Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficacy of cell phone-delivered smoking cessation counseling for persons living with HIV/AIDS: 3-month outcomes.

INTRODUCTION Substantial evidence indicates that cigarette smoking among people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) represents a significant public health concern. However, few efforts to assess smoking cessation interventions targeting this population have been reported. In this brief report, 3-month outcomes from an ongoing treatment trial for PLWHA who smoke are described. METHODS Study participants were recruited from a large HIV care center serving a diverse population of PLWHA. A two-group randomized design was used to compare the efficacy of usual-care (UC) smoking cessation treatment versus a cell phone intervention (CPI). Follow-ups were conducted at the HIV clinic 3 months postenrollment. Using an intent-to-treat approach, a series of multiple regression models were used to compare smoking outcomes in the 2 groups. RESULTS Four hundred and seventy-four participants were enrolled and randomized, UC (n = 238) and CPI (n = 236). Mean age in the sample was 44.8 (SD = 8.1) years, and the majority were male (70.0%), Black (76.6%), and had an education level of high school or less (77.5%). At follow-up, participants in the CPI group were 4.3 (95% CI = 1.9, 9.8) times more likely to be abstinent (7 day) compared with those in the UC group. Similarly, significant point estimates were observed for the other smoking outcomes of interest. CONCLUSIONS Findings from this preliminary report indicate that a smoking cessation intervention for PLWHA consisting of cell phone-delivered proactive counseling results in significantly higher abstinence rates compared with a standard care approach. Evaluation of the long-term (6-month and 12-month) efficacy of the CPI approach is ongoing.
Genetic Polymorphism in Cytochrome P450 2D6 (CYP2D6): Population Distribution of CYP2D6 Activity

Cytochrome P-450 2D6 (CYP2D6) is involved in the metabolism of many therapeutic drugs even though the enzyme represents a small proportion of the total CYP content of human liver. In vivo phenotyping with probe drug substrates such as debrisoquine and dextromethorphan showed a clear separation between poor metabolizers (PM) and extensive metabolizers (EM). This polymorphism may affect susceptibility to environmental disease, as suggested by molecular epidemiologic studies that found an association between CYP2D6 metabolizer phenotype and cancer risk; however, this association is not consistent. There are only a few examples of CYP2D6 involvement in toxicant mechanism of action, but this has not been extensively studied. Gene probe studies documented a number of genetic polymorphisms that underlie CYP2D6 metabolizer phenotypes. The EM group carries the wild-type (*1) or active (*2) variant alleles, while the PM group carries the *3, *4, *5, or *6 alleles, all of which code for a protein that has lower or null CYP2D6 activity. The current analysis characterizes (a) influence of genotype on phenotype based upon in vivo metabolism studies of probe drugs and (b) frequency of the major genotypes in different population groups is also characterized. These data were then incorporated into Monte Carlo modeling to simulate population distributions of CYP2D6 activity. This analysis reproduced the bimodal distributions commonly seen in phenotyping studies of Caucasians and found extensive population variability in enzyme activity, as indicated by the 9- to 56-fold difference between the PM modal median and the total population median CYP2D6 activity. This substantial degree of interindividual variability in CYP function indicates that assessments involving CYP2D6 substrates need to consider the full distribution of enzyme activity in refining estimates of internal dose in health assessments of xenobiotics.
Toll-like receptor and IL-12 signaling control susceptibility to contact hypersensitivity

Allergic contact hypersensitivity (CHS) is a T cell–mediated inflammatory skin disease. Interleukin (IL)-12 is considered to be important in the generation of the allergen-specific T cell response. Loss of IL-12 function in IL-12Rβ2–deficient mice, however, did not ameliorate the allergic immune response, suggesting alternate IL-12–independent pathways in the induction of CHS. Because exposure to contact allergens always takes place in the presence of microbial skin flora, we investigated the potential role of Toll-like receptors (TLRs) in the induction of CHS. Using mice deficient in TLR4, the receptor for bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS), IL-12 receptor (R) β2, or both, we show that the concomitant absence of TLR4 and IL-12Rβ2, but not the absence of TLR4 or IL-12Rβ2 alone, prevented DC-mediated sensitization, generation of effector T cells, and the subsequent CHS response to 2,4,6-trinitro-1-chlorobenzene (TNCB), oxazolone, and fluorescein isothiocyanate. Introduction of the TLR4 transgene into the TLR4/IL-12Rβ2 mutant restored the CHS inducibility, showing a requirement for TLR4 in IL-12–independent CHS induction. Furthermore, the concomitant absence of TLR2 and TLR4 prevented the induction of CHS to TNCB in IL-12–competent mice. Finally, CHS was inducible in germ-free wild-type and IL-12Rβ2–deficient mice, but not in germ-free TLR4/IL-12Rβ2 double deficient mice, suggesting that the necessary TLR activation may proceed via endogenous ligands.
The effects of anaesthesia with thiopentone, nitrous oxide, narcotics and neuromuscular blocking drugs on renal function in normal man.

SUMMARY Changes in renal haemodynamics, water and electrolyte excretion were determined in 10 healthy male volunteers before and after the administration of narcotic and atropine sulphate intravenously, and after anaesthesia with thiopentone, nitrous oxide in oxygen, neuromuscular blocking drugs and in some instances intermittent narcotic. A significant reduction in glomerular filtration rate (13 per cent) without change in renal plasma flow with an increased renal vascular resistance was observed following narcotic and atropine premedication. No alteration in urine volume or osmolality followed narcotic premedication suggesting failure of ADH release. Administration of anaesthesia resulted in a further reduction (11 per cent) in glomerular filtration rate, a 31 per cent reduction in renal plasma flow and maintained increase in renal vascular resistance. A profound antidiuresis characterized by low urine volume, increased urine osmolality, and negative free water clearance was observed during anaesthesia. This could not be reversed by ethanol infusion, unlike the response in previous studies with cyclopropane and halothane.
Maintaining Focus: Overcoming Attention Deficit Disorder in Contingent Planning

In our experiments with four well-known systems for solving partially observable planning problems (Contingent-FF, MBP, PKS, and POND), we were greatly surprised to find that they could only solve problems with a small number of contingencies. Apparently they were repeatedly trying to solve many combinations of contingencies at once, thus unnecessarily using up huge amounts of time and space. This difficulty can be alleviated if the planner can maintain focus on the contingency that it is currently trying to solve. We provide a way to accomplish this by incorporating focusing information directly into the planning domain’s operators, without any need to modify the planning algorithm itself. This enables the above planners to solve larger problems and to solve them much more quickly. We also provide a new planner, FOCUS, in which focusing information can be provided as a separate input. This provides even better performance by allowing the planner to utilize more extensive focusing information.
POLO ensures chromosome bi-orientation by preventing and correcting erroneous chromosome–spindle attachments

Correct chromosome segregation during cell division requires bi-orientation at the mitotic spindle. Cells possess mechanisms to prevent and correct inappropriate chromosome attachment. Sister kinetochores assume a ‘back-to-back’ geometry on chromosomes that favors amphitelic orientation but the regulation of this process and molecular components are unknown. Abnormal chromosome–spindle interactions do occur but are corrected through the activity of Aurora B, which destabilizes erroneous attachments. Here, we address the role of Drosophila POLO in chromosome–spindle interactions and show that, unlike inhibition of its activity, depletion of the protein results in bipolar spindles with most chromosomes forming stable attachments with both sister kinetochores bound to microtubules from the same pole in a syntelic orientation. This is partly the result of impaired localization and activity of Aurora B but also of an altered centromere organization with abnormal distribution of centromeric proteins and shorter interkinetochore distances. Our results suggests that POLO is required to promote amphitelic attachment and chromosome bi-orientation by regulating both the activity of the correction mechanism and the architecture of the centromere.
A Frequency-Locked-Loop Filter for Biased Multi-Sinusoidal Estimation

In this paper, an adaptive filter, based on a third-order generalized integrator, is proposed to estimate all the parameters of a biased sinusoid. The averaging theory is used to prove that the filter identifies the unknown frequency of the signal, in the case of a pure biased sinusoid in input. Moreover, in the case of a generic periodic signal, the method provides an estimate of the fundamental frequency by converging to a limit cycle in its vicinity. The robustness of the proposed approach with respect to noise in the input signal is analyzed. A filter bank is also presented to deal with the reconstruction problem of a generic multi-sinusoidal signal. Simulation results are also provided to compare the performances of the method with existing ones.
Turning a blind eye: the success of blinding reported in a random sample of randomised, placebo controlled trials

Abstract Objective To examine the reporting and success of double blinding in a sample of randomised, placebo controlled trials from leading general medicine and psychiatry journals. Methods Identification of placebo controlled, randomised controlled trials from prespecified general medical and psychiatric journals indexed on Medline between 1 January 1998 and 1 October 2001, from which a random sample of 200 randomised clinical trials was chosen, of which 191 trials were evaluated. Results Only seven of the 97 (7%) general medicine trials provided evidence on the success of blinding, with five reporting that the success of blinding was imperfect. In trials from psychiatric journals, the success of blinding was reported in eight of the 94 trials, with four reporting that the blinding was imperfect. Overall, only four of the 191 (2%) trials assessed blinding in the participants and either the outcome assessors or the investigators. