between chromosomes 9 and 22, known as the Philadelphia chromosome. It has been hypothesized that genetic factors other than histocompatibility disparity may play a role in predisposition to developing CML. In this regard, T helper types 1 and 2 (Th1 and Th2) cytokines and their gene polymorphism seem to be important. Overall expression and secretion of cytokines are dependent, at least in part, on genetic polymorphism (nucleotide variations) within the promoter region or other regulatory sequences of cytokine genes. The majority of polymorphisms described are single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs). The objective of this study was to analyse the genetic profile of Th1 and Th2 cytokines in 30 Iranian patients with CML and 40 healthy subjects. In the patients and control subjects, the allelic and genotype frequencies were determined for the cytokine genes. All typing were performed with a polymerase chain reaction–sequence‐specific primers (PCR‐SSP) assay. Allele and genotype frequencies were calculated and compared with those of normal controls. The results showed that the most frequent genotypes in our patients were transforming growth factor (TGF)‐β TG/TG, interferon (IFN)‐γ AT, interleukin (IL)‐4 CC at position −590, TT at position −33, and IL‐10 ACC/ACC and ATA/ATA. In contrast, the genotypes TGF‐β CG/CG, IL‐2 TT at position −330, IL‐4 CT at position −590, CT at position −33, and IL‐10 GCC/ACC were seen at much lower frequencies. The results suggest that production of TGF‐β in CML patients is higher and production of IL‐4 and IL‐10 is lower than in normal subjects.
News Shocks and Terms of Trade : A Quantitative Investigation ∗

In this paper we investigate the effects of “news shocks” to technology on the terms of trade. To do so, we augment a standard, frictionless model of the international business cycle with news shocks and check the changes in the model’s prediction with regard to persistence and volatility of model-generated data. Our results show that news can increase the persistence of the terms of trade, but decrease its variability, albeit slightly. We provide intuitive explanations for the above based on two theoretical assertions. First, news-shocks generate wealth effects; hence, movements in relative prices reflect changes in relative demands for the home and foreign goods. Second, the desire for consumption-smoothing urges agents to smooth-out this wealth effect. Coupled with complete markets, the processes of consumption and investment are smooth and persistent.
Order of the major constituents in sign languages: implications for all language

A survey of reports of sign order from 42 sign languages leads to a handful of generalizations. Two accounts emerge, one amodal and the other modal. We argue that universal pressures are at work with respect to some generalizations, but that pressure from the visual modality is at work with respect to others. Together, these pressures conspire to make all sign languages order their major constituents SOV or SVO. This study leads us to the conclusion that the order of S with regard to verb phrase (VP) may be driven by sensorimotor system concerns that feed universal grammar.
Patient attitudes to commonly promoted medical interventions

OBJECTIVE To survey attitudes about three "best practice" medical interventions (hormone replacement therapy [HRT], thrombolysis for acute myocardial infarction [THROM] and coronary artery by-pass surgery [CABS]) in a sample of patients, and identify factors associated with those attitudes. SETTINGS Metropolitan tertiary care hospital outpatient clinics (survey 1, April 1997), two general practice surgeries (survey 2, May 1997), and one general practice surgery (survey 3, October 1997). DESIGN Patients completed a questionnaire while waiting for their clinical consultation. Attitude scores were measured on an 11-category Likert scale ranging from -5 (definitely would not) to +5 (definitely would) for acceptance of proposed medication or surgery. PARTICIPANTS 85 (participation rate, 85%), 77 (94%) and 95 (97%) in surveys 1, 2 and 3, respectively. Surveys 1 and 2 constituted the primary study group (n = 162). Patients aged > or = 50 years or reporting heart disease were excluded from the HRT analyses; patients aged > or = 65 years were excluded from the THROM and CABS analyses. RESULTS The median attitude scores for HRT (n = 58), THROM and CABS (n = 111) were -2.95 (95% CI, -5 to -2.1), -0.5 (95% CI, -0.9 to 0) and -0.1 (95% CI, -0.5 to +1.3), respectively. Decreasing the risk-benefit ratio fourfold for HRT in survey 3 (n = 68) increased the median score to -0.75 (95% CI, -2.3 to 0). CONCLUSIONS Patients do not view favourably the risk-benefit ratio of the three surveyed medical interventions. These attitudes may present a major impediment to most primary prevention programs.
Does empathy between artificial agents improve agent teamwork?

