Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Case of Morvan Syndrome Mimicking Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis With Frontotemporal Dementia

Introduction: Morvan syndrome is a rare autoimmune/paraneoplastic disorder involving antibodies to the voltage-gated potassium channel complex. It is defined by subacute encephalopathy, neuromuscular hyperexcitability, dysautonomia, and sleep disturbance. It may present a diagnostic dilemma when trying to differentiate from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis with frontotemporal dementia. Methods: A 76-year-old man with a history of untreated prostate adenocarcinoma was evaluated for subacute cognitive decline, diffuse muscle cramps, and hyponatremia. Results: MRI demonstrated atrophy most prominent in the frontal and temporal regions. Electromyography (EMG) demonstrated diffuse myokymia/neuromyotonia. Polysomnography lacked REM and N3 sleep. Paraneoplastic panel detected antibodies to voltage-gated potassium channel complex (CASPR2 subtype). Conclusions: It is difficult to differentiate between Morvan syndrome and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis with frontotemporal dementia with examination and neuroimaging alone. There may be a link between Morvan syndrome and prostate adenocarcinoma which could help with screening/diagnosis. The authors found that laboratory and neurophysiological tests are indispensable in diagnosing and treating Morvan syndrome.
CCR4 ligands are up-regulated in the airways of atopic asthmatics after segmental allergen challenge

T-helper (Th) 2 cytokines are thought to mediate most features of allergic inflammation in atopic asthma. However, it remains unclear whether chemokine pathways direct selective recruitment of Th2 cells to the airways during human allergic responses. Bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) was performed in 15 nonsmoking mild atopic asthmatics before and 24 h after a fibreoptic segmental allergen challenge, and chemokines related to T-cell recruitment were assayed by ELISA. The Th2-related C-C chemokine (CCR)4 ligands, macrophage-derived chemokine/C-C chemokine ligand (CCL)22 and thymus and activation-regulated chemokine/CCL17, were increased in BAL after challenge. These chemokines correlated significantly with lymphocyte numbers and with interleukin (IL)‐5 and IL‐13 in post-challenge BAL. In contrast, two out of three putative Th1-related chemokines did not change. There were no alterations in monokine induced by interferon (IFN)‐γ/CXC chemokine ligand (CXCL)9 or macrophage inflammatory protein‐1α/CCL3; whereas a significant increase in IFN-induced protein-10kDa/CXCL10 was observed, which did not correlate with the T-cell influx. In peripheral mononuclear cells from atopic donors, CCL22 and CCL17 were induced by IL‐4 and IL‐13, further supporting the relationship between CCL22/CCL17 and Th2 cytokines. Finally, CCL22 was able to trigger actin polymerisation in peripheral CD4+ T-cells expressing CCR4. Thus, C-C chemokine receptor 4 ligands are up-regulated in the airways of atopic asthmatics following allergen exposure, contribute to the T-cell influx to the airways and are closely related to the Th2-cytokine response.
Determination of Optimal Variable-Sized Multiple-Block Appointment Systems

The single-block appointment system is the most common method of scheduling ambulatory care clinics today. Several studies have examined various appointment systems ranging from single-block appointments on one extreme to individual appointments on the other, and including mixtures of these such as multiple-block (m-at-a-time) and block/individual systems. In this paper we analyze a general single-server multiple-block system, one permitting blocks of variable size. In the analysis we use a dynamic programming approach, with some modifications to compensate for the non-Markov nature of the problem. Analytical results and approximations which significantly reduce the computational requirements for a solution are obtained. Examples demonstrate that under certain weightings of the criteria of waiting, idle, and overtime, the generality of the system considered here allows performance superior to that of other commonly used systems.
High Performance Exact Triangle Counting on GPUs

This paper presents a GPU implementation of the graph triangle counting operation based on the set intersection algorithm. The algorithm is implemented in four kernels optimized for different types of graphs in a code delivering performance higher than the current state-of-the-art and without preprocessing the input graph. At runtime, a lightweight heuristic is used to select the kernel to run based on the specific graph taken as input. In contrast to previous works, the presented approach takes advantage of a set intersection operation implemented via bitmaps. Moreover, the simplicity of the approach allows the code to have limited size and engineering complexity.
Genetic structure, spatial organization, and dispersal in two populations of bat-eared foxes

