Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chemotherapy of metastatic triple negative breast cancer: Experience of using platinum-based chemotherapy

The results of recent studies investigating the role of platinum-based chemotherapy (PBCT) in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (mTNBC) were conflicting. We retrospectively investigated a large cohort (n = 379) of mTNBC to re-evaluate the role of platinums. Longer PFS was found in patients with PBCT than those with non-PBCT (7.8 vs. 4.9 months, P < 0.001) as first-line chemotherapy, but no statistical difference of OS was observed. Compared with other kinds of platinum, cisplatin-based regimens as the first-line chemotherapy showed better PFS (8.0 vs. 4.3 months, P = 0.03) and better ORR. Introduction of ≥2 lines, rather than 1 line, of PBCT can result in better OS when compared with no introduction of PBCT during the whole treatment. If considering the timing of intervention of PBCT, first-line introduction and later line introduction of PBCT did not make any difference in OS among patients with only one line PBCT during the whole treatment. We concluded that PBCT with only 1 line during the whole treatment might not be necessary for unselected mTNBC with the exception of an urgent demand to control disease or symptoms, however, ≥2 lines of PBCT did prolong OS.
Mapping myocardial perfusion with an intravascular MR contrast agent: Robustness of deconvolution methods at various blood flows

Evaluation of quantitative parameters such as regional myocardial blood flow (rMBF), blood volume (rMBV), and mean transit time (rMTT) by MRI is gaining acceptance for clinical applications, but still lacks robust postprocessing methods for map generation. Moreover, robustness should be preserved over the full range of myocardial flows and volumes. Using experimental data from an isolated pig heart preparation, synthetic MR kinetics were generated and four deconvolution approaches were evaluated. These methods were then applied to the first‐pass T1 images of the isolated pig heart using an intravascular contrast agent and rMBF, rMBV and rMTT maps were generated. In both synthetic and experimental data, the fit between calculated and original data reached equally good results with the four techniques. rMBV was the only parameter estimated correctly in numerical experiments. Moreover, using the algebraic method ARMA, abnormal regions were well delineated on rMBV maps. At high flows, rMBF was underestimated at the experimental noise level. Finally, rMTT maps appeared noisy and highly unreliable, especially at high flows. In conclusion, over the myocardial flow range, i.e., 0–400 ml/min/100g, rMBF identification was biased in presence of noise, whereas rMBV was correctly identified. Thus, rMBV mapping could be a fast and robust way to detect abnormal myocardial regions. Magn Reson Med 48:166–179, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Violence Exposure, Catecholamine Excretion, and Blood Pressure Nondipping Status in African American Male Versus Female Adolescents

Objective Nondipping status (<10% decrease in blood pressure [BP] from awake to asleep) has been associated with end-organ disease (stroke and left ventricular hypertrophy) in adults. Nondipping status has also been observed in 30% of healthy African American adolescents, but little is known about the correlates of nondipping status in adolescents. This study examined the relationship between violence exposure, catecholamine excretion, and BP nondipping status in 56 healthy African American adolescents (27 boys, 29 girls; ages 11–18 years). Methods Participants completed the Survey of Exposure to Community Violence, wore an ambulatory BP monitor and provided one timed day and night urine collection for determination of epinephrine and norepinephrine excretion. Results Boys had higher daytime epinephrine (5.1 ± 3.3 vs. 2.6 ± 2.3 ng/min, p < .001) and norepinephrine excretion (29.2 ± 25.1 vs. 16.5 ± 14.9 ng/min, p < .05) and showed a greater prevalence of mean BP nondipping status than girls (37% vs. 10%, p < .03). Mean BP nondipping status was positively associated with victimization (r = 0.42, p < .0001). Regression analyses indicated a significant interaction between hearing about violence and sex for predicting daytime epinephrine (p < .02), with male nondippers showing a stronger positive association (partial correlation = 0.59, p < .05) than females (partial correlation = 0.03, p = NS). Logistic regressions also demonstrated a significant interaction between hearing about violence and sex for predicting mean BP dipping status, with male nondippers reporting the greatest exposure. Conclusions Mean BP nondipping was associated with victimization in both boys and girls. Boys who reported higher levels of hearing about violence showed greater daytime epinephrine excretion and were more likely to be classified as nondippers.
Role of Rab5 in the Recruitment of hVps34/p150 to the Early Endosome