Both everyday experience and scientific studies indicate that emotional intelligence in general, and empathy in particular, improve the effectiveness of human teamwork. Research in affective computing confirms their significance in systems where humans and artificial agents interact. This paper explores the notion of empathy between artificial agents that has so far received little attention, and argues that it could have significant impact on the design of robust and resilient agent teams. Combining the formal framework of Emotional BDI agents with the principles underlying the leading model of empathy in psychology and neuroscience, we define a hierarchy of affective and behavioral responses, integrated into an algorithm that formalizes the interactions between the subject and object of empathy in the domain of artificial practical reasoning agents.
Mixed methods evaluation of well-being benefits derived from a heritage-in-health intervention with hospital patients

Background: This study sought to determine the effects of a heritage-in-health intervention on well-being. Benefits of arts-in-health interventions are relatively well-documented yet little robust research has been conducted using heritage-in-health interventions, such as those involving museum objects. Methods: Hospital patients (n = 57) participated in semi-structured, 30–40 minute facilitated interview sessions, discussing and handling museum objects comprising selections of six artefacts and specimens loaned from archaeology, art, geology and natural history collections. Well-being measures (Positive Affect Negative Affect Scale, Visual Analogue Scales) evaluated the sessions while inductive and deductive thematic analysis investigated psycho-educational features accounting for changes. Results: Comparison of pre- and post-session quantitative measures showed significant increases in well-being and happiness. Qualitative investigation revealed thinking and meaning-making opportunities for participants engaged with objects. Conclusions: Heritage-in-health sessions enhanced positive mood and social interaction, endorsing the need for provision of well-being-related museum and gallery activities for socially excluded or vulnerable healthcare audiences.
Zinc disc implantation model of urinary bladder calculi and humane endpoints

The zinc disc implantation-induced urinary bladder calculi model in the rat is commonly used for preclinical evaluation of the antiurolithiatic activity of test compounds. Certain published reports state that relatively long durations for which zinc discs must be implanted in the bladders of rats. Hence, there is a need to refine this model. These investigations aimed to determine whether long-term studies using the zinc disc implantation model provide any additional data that affect the final outcomes of the study. In this study, we evaluated the effects of a well-known antiurolithiatic polyherbal drug, Cystone, for different treatment durations of 10, 20 and 48 days postimplantation. Our results indicate that even the shortest duration of 10 days is sufficient to reveal antiurolithiatic effects of a test drug. Hence, in the zinc disc implantation-induced urinary bladder calculi model, the study duration is proposed to be minimized so as to reduce the distress caused to the rats due to long-term exposure to the implant. Further, it is suggested that the growth of the bladder calculi can be monitored by taking X-ray radiographs of the bladder deposits to decide the time to terminate the study. Use of preformed calcium oxalate crystal instead of zinc discs, as suggested in earlier reports by others, may also be considered to avoid the sacrifice of rats at the end of the study.
The association between marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid levels and survival after renal transplantation.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Several studies have reported beneficial cardiovascular effects of marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. To date, no large studies have investigated the potential benefits of marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids in recipients of renal transplants. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS In this observational cohort study of 1990 Norwegian recipients of renal transplants transplanted between 1999 and 2011, associations between marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid levels and mortality were investigated by stratified analysis and multivariable Cox proportional hazard regression analysis adjusting for traditional and transplant-specific mortality risk factors. Marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid levels in plasma phospholipids were measured by gas chromatography in a stable phase 10 weeks after transplantation. RESULTS There were 406 deaths (20.4%) during a median follow-up period of 6.8 years. Mortality rates were lower in patients with high marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid levels (≥7.95 weight percentage) compared with low levels (<7.95 weight percentage) for all age categories (pooled mortality rate ratio estimate, 0.69; 95% confidence interval, 0.57 to 0.85). When divided into quartiles according to marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid levels, patients in the upper quartile compared with the lower quartile had a 56% lower risk of death (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.44; 95% confidence interval, 0.26 to 0.75) using multivariable Cox proportional hazard regression analysis. There was a lower hazard ratio for death from cardiovascular disease with high levels of marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid and a lower hazard ratio for death from infectious disease with high levels of the marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid eicosapentaenoic acid, whereas there was no association between total or individual marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid levels and cancer mortality. CONCLUSIONS Higher plasma phospholipid marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid levels were independently associated with better patient survival.
Non-normal variation and regression to the mean

Non-normal variation across repeated measurements leads to nonlinear and heteroskedastic regression to the mean unlike the simple linear and homoskedastic regression to the mean found in normal models. This paper investigates the nature of the regression to the mean phenomenon in non-normal settings using (a) small variance approximations and (b) exact results obtained using normal mixtures to approximate non-normal distributions.
Therapeutic Effects of Cystamine in a Murine Model of Huntington's Disease