We incorporated radio-telemetry data with genetic analysis of bat-eared foxes (Otocyon megalotis) from individuals in 32 different groups to examine relatedness and spatial organization in two populations in South Africa that differed in density, home-range sizes, and group sizes. Kin clustering occurred only for female dyads in the high-density population. Relatedness was negatively correlated with distance only for female dyads in the high-density population, and for male and mixed-sex dyads in the low-density population. Home-range overlap of neighboring female dyads was significantly greater in the high compared to low-density population, whereas overlap within other dyads was similar between populations. Amount of home-range overlap between neighbors was positively correlated with genetic relatedness for all dyad-site combinations, except for female and male dyads in the low-density population. Foxes from all age and sex classes dispersed, although females (mostly adults) dispersed farther than males. Yearlings dispersed later in the high-density population, and overall exhibited a male-biased dispersal pattern. Our results indicated that genetic structure within populations of bat-eared foxes was sex-biased, and was interrelated to density and group sizes, as well as sex-biases in philopatry and dispersal distances. We conclude that a combination of male-biased dispersal rates, adult dispersals, and sex-biased dispersal distances likely helped to facilitate inbreeding avoidance in this evolutionarily unique species of Canidae.
A Normative Analytic Framework for Development of Practice Guidelines for Specific Clinical Populations

Background. A central problem in practice guideline development is how to develop guidelines that appropriately account for variations in clinical populations and practice settings. Despite recognition of this problem, there is no formal mechanism for as sessing what the need is for flexibility in guidelines, or for deciding how to incorporate such flexibility into recommendations. Objective. This research sought to provide a formal basis to determine when clinical circumstances vary sufficiently that guideline recommendations should differ, how recommendations should be tailored for a specific clinical setting, and whether the benefit associated with such site-specific guidelines justifies the expense of their development. Results. The authors describe an approach for estimating the maximum health benefit that developers can obtain by eliminating uncertainty about differences in the patient populations and practice settings in which a guideline will be used. This estimate, the expected value of customization, provides a mechanism to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the development of site-specific guidelines that account explicitly for variation in clinical circumstances. Application of this method to the development of screening guidelines for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection indicates that the development of site-specific guidelines poten tially is cost-effective. Site-specific guidelines either improve, or leave unchanged, the efficiency of HIV screening; whether they increase or decrease total expenditures and health benefits depends on the choice of a cost-effectiveness threshold, and the clin ical problem. Conclusions. Development of guideline recommendations based on de cision models provides a normative approach for evaluating the need for and the cost-effectiveness of site-specific guidelines that have been tailored to specific prac tice settings. Such site-specific guidelines can improve substantially the expected health benefit and the economic efficiency of practice guidelines. Key words: practice guidelines; decision models; cost-effectiveness; site-specific guidelines. (Med Decis Making 1997;17:409-426)
Attitudes of Primary Care Providers and Recommendations of Home Blood Pressure Monitoring—DocStyles, 2010

To assess primary care providers' (PCPs) opinions related to recommending home blood pressure monitoring (HBPM) for their hypertensive patients, the authors analyzed a Web‐based 2010 DocStyles survey, which included PCPs' demographics, health‐related behaviors, recommendations on HBPM, views of patient knowledge, and use of continuing medical education. Of the 1254 PCPs who responded, 539 were family practitioners, 461 were internists, and 254 were nurse practitioners; 32% recommended HBPM to ≥90% of their patients and 26% recommended it to ≤40% of their patients. Nurse practitioners were significantly more likely to recommend HBPM than were internists (odds ratio, 0.55; 95% confidence interval, 0.40–0.78). The top reasons for not recommending HBPM were “patient can't afford it” and “patient doesn't need it. ” A total of 20% of PCPs indicated that their patients were poor to lower middle class; these PCPs were less likely to recommend HBPM to their patients than were those PCPs with most patients in higher economic classes. Additional efforts are needed to provide education to providers, especially physicians, about the benefits of HBPM in improved and cost‐effective blood pressure control in the United States.
High-Dimensional Estimation of Structured Signals From Non-Linear Observations With General Convex Loss Functions

We study the issue of estimating a <italic>structured signal</italic> <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$ {x}_{0}\in \mathbb {R}^{n}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> from <italic>non-linear and noisy Gaussian observations</italic>. Supposing that <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$ {x}_{0}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is contained in a certain <italic>convex subset</italic> <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$ K\subset \mathbb {R}^{n}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, we prove that accurate recovery is already feasible if the number of observations exceeds the <italic>effective dimension</italic> of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$ K$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. It will turn out that the possibly unknown non-linearity of our model affects the error rate only by a multiplicative constant. This achievement is based on recent works by Plan and Vershynin, who have suggested to treat the non-linearity rather as <italic>noise</italic>, which perturbs a linear measurement process. Using the concept of <italic>restricted strong convexity</italic>, we show that their results for the <italic>generalized Lasso</italic> can be extended to a fairly large class of <italic>convex loss functions</italic>. Moreover, we shall allow for the presence of <italic>adversarial noise</italic> so that even deterministic model inaccuracies can be coped with. These generalizations particularly give further evidence of why many standard estimators perform surprisingly well in practice, although they do not rely on any knowledge of the underlying output rule. To this end, our results provide a unified framework for signal reconstruction in high dimensions, covering various challenges from the fields of <italic>compressed sensing</italic>, <italic>signal processing</italic>, and <italic>statistical learning</italic>.
Liquid metal embrittlement during resistance spot welding of Zn-coated high-strength steels

ABSTRACT Liquid Zn-assisted embrittlement during resistance spot welding of Zn-coated high strength steels induces risks of surface cracking. This paper presents a state-of-the-art review on the surface crack evolution due to liquid metal embrittlement during spot welding. Several aspects of cracking have been discussed such as macroscopic and microscopic features of liquid Zn-assisted cracks, prevalent crack locations in spot welds, sensitivity to welding conditions, and susceptibility of different types of steels and Zn-based coatings. Subsequently, the influence of governing factors like temperature, stress, microstructure, and nature of coating are presented by correlating thermo-mechanical studies with actual spot welding investigations on Zn-coated steels. Finally, the possible mechanisms of embrittlement are discussed and suitable methods to suppress surface crack formation during spot welding are suggested. This is the winning review of the 2018 Materials Literature Review Prize of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, run by the Editorial Board of MST. Sponsorship of the prize by TWI Ltd is gratefully acknowledged.
Investigating Women’s Experiences of Asthma Care in Pregnancy: A Qualitative Study

Background : Most asthmatic women have normal pregnancies and complications are infrequent when their asthma is well-controlled. Symptom control and medical treatment are concerning to pregnant asthma suffers, as is the impact that their illness and treatment might have on their unborn baby. The aim was to investigate in a qualitative study the thoughts and feelings of women’s experiences of asthma in pregnancy. Twenty-two women with asthma who had a pregnancy within two years were asked to participate. Seven women were interviewed when data saturation was achieved. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using the ‘Framework’ Method, independently analysed by two researchers and consensus reached concerning the construction of themes. The key themes that emerged were Asthma and pregnancy; Pregnancy and post-natal experiences; and Health professionals. These findings are globally interesting because of the prevalence of maternal asthma and they illustrate participants’ experiences concerning their asthma care and their views on its improvement. Pregnant asthmatic women have concerns about their care and treatment which might be alleviated by outreach, joint working between respiratory doctors and nurse specialists, midwives and General Practice nurses. Targeted educational activities could form a part of this care delivery.
MATHEMATICAL ENGINEERING TECHNICAL REPORTS Sum-of-Squares Decomposition via Generalized KYP Lemma