PI 3‐kinases are important regulators of endocytic trafficking. We have previously proposed a model in which the Rab5 GTPase recruits EEA1 to the early endosome both directly, by binding to EEA1, and indirectly, through the recruitment of the p150/hVps34 PI 3‐kinase and the production of PI[3]P in the endosomal membrane. In this study we have examined this model in vivo. We find that both endogenous hVps34 and p150 are targeted to enlarged endosomal structures in cells expressing constitutively activated Rab5, where they are significantly colocalized with EEA1. Recombinant fragments of p150 disrupt the endosomal localization of EEA1, showing that p150 is required for EEA1 targeting. We further analyzed the mechanism of GTP‐dependent Rab5‐p150 binding, and showed the p150 HEAT and WD40 domains are required for binding, whereas deletion of the protein kinase domain increases binding to Rab5. Overexpression of constitutively active Rab5 caused a redistribution of epitope‐tagged hVps34 and p150 to Rab5‐positive endosomes. However, subcellular fractionation showed that this was not due to a significant recruitment of hVps34 or p150 from the cytosolic to the particulate fraction. These data suggest that the binding of Rab5 to the HEAT/WD40 domains of p150 is important in regulating the localization of hVps34/p150. However, Rab5 does not appear to act by directly recruiting p150/hVps34 complexes from the cytosol to the endosomal membrane.
Semantic Dependency Parsing via Book Embedding

We model a dependency graph as a book, a particular kind of topological space, for semantic dependency parsing. The spine of the book is made up of a sequence of words, and each page contains a subset of noncrossing arcs. To build a semantic graph for a given sentence, we design new Maximum Subgraph algorithms to generate noncrossing graphs on each page, and a Lagrangian Relaxation-based algorithm tocombine pages into a book. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the bookembedding framework across a wide range of conditions. Our parser obtains comparable results with a state-of-the-art transition-based parser.
Response to the Commentary of Donald A. Pierce (Radiat. Res. 160, 718–723, 2003)

We tend to agree with many of the positions expressed by Pierce (1) in his optimistic views about modeling and his more general comments. Biologically based mathematical models necessarily are and will always be far from giving a true picture of all the details of the carcinogenic process, but they can be a useful tool to connect quantitatively various hypotheses about the rate-limiting processes with epidemiological and experimental data. They are indispensable to obtain scientifically based, more reliable extrapolations from large, directly observable risks to the area of small risks which need to be quantified for the rational protection of humans and their environment against low doses of ionizing radiation (and other carcinogens). We agree with Pierce that the goals of our respective modeling efforts might be different. The TSCE model was developed to provide a general framework for analyses of data on different biological end points related to cancer, not just incidence data. Thus we are interested not only in the hazard function but also in the number and size distribution of intermediate lesions on the pathway to cancer. We have in fact used the model for analysis of data on intermediate lesions (2, 3). We want to point out that some of us considered multiple stages in carcinogenesis much before Pierce thinks we did, starting in a paper on colon cancer published in 1992 (4). However, we are convinced that any model that does not accommodate clonal expansion of intermediate cell populations is unrealistic. Pierce’s attempt to incorporate clonal expansion in their idealized version of the multistage model is only an approximation with very different properties.
Multimodal person recognition using unconstrained audio and video

We propose a person identi cation technique that can recognize and verify people from unconstrained video and audio. We do not expect fully frontal face image or clean speech as our input. Our recognition algorithm can detect and compensate for pose variation and changes in the auditory background and also select the most reliable video frame and audio clip to use for recognition. We also use 3D depth information of a human head to detect the presence of an actual person as opposed to an image of that person. Our system achieves 100% recognition and veri cation rates on natural real-time input with 26 registered clients.
Literature review shows that fathers are still not receiving the support they want and need from Swedish child health professionals

Sweden has a reputation for gender equality, and its child health services seek to support both parents. However, this meta‐ethnographic analysis of 62 studies from 2000 to 2015 covering prenatal clinics, labour and birth wards, postnatal wards and child health centres found programmes had not been designed around paternal needs. Therefore, despite the policy change nearly 50 years ago to include both parents, fathers were still not fully accepted and supported.
Risk factors for nasopharyngeal carriage of Streptococcus pneumoniae and effects of a hygiene intervention: repeated cross-sectional cohort study at day care centres

Abstract Background: Day care attendance and antibiotic consumption are major risk factors for carriage of antibiotic-susceptible and non-susceptible pneumococci. We describe the nasopharyngeal carriage of antibiotic-susceptible and non-susceptible pneumococci among children at day care centres (DCCs), analyse the association of potential risk factors with carriage, and examine the effects of a hygiene intervention on carriage. Methods: Thirty DCCs in 2 communities were included in a cohort intervention trial. Nasopharyngeal cultures and information on the children were obtained every 6 months. The study lasted 2.5 y and the hygiene intervention was introduced at half of the DCCs during the last 1.5 y of the study. The results were analysed using a mixed effects logistic regression model. Results: A total of 5663 cultures were obtained from 2399 children, of which 55.6% grew pneumococci. Of the pneumococci, 27.9% were penicillin-non-susceptible (PNSP). The hygiene intervention was associated with a decreased risk of pneumococcal carriage, but this did not reach statistical significance for PNSP carriage. Pneumococcal and PNSP carriage was negatively associated with age, varied significantly between DCCs, and was positively associated with the number of preceding colds. Individual antibiotic use (mainly penicillin/amoxicillin) at the time of sampling and/or during the preceding month was associated with a decreased risk of pneumococcal and PNSP carriage. Individual use of cephalosporins was associated with an increased risk of carriage of penicillin and TMP–SMX-non-susceptible pneumococci. Conclusion: The hygiene intervention at the DCCs reduced the risk of pneumococcal carriage and the individual use of antibiotics was found to affect carriage in a complex manner.
QoS-Aware VM Placement in Multi-domain Service Level Agreements Scenarios

Virtualization technologies of Infrastructure-as-a- Service enable the live migration of running Virtual Machines (VMs) to achieve load balancing, fault-tolerance and hardware consolidation in data centers. However, the downtime/service unavailability due to live migration may be substantial with relevance to the customers' expectations on responsiveness, as the latter are declared in established Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Moreover, it may cause significant (potentially exponential) SLA violation penalties to its associated higher- level domains (Platform-as-a-Service and Software-as-a-Service). Therefore, VM live migration should be managed carefully. In this paper, we present the OpenStack version of the Generic SLA Manager, alongside its strategies for VM selection and allocation during live migration of VMs. We simulate a use case where IaaS (OpenStack-SLAM) and PaaS (OpenShift) are combined, and assess performance and efficiency of the aforementioned VM placement strategies, when a multi-domain SLA pricing & penalty model is involved. We find that our proposal is efficient in managing trade-offs between the operational objectives of service providers (including financial considerations) and the customers' expected QoS requirements.
Late onset renal failure from angiotensin blockade (LORFFAB): a prospective thirty-month Mayo Health System clinic experience.

BACKGROUND Worsening azotemia following initiation of angiotensin blockade (AB), in patients with CKD, RAS with/without precipitating factors is recognized. Small increases in serum creatinine following initiation of AB occur and must not warrant drug discontinuation. We anecdotally had observed improvement in CKD in patients with normal renal arteries and no precipitating factors, following termination of AB. The worldwide ESRD epidemic, coincident with increasing use of AB, prompted us to hypothesize a late-onset azotemia in such CKD patients. MATERIAL/METHODS Over 30 months, 103 patients with worsening azotemia, while on AB were evaluated. Ninety-seven patients with abnormal MRA and/or with precipitating factors were excluded. In the remaining five, AB was discontinued, and GFR monitored. RESULTS One male, four females, mean age 66.2 years. Three diabetic/hypertensives, one SLE/hypertensive, one diabetic/kidney transplant recipient. Mean stable AB, 25.2 months, (6-66 months). Mean follow up, 11.8 months. One month following discontinuation of AB, GFR increased by a mean 45%. Mean serum creatinine decreased from 2.9+/-0.9 to 1.8+/-0.4 mg/dL (p=0.04). Uremic symptoms in 3, hyperkalemia in one, secondary hyperparathyroidism in one, resolved. Two with anemia, now require less erythropoietin. CONCLUSIONS We called this unrecognized potentially reversible late-onset worsening azotemia, occurring several months to years on stable AB, in CKD patients with normal renal arteries, without precipitating factors, late-onset renal failure from angiotensin blockade (LORFFAB). Pathophysiologically, the concept of microvascular RAS is invoked. The extent of LORFFAB, with millions of patients worldwide on AB, remains conjectural and warrants further investigation.
The Biogeochemistry of Electroactive Humic Substances and Its Connection to Iron Chemistry in the North East Atlantic and the Western Mediterranean Sea

We present the zonal distribution of electroactive humic‐like substances (eHS) along a section from Offshore Portugal in the North East Atlantic to the Sicily Channel in the Mediterranean Sea. The concentrations were normalized to Suwannee River Fulvic Acid and ranged from 11 μg/L to 81 μg/L. The vertical distributions were typical of those previously reported for dissolved organic carbon in the Mediterranean Sea. High eHS concentrations were measured in surface water and concentrations decreased with depth before increasing again toward benthic maxima measured at some stations. We estimate that eHS represented a relatively small fraction of the natural organic matter in the Mediterranean Sea (2–5%) but considering their important role in the complexation and the solubility of key trace elements (e.g., iron and copper), the eHS cycle could influence the entire biogeochemistry of these marine systems. We identified key processes controlling the concentration of eHS. While biologically mediated production was the major source of eHS, riverine and rain inputs as well as sediment release were also likely external sources. Low eHS concentrations at subsurface depths pointed to photodegradation as a possible sink of eHS, but degradation by heterotrophic bacteria seemed to be the main sink in the deep sea. Finally, we found a positive correlation between dissolved iron and eHS concentrations. Estimation of eHS contribution to iron binding ligand concentrations indicates the complexation of iron by eHS in the Mediterranean Sea. These observations suggest links between the cycles of eHS and iron in the Mediterranean Sea.
CONSUMER SWITCHING BEHAVIOR FROM ONLINE BANKING TO MOBILE BANKING

Through investigating factors that influence consumers to make a transition from online to mobile banking, this empirical study shows that relative attitude and relative subjective norm positively motivated respondents to switch from Internet to mobile banking while relative perceived behavior control deterred respondents from transitioning. Empirical results also demonstrated that Internet banking is superior to mobile banking in terms of consumer relative compatibility, self-efficacy, resource facilitating conditions, and technology facilitating conditions. Meanwhile, mobile banking emerged as superior to Internet banking for other constructs. By adding a comparative concept into an extended decomposed theory of planned behavior (DTPB) model, this study may expand the applicable domain of current social psychology theories from the adoption of single products or services to the choice between competing products or services that achieve similar purposes and functions. To cite this document: Chian-Son Yu, "Consumer switching behavior from online banking to mobile banking", International Journal of Cyber Society and Education, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 1-28, 2014. Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi. org/10.7903/ijcse.1108
Temporal Variations in a Modified Neer Impingement Test Can Confound Clinical Interpretation

High variability in the time required for patients to have substantial pain relief after Neer-type subacromial impingement tests might help explain conflicting data regarding their effectiveness in guiding treatment and predicting surgical outcomes. To focus on quantifying temporal variability associated with a modified (local anesthetic and corticosteroid) impingement test, we hypothesized that substantial pain relief (greater than 75% reduction) can occur beyond the 10-minute interval many clinicians use for determining results of this test. Fourteen females and 12 males (mean age, 55.6 years) who received subacromial injections for Stage II impingement completed 10-cm visual analog scales for pain at 5,10, 20, 30, and 40 minutes postinjection. There were 11 patients (42%) who attained at least 75% relief by 10 minutes compared with nine (35%) additional patients who subsequently attained 75% relief after 10 minutes. On average, 75% reduction in pain did not occur until after 30 minutes postinjection. Data analysis also revealed two groups: (1) rapid responders with greater than 50% pain relief by 10 minutes; and (2) delayed responders with greater than 50% pain relief after 10 minutes. Assessing pain at 10 minutes for a Neer-type impingement test can fail to accurately determine a positive test in a substantial percentage of patients.Level of Evidence: Level II, diagnostic study. See the Guidelines for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.
Management of Hearing Aid Assembly by Urban-Dwelling Hearing-Impaired Adults in a Developed Country

A self-fitting hearing aid, designed to be assembled and programmed without audiological or computer support, could bring amplification to millions of people in developing countries, who remain unaided due to the lack of a local, professional, audiological infrastructure. The ability to assemble and insert a hearing aid is fundamental to the successful use of a self-fitting device. In this study, the management of such tasks was investigated. Eighty older, urban-dwelling, hearing-impaired adults in a developed country were asked to follow a set of written, illustrated instructions to assemble two slim-fit behind-the-ear hearing aids. Participants were allowed to access assistance with the task from an accompanying partner. A range of personal and audiometric variables was measured through the use of structured questionnaires and standardized tests of health literacy, cognitive function, and manual dexterity. The results showed that 99% of participants were able to complete the hearing aid assembly task, either on their own or with assistance. Health literacy, or the ability to read and understand health-related text, and gender most strongly influenced participants’ ability to complete the assembly task independently and accurately. Higher levels of health literacy were associated with an increased likelihood of independent and successful task completion. Male participants were more likely to complete the task on their own, while female participants were more likely to assemble the device without errors. The results of this study will inform future work regarding development of educational material for the self-fitting hearing aid as well as candidacy for such a device.
NLRP3 inflammasome activation results in hepatocyte pyroptosis, liver inflammation, and fibrosis in mice

Inflammasome activation plays a central role in the development of drug‐induced and obesity‐associated liver disease. However, the sources and mechanisms of inflammasome‐mediated liver damage remain poorly understood. Our aim was to investigate the effect of NLRP3 inflammasome activation on the liver using novel mouse models. We generated global and myeloid cell‐specific conditional mutant Nlrp3 knock‐in mice expressing the D301N Nlrp3 mutation (ortholog of D303N in human NLRP3), resulting in a hyperactive NLRP3. To study the presence and significance of NLRP3‐initiated pyroptotic cell death, we separated hepatocytes from nonparenchymal cells and developed a novel flow‐cytometry–based (fluorescence‐activated cell sorting; FACS) strategy to detect and quantify pyroptosis in vivo based on detection of active caspase 1 (Casp1)‐ and propidium iodide (PI)‐positive cells. Liver inflammation was quantified histologically by FACS and gene expression analysis. Liver fibrosis was assessed by Sirius Red staining and quantitative polymerase chain reaction for markers of hepatic stellate cell (HSC) activation. NLRP3 activation resulted in shortened survival, poor growth, and severe liver inflammation; characterized by neutrophilic infiltration and HSC activation with collagen deposition in the liver. These changes were partially attenuated by treatment with anakinra, an interleukin‐1 receptor antagonist. Notably, hepatocytes from global Nlrp3‐mutant mice showed marked hepatocyte pyroptotic cell death, with more than a 5‐fold increase in active Casp1/PI double‐positive cells. Myeloid cell‐restricted mutant NLRP3 activation resulted in a less‐severe liver phenotype in the absence of detectable pyroptotic hepatocyte cell death. Conclusions: Our data demonstrate that global and, to a lesser extent, myeloid‐specific NLRP3 inflammasome activation results in severe liver inflammation and fibrosis while identifying hepatocyte pyroptotic cell death as a novel mechanism of NLRP3‐mediated liver damage. (Hepatology 2014;59:898–910)