The precise cause of neuronal death in Huntington's disease (HD) is unknown. Proteolytic products of the huntingtin protein can contribute to toxic cellular aggregates that may be formed in part by tissue transglutaminase (Tgase). Tgase activity is increased in HD brain. Treatment in R6/2 transgenic HD mice, using the transglutaminase inhibitor cystamine, significantly extended survival, improved body weight and motor performance, and delayed the neuropathological sequela. Tgase activity and NΣ-(γ -l-glutamyl)-l-lysine (GGEL) levels were significantly altered in HD mice. Free GGEL, a specific biochemical marker of Tgase activity, was markedly elevated in the neocortex and caudate nucleus in HD patients. Both Tgase and GGEL immunoreactivities colocalized to huntingtin aggregates. Cystamine treatment normalized transglutaminase and GGEL levels in R6/2 mice. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that transglutaminase activity may play a role in the pathogenesis of HD, and they identify cystamine as a potential therapeutic strategy for treating HD patients.
Efficacy and side effects of intradermal hepatitis B vaccination in CAPD patients: a comparison with the intramuscular vaccination.

BACKGROUND This prospective randomized study aims to assess the effectiveness of intradermal (ID) hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccination in patients on continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD) therapy. METHODS Sixty patients were randomly divided into 2 groups. The ID group was treated with 5 microg of recombinant HBV vaccine intradermally every week for a total of 10 doses, and the intramuscular (IM) group, with 20 microg intramuscularly at 0, 1, and 6 months. RESULTS ID HBV vaccination was associated with a greater seroconversion rate (81.5% versus 62.1%), although the difference did not reach statistical significance (P = 0.14). The cumulative seroconversion rate was significantly greater with ID vaccination by 6 months after the first vaccine dose (P = 0.03). There was no difference between the 2 groups in time required to convert, peak antibody to HBV surface antigen (anti-HBs), and proportion of patients with anti-HBs levels maintained at greater than 10 mIU/mL or 100 mIU/mL in the 2-year observation period. Although the ID group achieved a peak anti-HBs titer significantly earlier than the IM group (P = 0.001), we found a significant trend for the ID group to achieve a lower peak anti-HBs titer (chi-square test for trend, P = 0.005). The incidence of local reactions was significantly greater with ID immunization; however, reactions were mild and transient. CONCLUSION ID HBV vaccination is associated with significant improvement in seroconversion rate in CAPD patients at 6 months, but this difference diminishes at 2 years. Larger studies are warranted to confirm this finding.
Optimal control based guidance law with impact angle constraint

An optimal impact angle control guidance law is proposed in this paper. The missile system is approximated under the small heading error assumption and the impact angle control guidance law is derived based on the approximated system to minimize the energy cost. The proposed guidance law has a form of biased PNG law and it's in accord with the previous result of PNG in the form acceleration command and time-to-go estimate. As the main advantages, the proposed guidance law has a simpler form and doesn't require the time-to-go estimate in the acceleration command. In addition, it also shows better performance in energy cost. Numerical simulations are performed to demonstrate the performance of the developed method.
Query quality: user ratings and system predictions

Numerous studies have examined the ability of query performance prediction methods to estimate a query's quality for system effectiveness measures (such as average precision). However, little work has explored the relationship between these methods and user ratings of query quality. In this poster, we report the findings from an empirical study conducted on the TREC ClueWeb09 corpus, where we compared and contrasted user ratings of query quality against a range of query performance prediction methods. Given a set of queries, it is shown that user ratings of query quality correlate to both system effectiveness measures and a number of pre-retrieval predictors.
Bioluminescence Imaging Captures the Expression and Dynamics of Endogenous p21 Promoter Activity in Living Mice and Intact Cells

ABSTRACT To interrogate endogenous p21WAF1/CIP1 (p21) promoter activity under basal conditions and in response to various forms of stress, knock-in imaging reporter mice in which expression of firefly luciferase (FLuc) was placed under the control of the endogenous p21 promoter within the Cdkn1a gene locus were generated. Bioluminescence imaging (BLI) of p21 promoter activity was performed noninvasively and repetitively in mice and in cells derived from these mice. We demonstrated that expression of FLuc accurately reported endogenous p21 expression at baseline and under conditions of genotoxic stress and that photon flux correlated with mRNA abundance and, therefore, bioluminescence provided a direct readout of p21 promoter activity in vivo. BLI confirmed that p53 was required for activation of the p21 promoter in vivo in response to ionizing radiation. Interestingly, imaging of reporter cells demonstrated that p53 prevents the extracellular signal-regulated kinase/mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway from activating p21 expression when quiescent cells are stimulated with serum to reenter the cell cycle. In addition, low-light BLI identified p21 expression in specific regions of individual organs that had not been observed previously. This inducible p21FLuc knock-in reporter strain will facilitate imaging studies of p53-dependent and -independent stress responses within the physiological context of the whole animal.
A Multiple-Hypothesis Approach for Multiobject Visual Tracking