The Kalman-Yakubovich-Popov (KYP) lemma establishes the equivalence between a frequency domain inequality (FDI) of a proper rational function and a linear matrix inequality (LMI). A recent result generalized the KYP lemma to characterize an FDI of a possibly nonproper rational function on a portion of a curve on the complex plane. This note examines implications of the generalized KYP result to sum-of-squares (SOS) decompositions of matrix-valued nonnegative polynomials of a single complex variable on a curve in the complex plane. Our result generalizes and unifies some existing SOS results, and also establishes equivalences among FDI, LMI, and SOS.
Hashing with Angular Reconstructive Embeddings

Large-scale search methods are increasingly critical for many content-based visual analysis applications, among which hashing-based approximate nearest neighbor search techniques have attracted broad interests due to their high efficiency in storage and retrieval. However, existing hashing works are commonly designed for measuring data similarity by the Euclidean distances. In this paper, we focus on the problem of learning compact binary codes using the cosine similarity. Specifically, we proposed novel angular reconstructive embeddings (ARE) method, which aims at learning binary codes by minimizing the reconstruction error between the cosine similarities computed by original features and the resulting binary embeddings. Furthermore, we devise two efficient algorithms for optimizing our ARE in continuous and discrete manners, respectively. We extensively evaluate the proposed ARE on several large-scale image benchmarks. The results demonstrate that ARE outperforms several state-of-the-art methods.
MHD flow and heat transfer of SiC-TiO2/DO hybrid nanofluid due to a permeable spinning disk by a novel algorithm

This study intends to semi-analytically investigate the steady 3D boundary layer flow of a SiC-TiO2/DO hybrid nanofluid over a porous spinning disk subject to a constant vertical magnetic field. Here, the novel attitude to single-phase hybrid nanofluid model corresponds to considering nanoparticles and base fluid masses to compute solid equivalent volume fraction, solid equivalent density, and also solid equivalent specific heat at constant pressure. The basic PDEs are transformed into dimensionless ODEs using Von Karman similarity transformations, which are then solved numerically using bvp4c function. Results indicate that mass suction and magnetic field effects diminish all hydrodynamic and thermal boundary layer thicknesses. Finally, a significant report is presented to investigate quantities of engineering interest due to governing parameters’ effects.
Lives in the hands of economists : a critical review of the main methodologies used to derive the value of a statistical life

This paper aims at describing the notion of the value of a statistical life and its use for conducting cost-benefit analysis relevant to policies that affect health and safety. The distinction between statistical and identified lives is discussed, and the common methodologies for valuing a statistical life are critically presented. It is argued that moral issues aside, there is also a series of technical and conceptual problems that relate to the valuation of a statistical life. The implication of this assertion is that, although cost-benefit analysis may generate insightful results, their policy suggestions should by no means be conclusive – especially when safety is at stake, and that various exogenous considerations should also be taken into account.
Higher levels of hepatitis C virus RNA found in blood donors co-infected with HIV as compared to HCV mono-infected donors.

INTRODUCTION Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections are public health problems in sub-Saharan countries such as the Republic of Congo. HIV infection could impact the characteristics of HCV infection in co-infected people. We investigated HCV-HIV co-infection among blood donors in Congo. METHODOLOGY Ninety-nine HIV-positive and/or HCV-seropositive blood donors were selected during screening and subsequently tested for aminotransferases and HCV RNA. RESULTS A total of 29 donors were found positive for HCV RNA (HCV-infected individuals), including 19/60 (31.66%) HIV donors (co-infected) and 10/39 (25.64%) non-HIV donors (mono-infected). Most of the co-infected donors (17/19) displayed a high viral load (> 5 log). The median HCV RNA level was at least 2 logs higher in co-infected people. The levels of alanine aminotransferase (ALT) were also slightly higher in co-infected donors than in HCV mono-infected donors. CONCLUSION This study reports HCV-HIV co-infection among blood donors in Congo and shows that HCV viral load is higher in HIV donors.
Monitoring Autophagy in the Model Green Microalga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

