Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bacteriospermia and Its Impact on Basic Semen Parameters among Infertile Men

Introduction. Semen analysis is considered as the surrogate marker for male fecundity while assessing infertile men. There are several reasons for altered semen quality and bacteriospermia could be one among them. Thereby the aim of our work is to study the semen culture and its impact on semen parameters among infertile men. Materials and Methods. Semen samples were collected from men attending infertility clinic. Semen parameters were analysed based on WHO guidelines. Also, samples were subjected to culture using standard bacteriological techniques. Results. A total of 85 samples were collected. A number of 47 (55.30%) had normal sperm count, 37 (43.50%) had oligozoospermia, and one (1.17%) had azoospermia. Teratozoospermia was the most common abnormality observed (81.17%) followed by asthenozoospermia (28.23%). The prevalence of bacteriospermia was 35.3%. Enterococcus faecalis (30%) was the most common organism isolated followed by Coagulase negative Staphylococcus (23.33%), Staphylococcus aureus (20%), and E. coli (10%). Other less frequently isolated organisms were Klebsiella pneumoniae (6.66%), Proteus sp. (6.66%), and Citrobacter sp. (3.33%). Conclusion. The presence of asymptomatic bacteriospermia did not correlate with abnormal semen parameters.
Stock Price, Earnings and Book Value in Managerial Performance Measures

This paper develops a multiperiod principal‐agent model in which a manager must be given incentives to undertake investments and to exert personally costly effort. Investments are “soft” (e.g., intangible assets) and therefore entail measurement errors for the accounting system as it seeks to separate investments from operating expenditures. This separation is of no concern to the stock market, which draws on its own information about future cash flows resulting from current investments. The firm's stock price, however, reflects all value‐relevant information, parts of which are not incentive relevant. Optimal incentive provisions must combine “forward‐looking” market information with “backward‐looking” accounting information. Under certain conditions, optimal performance measures can be expressed as a weighted average of economic value added (residual income) and market value added.
An office or a bedroom? Challenges for family-centered care in the pediatric intensive care unit

Although the modern pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) has followed general pediatrics and adopted the family-centered care model, little is known about how families prospectively experience PICU care. The authors' goal was to better understand the experiences of families whose child was hospitalized in a PICU. They conducted a 12-month prospective ethnographic study in a PICU in a tertiary care hospital in a large North American urban center. Data were obtained via participant-observation and formal and informal interviews with 18 families and staff key informants. Findings revealed a disconnect between the espoused model of family-centered care and quotidian professional practices. This divergence emerged in the authors' analysis as a heuristic that contrasts a professional “office” to a sick child’s “bedroom. ” PICU practices and protocols transformed the child into a patient and parents into visitors; issues such as noise, visitation, turf, and privacy could favor staff comfort and convenience over that of the child and family. The authors' discussion highlights suggestions to overcome this divergence in order to truly make the PICU family centered.
Black Raspberry Extract Increased Circulating Endothelial Progenitor Cells and Improved Arterial Stiffness in Patients with Metabolic Syndrome: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Administration of black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis) is known to improve vascular endothelial function in patients at a high risk for cardiovascular (CV) disease. We investigated short-term effects of black raspberry on circulating endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) and arterial stiffness in patients with metabolic syndrome. Patients with metabolic syndrome (n = 51) were prospectively randomized into the black raspberry group (n = 26, 750 mg/day) and placebo group (n = 25) during the 12-week follow-up. Central blood pressure, augmentation index, and EPCs, such as CD34/KDR(+), CD34/CD117(+), and CD34/CD133(+), were measured at baseline and at 12-week follow-up. Radial augmentation indexes were significantly decreased in the black raspberry group compared to the placebo group (-5% ± 10% vs. 3% ± 14%, P < .05). CD34/CD133(+) cells at 12-week follow-up were significantly higher in the black raspberry group compared to the placebo group (19 ± 109/μL vs. -28 ± 57/μL, P < .05). Decreases from the baseline in interleukin-6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) were significantly greater in the black raspberry group compared to the placebo group (-0.5 ± 1.4 pg/mL vs. -0.1 ± 1.1 pg/mL, P < .05 and -5.4 ± 4.5 pg/mL vs. -0.8 ± 4.0 pg/mL, P < .05, respectively). Increases from the baseline in adiponectin levels (2.9 ± 2.1 μg/mL vs. -0.2 ± 2.5 μg/mL, P < .05) were significant in the black raspberry group. The use of black raspberry significantly lowered the augmentation index and increased circulating EPCs, thereby improving CV risks in patients with metabolic syndrome during the 12-week follow-up.
Dual-side dynamic controls for cost minimization in mobile cloud computing systems