In multiple-object tracking applications, it is essential to address the problem of associating targets and observation data. For visual tracking of multiple targets which involves objects that split and merge, a target may be associated with multiple measurements and many targets may be associated with a single measurement. The space of such data association is exponential in the number of targets and exhaustive enumeration is impractical. We pose the association problem as a bipartite graph edge covering problem given the targets and the object detection information. We propose an efficient method of maintaining multiple association hypotheses with the highest probabilities over all possible histories of associations. Our approach handles objects entering and exiting the field of view, merging and splitting objects, as well as objects that are detected as fragmented parts. Experimental results are given for tracking multiple players in a soccer game and for tracking people with complex interaction in a surveillance setting. It is shown through quantitative evaluation that our method tracks through varying degrees of interactions among the targets with high success rate.
Comparative efficacy of diaminazine aceturate and isomethamidium chloride in rabbits experimentally infected with Trypanosoma brucei brucei

The comparative efficacy of diaminazine aceturate (DA) and isomethamedium chloride (IC) was investigated in Trypanosoma brucei brucei infected domestic rabbits (Oryctolagus cunisculus). A total of eighteen rabbits were used for the study. The rabbits were divided into six groups of three each. All the rabbits in groups B – F were infected with Trypanosoma brucei brucei, while those in group A served as the negative control (uninfected and untreated group). Group B contained the infected and untreated (positive control group), Group C rabbits were infected and treated with DA at 3.5 mg/kg, Group D were infected and treated with DA 7 mg/kg, Group E contained the infected and treated with 3.5 mg/kg of DA combined with 1.0 mg/kg of IC and Group F contained the infected and treated with 7 mg/kg of DA combined with 1.0 mg/kg of IC. The weekly rectal temperature, body weight gain, packed cell volume (PCV), total erythrocyte count, haemoglobin concentration (HbC), total leucocyte count (TLC), differential leucocyte count (DLC), clinical signs and survivability and rate of parasite clearance were used to assess the efficacy of the drugs and drug combinations. The parasites cleared from groups E and F 24 hours post treatment, while in group D, it was 48 hours post treatment. The rabbits in group C and group B died within 13 – 19 and 50 – 52 days post infection (PI), respectively. Relapse was recorded in all the rabbits treated only wit DA. There was significant (p<0.05) reductions in weight, PCV, erythrocyte count, HbC and TLC. The significant (p<0.05) increase in temperature following infection were reversed by the treatments, this reversal however, was faster and lasted longer in the combined treatment groups (E and especially F) than in the single treatment group. The results of this study suggest that the combined treatments of DA and IC produced better therapeutic effect than DA only. Keywords : Parasitaemia, Trypanosomiasis, Rabbits, Diaminazine aceturate, Isomethamedium chloride
Fracture toughness of a short‐fiber reinforced thermoplastic

Thin plates of carbon short-fiber reinforcement polycarbonate were injection molded. The mold was designed to produce a uniform melt flow across the cavity and an extended knock-out pin was incorporated to form a circular hole at the center of the molded plate. The elastic constants of the plaques were determined using sections cut from the plate at different angles to the direction of flow. Analysis of the data showed that the plates could be treated macroscopically as being orthotropic. Microscopic observations revealed that the fiber orientation was primarily in the flow direction and was tangential in the vicinity surrounding the hole. The fracture toughness, as measured by the stress intensity (K), was determined using the compliance method. Experimental calibration curves were constructed at 0° and 90° to the axis of flow by loading specimens containing saw cuts of varying length. The resultant curves were non-dimensionalized by incorporation of the elastic moduli, thickness, and width. The fracture toughness values were determined using a razor notch as a starter crack. The crack growth during testing was found to be stable, which could allow several determinations to be made on each plate. The effects of crack length, flow in the cavity, and fiber orientation around the hole were investigated. The fracture toughness was found to decrease with increasing crack length, but was not found to reach a limiting value within the practical range of testing. The effect of flow was also found to be significant. Specimens oriented 90° to the axis of flow showed higher toughness values. This was attributed to the fibers being oriented perpendicular to the axis of the crack. The samples tested with razor notches cut at the edge of the molded holes had still higher apparent toughness values. Similarly, this effect was explained by the higher fiber orientation shown with photomicrographs of specimens cut near the edge of the hole.
Cowards and Heroes: Group Loyalty in the American Civil War

What motivated men to risk death in the most horrific war in U.S. history when pay was low and irregular and military punishment strategies were weak? In such a situation creating group loyalty by promoting social capital is of paramount importance and in the Civil War was the cement of both armies. We find that individual and company socio-economic and demographic characteristics, ideology, and morale were important predictors of group loyalty in the Union Army. Company characteristics were more important than ideology or morale. Soldiers in companies that were more homogeneous in ethnicity, occupation, and age were less likely to shirk.