Autophagy is an intracellular catabolic system that delivers cytoplasmic constituents and organelles in the vacuole. This degradative process is mediated by a group of proteins coded by autophagy-related (ATG) genes that are widely conserved from yeasts to plants and mammals. Homologs of ATG genes have been also identified in algal genomes including the unicellular model green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. The development of specific tools to monitor autophagy in Chlamydomonas has expanded our current knowledge about the regulation and function of this process in algae. Recent findings indicated that autophagy is regulated by redox signals and the TOR network in Chlamydomonas and revealed that this process may play in important role in the control of lipid metabolism and ribosomal protein turnover in this alga. Here, we will describe the different techniques and approaches that have been reported to study autophagy and autophagic flux in Chlamydomonas.
Impact of Smoking and Smoking Cessation on Arterial Stiffness and Aortic Wave Reflection in Hypertension

Cigarette smoking is an important modifiable cardiovascular risk factor and pathophysiological mechanisms may include a stiff vascular tree. Although smokers have stiffer arteries, whether smoking cessation is associated with reduced arterial stiffness is not known. We compared never-treated patients with essential hypertension (n=554) aged 18 to 80 years (56% females) classified as current smokers (n=150), ex-smokers (n=136), and nonsmokers (n=268). Ex-smokers were categorized into <1 year, >1 and <10 years, and >10 years of smoking cessation. Measurements included aortic stiffness, assessed as pulse wave velocity (Complior), wave reflection (augmentation index [AIx]), and transit time (TR) (Sphygmocor). Current and ex-smokers had significantly higher pulse wave velocity and AIx compared with nonsmokers (pulse wave velocity for current smokers: 10.7±0.2; ex-smokers: 10.6±0.2; nonsmokers: 9.9±0.1 m/s; P<0.001; AIx for current smokers: 31±1; ex-smokers: 30±1; nonsmokers: 27±0.8%; P<0.05), whereas TR was lower in current and ex-smokers compared with nonsmokers (TR for current smokers: 131±1.0; ex-smokers: 135±1; nonsmokers: 137±0.8 m/s; P<0.0001). There was a significant linear relationship between smoking status and pulse wave velocity (P<0.001), AIx (P<0.001), and TR (P<0.001), even after adjusting for age, sex, mean arterial pressure, heart rate, and body mass index. In ex-smokers, duration of smoking cessation had a significant linear relationship with improvement in pulse wave velocity (P<0.001), AIx (P<0.001), and TR (P<0.001), with arterial stiffness parameters returning to nonsignificant levels after a decade of smoking cessation.
Usefulness of the SYNTAX Score for Predicting Clinical Outcome After Percutaneous Coronary Intervention of Unprotected Left Main Coronary Artery Disease

Background—The SYNTAX score (SXscore) has been proposed recently as a valuable tool to characterize the coronary vasculature prospectively with respect to the number of lesions and their functional impact, location, and complexity. However, the prognostic value of SXscores in patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention of the left main artery has not been validated. Methods and Results—We applied the SXscore in 255 consecutive patients who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention for left main disease and explored its performance with respect to their clinical outcome. Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression analyses were performed to evaluate the relation between the SXscore and the incidence of cardiac mortality, the primary end point of the study, and major adverse cardiac events (MACE). At 1 year, the SXscore significantly predicted the risk of cardiac death (hazard ratio, 1.12/unit increase; 95% CI, 1.06 to 1.18; P<0.001) and MACE (hazard ratio, 1.59/unit increase; 95% CI, 1.02 to 2.48; P=0.043). After adjustment for potential confounders, a higher SXscore remained significantly associated with cardiac mortality (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.15; 95% CI, 1.05 to 1.26; P=0.003) and MACE (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.06; 95% CI, 1.02 to 1.10; P=0.005). C-indexes for SXscores in terms of cardiac death and MACE were 0.83 and 0.64, respectively. Using classification tree analysis, discrimination levels of 34 and 37 were identified as the optimal cutoff to distinguish between patients at low and high risk of cardiac death and MACE, respectively. Conclusions—The SXscore is a useful tool to predict cardiac mortality and MACE in patients undergoing percutaneous revascularization of the left main coronary artery.