Mobile cloud computing (MCC) has been proposed to offload heavy computing jobs of mobile devices to cloud servers managed by cloud service provider (CSP), which enables the mobile devices to save energy and processing delay. Heretofore, cloud offloading policies in mobile devices and pricing/scheduling in CSP have been independently addressed. This paper is first to jointly account for both sides of mobile users and CSP in a unified mobile cloud computing framework. By invoking “Lyapunov drift-plus-penalty” technique, we propose dual-side control algorithms for the mobile users and CSP in two different scenarios: (i) In non-cooperation scenario, we propose a NC-UC algorithm for the mobile users and a NC-CC algorithm for the CSP to minimize each cost for given delay constraints. (ii) In cooperation scenario, we suggest a CP-JC algorithm for both cloud users and CSP to minimize the sum costs of them for given delay constraints. Trace-driven simulations demonstrate that NC-UC saves minimum 63% of cost by trading 8MB of average queue lengths when compared with the existing algorithms, and NC-CC achieves 71% of profit gain when compared with the same delay of existing scheme; moreover, the cooperation enables them to save additional costs and delays.
Serum anti-inflammatory cytokines for the evaluation of inflammatory status in endometriosis

Background: Endometriosis is a frequent gynecologic disease with a severe impact on the quality of life in the affected women; its pathogenesis is yet to be fully understood, with an altered immunity as a possible key factor. The present study aimed to investigate the serum anti-inflammatory cytokine profile in the patients with endometriosis compared with the healthy controls. Materials and Methods: One hundred and sixty women were included, divided into two study groups (Group I — endometriosis; Group 2 — healthy women). We evaluated the serum levels of interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra), IL-2, IL-2R, IL-4, IL-10, IL-13, and IL-15 with the use of Human multiplex cytokine panels. Statistical analyses (normality distribution analysis, independent t-test, Mann–Whitney U-test) were performed using IBM SPSS software (version 22.0) and GraphPad Prism (version 5.00); receiver operating characteristic curve were used to demonstrate the diagnostic performance of the studied markers. Results: The mean serum level of IL-1Ra, IL-4, and IL-10 were significantly higher in women with endometriosis compared to women free of disease from the control group (30.155, 138.459, and 1.489, respectively, compared to 14.109, 84.710, and 0.688, respectively; P < 0.001, P < 0.001, and P = 0.002, respectively.). No significant differences in the mean serum levels of IL-2, IL-13, and IL-15 were observed between the studied groups and IL-2R had a very low detection rate. Conclusion: Endometriosis is associated with elevated levels of anti-inflammatory cytokines, IL-1Ra, IL-4, and IL-10, markers that have a potential role as a prognostic factor for endometriosis.
Single Frequency Filtering Approach for Discriminating Speech and Nonspeech

In this paper, a signal processing approach is proposed for speech/nonspeech discrimination. The approach is based on single frequency filtering (SFF), where the amplitude envelope of the signal is obtained at each frequency with high temporal and spectral resolution. This high resolution property helps to exploit the resulting high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regions in time and frequency. The variance of the spectral information across frequency is higher for speech and lower for many types of noises. The mean and variance of the noise-compensated weighted envelopes are computed across frequency at each time instant. Decision logic is applied to the feature derived from the mean and variance values on varieties of degradations, including NTIMIT, CTIMIT and distance speech, besides degradation due to standard noise types. In all cases, the proposed method gives significantly better performance than the standard Adaptive Multi-rate VAD2 (AMR2) method. AMR2 method is chosen for comparison, as the method adapts itself for different degradations, and is seen to give good performance over different SNR situations. The proposed method does not use training data to derive the characteristics of speech or noise, nor makes any assumption on the nonspeech beginning. The SFF method appears promising in other applications of speech processing, such as pitch extraction and speech enhancement.
Greedy RankRLS : a Linear Time Algorithm for Learning Sparse Ranking Models

Ranking is a central problem in information retrieval. Much work has been done in the recent years to automate the development of ranking models by means of supervised machine learning. Feature selection aims to provide sparse models which are computationally efficient to evaluate, and have good ranking performance. We propose integrating the feature selection as part of the training process for the ranking algorithm, by means of a wrapper method which performs greedy forward selection, using leave-query-out crossvalidation estimate of performance as the selection criterion. We introduce a linear time training algorithm we call greedy RankRLS, which combines the aforementioned procedure, together with regularized risk minimization based on pairwise least-squares loss. The training complexity of the method is O(kmn), where k is the number of features to be selected, m is the number of training examples, and n is the overall number of features. Experiments on the LETOR benchmark data set demonstrate that the approach works in practice.
Physician-ordered respiratory care vs physician-ordered use of a respiratory therapy consult service. Results of a prospective observational study.

OBJECTIVE To assess the impact of a respiratory therapy consult service (RTCS) on practices and appropriateness of ordering respiratory care services. DESIGN Nonrandomized prospective observational cohort study with concurrent controls. SETTING Adult non-ICU inpatient wards of an academic medical center. PATIENTS A convenience sample of 98 adult non-ICU inpatients at the Cleveland Clinic Hospital, representing 20 inpatient clinical services. Patients whose respiratory care plans were determined by respiratory care practitioners using sign and symptom-based algorithms to specify treatment comprised the treatment group (n = 51, respiratory therapy consult group). The nonconsult group (n = 47) were patients whose respiratory care plans were specified by their own physicians. INTERVENTION Specification of the respiratory care plan by the RTCS vs by the physicians themselves. Use of the RTCS was at the discretion of the managing physician. OUTCOME MEASURES Types and number of respiratory care treatments, length of hospital stay, costs of the respiratory therapy provided, appropriateness of respiratory care orders (based on comparison of the actual respiratory care orders with a reference respiratory care plan generated by a study investigator who was kept blind to the actual respiratory care plan), and adverse respiratory events. RESULTS Patients for whom the RTCS was requested by their physicians had a greater severity of respiratory illness based on having a lower triage score, but were otherwise similar at baseline. Fewer initial orders for respiratory care were discordant with the reference algorithms in RTCS patients (15% +/- 26% [SD]) than in nonconsult patients (43% +/- 36%; p < 0.001), and a smaller fraction of RTCS patients received at least one discordant initial respiratory care order (37% vs 72%; p < 0.001). Though provided to sicker patients with longer lengths of hospital stay, RTCS-directed care incurred similar respiratory care costs per patient ($335.63 +/- $272.69 [RTCS] vs $349.06 +/- $273.27; p = 0.72). CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that the RTCS can be an effective strategy to allocate respiratory care strategies appropriately while conserving the costs of providing respiratory care.
Specific peptide ligand for Grb7 signal transduction protein and pancreatic cancer metastasis.

BACKGROUND Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive malignancies, with high rates of invasion and metastasis and with generally poor prognosis. We previously found that metastasis was strongly associated with the expression of growth factor receptor-bound protein 7 (Grb7), which contains a Src homology 2 (SH2) domain. In this study, we evaluated Grb7 protein as a molecular target of therapy for metastatic pancreatic cancer. METHODS Grb7 protein expression was measured by immunohistochemistry in 36 human pancreatic cancer specimens and adjacent normal pancreatic tissue. We synthesized a nonphosphorylated peptide inhibitor that binds specifically to the SH2 domain of Grb7. Intracellular signaling was assessed by immunoprecipitation and immunoblot assays in cultured human pancreatic cancer cells. Cell migration was measured with a modified Boyden chamber method. Peritoneal metastasis of the pancreatic cancer cells was measured with a mouse model. All statistical tests were two-sided. RESULTS We found that 22 (61%) of 36 pancreatic cancer specimens had higher levels of Grb7 protein than their corresponding normal pancreatic tissue specimens. Grb7 expression was statistically significantly different between specimens from patients without lymph node metastasis (stage N0; two of the 10 patients) and patients with lymph node metastasis (stages N1 + N2; 20 of the 26 patients) (P = .006). The Grb7 peptide inhibitor selectively blocked the interaction between Grb7 and focal adhesion kinase and blocked the phosphorylation of Grb7 protein. In vivo Grb7 peptide inhibitor statistically significantly attenuated cell migration (for control peptide, 87.5 cells migrated, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 82.6 to 92.4 cells; for Grb7 peptide, 5.7 cells migrated, 95% CI = 2.3 to 9.0 cells; P < .001) and peritoneal metastasis of the pancreatic cancer cells in a mouse model, as assessed by the number of nodules (control = 72.6 nodules, 95% CI = 55.8 to 89.4 nodules; and for Grb7 peptide = 3.2 nodules, 95% CI = 1.6 to 4.8 nodules; P < .001, t test) and their weight (control = 4.13 g, 95% CI = 3.40 to 4.86 g; Grb7 peptide = 0.19 g, 95% CI = 0.06 to 0.32 g; P < .001, t test). CONCLUSIONS The Grb7 peptide inhibitor appears to be a promising molecularly targeted therapeutic agent against metastatic pancreatic cancer.
The relationship between RGS5 expression and cancer differentiation and metastasis in non‐small cell lung cancer

Regulator of G‐protein signaling 5 (RGS5), a tissue‐specific signal regulating molecular, plays important roles in the development of vasculature. Recently, we have found that the mRNA level of RGS5 was oppositely related with tumor metastasis in non‐small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, the distribution of RGS5 in NSCLC and its significance need further study. We therefore investigated the expression of RGS5 in NSCLC, as well as its relationship with clinicopathologic parameters.
A Collaborative Recommend Algorithm Based on Bipartite Community

The recommendation algorithm based on bipartite network is superior to traditional methods on accuracy and diversity, which proves that considering the network topology of recommendation systems could help us to improve recommendation results. However, existing algorithms mainly focus on the overall topology structure and those local characteristics could also play an important role in collaborative recommend processing. Therefore, on account of data characteristics and application requirements of collaborative recommend systems, we proposed a link community partitioning algorithm based on the label propagation and a collaborative recommendation algorithm based on the bipartite community. Then we designed numerical experiments to verify the algorithm validity under benchmark and real database.
Incremental and interactive mining for frequent itemsets in evolving databases

This paper deals with new approaches to maintaining frequent itemsets in evolving databases. Our new approaches make use of incremental techniques to provide significant I/O reduction, and parallel techniques to provide computational savings. At the same time, our approaches are able to effectively handle online data updates (deletions/insertions) and interactive response times (approximate/partial results). Some additional highlights of the proposed approaches include extending the validity of the itemsets (generating approximate models of itemsets), and performing selective updates (tracking stable and predictable itemsets). These features allow our approaches to mine evolving data stored in warehouses as well as (potentially) streaming data. Extensive experimental benchmarking on evolving data demonstrates the potential advantages of the proposed approaches. We believe that this work can have high impact in application areas such as electronic commerce, web mining, and network intrusion detection.
Increased Beef Consumption Increases Apolipoprotein A-I but Not Serum Cholesterol of Mildly Hypercholesterolemia Men with Different Levels of Habitual Beef Intake

The objective of this research was to compare the effects of a lean beef enriched in oleic acid to a beef that is typical of the commercial beef consumed in the United States. Ten mildly hypercholesterolemic men, ages 34-58 years old, were selected from the Texas A&M University faculty and staff. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of two diets for a 6-week duration followed by a crossover after a 4-week habitual diet washout period. Diets were consumed daily for a 6-week study period. Participants substituted lean beef obtained from Wagyu bullocks or commercial beef for the meat typically consumed. Total cholesterol, apolipoproteins A-I and B, triacylglycerols, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol were measured in serum samples collected weekly. Beef type had no effect on any measured variable. There were no significant differences between baseline HDL or LDL cholesterol concentrations after the consumption of the beef test diets. Apolipoprotein A-I, serum glucose, and uric acid concentrations were elevated by the additional dietary beef. Analysis of records of customary diets indicated that one group consumed 160 g of beef daily, whereas the other group consumed only 26 g of beef daily. Therefore, post hoc analyses tested the habitual beef intake x treatment time interaction. LDL cholesterol concentration was markedly higher in the group with low habitual beef Intake (180 vs 144 mg/dl), and HDL cholesterol was slightly higher (44 vs 40 mg/dl; post-test values) than for the group with high habitual beef intake, but there were no habitual intake x time interactions for LDL or HDL cholesterol. Creatinine and blood urea nitrogen concentrations also were greater in the individuals habitually consuming less beef. This study had three important findings: i) a lean beef source enriched with oleic acid was no different from commercial beef in its effect on lipoprotein fractions; ii) neither previous level of beef intake nor baseline LDL cholesterol concentration influenced the serum cholesterol response to added dietary beef. which was negative; and iii) apolipoprotein A-I, but not HDL or LDL cholesterol, was sensitive to the additional dietary beef.
The Time Profile of Pentraxin 3 in Patients with Acute ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction and Stable Angina Pectoris Undergoing Percutaneous Coronary Intervention

Background. High levels of Pentraxin 3 (PTX3) are reported in acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Aim. To investigate circulating levels and gene expression of PTX3 in patients with AMI and stable angina pectoris (AP) undergoing PCI. Methods. Ten patients with AP and 20 patients with AMI were included. Blood samples were drawn before PCI in the AP group and after 3 and 12 hours and days 1, 3, 5, 7, and 14 in both groups. Results. Circulating PTX3 levels were higher in AMI compared to AP at 3 and 12 hours (P < 0.001 and P = 0.003). Within the AMI group, reduction from 3 hours to all later time points was observed (all P ≤ 0.001). Within the AP group, increase from baseline to 3 hours (P = 0.022), followed by reductions thereafter (all P < 0.05), was observed. PTX3 mRNA increased in the AMI group from 3 hours to days 7 and 14 in a relative manner of 62% and 73%, while a relative reduction from baseline to 3 and 12 hours of 29% and 37% was seen in the AP group. Conclusion. High circulating PTX3 levels shortly after PCI in AMI indicate that AMI itself influences PTX3 levels. PTX3 mRNA might be in response to fluctuations in circulating levels.
Using Time and Space Efficiently in Driverless Cars: Findings of a Co-Design Study

The alternative use of travel time is a widely discussed benefits of driverless cars. We therefore conducted 14 co-design sessions to examine how people manage their time, to determine how they perceive the value of time in driverless cars and derive design implications. Our findings suggest that driverless mobility will affect people's use of travel time and their time management in general. The participants repeatedly stated the desire of completing tasks while traveling to save time for activities that are normally neglected in everyday life. Using travel time efficiently requires using car space efficiently. We found out that the design concept of tiny houses could serve as common design pattern to deal with the limited space within cars and support diverse needs.
A crossvalidation method for estimating conditional densities

We extend the idea of crossvalidation to choose the smoothing parameters of the 'double-kernel' local linear regression for estimating a conditional density. Our selection rule optimises the estimated conditional density function by minimising the integrated squared error. We also discuss three other bandwidth selection rules, an ad hoc method used by Fan et al. (1996), a bootstrap method of Hall et al. (1999) for bandwidth selection in the estimation of conditional distribution functions, modified by Bashtannyk & Hyndman (2001) to cover conditional density functions, and finally a simple approach proposed by Hyndman & Yao (2002). The performance of the new approach is compared with these three methods by simulation studies, and our method performs outstandingly well. The method is illustrated by an application to estimating the transition density and the Value-at-Risk of treasury-bill data. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.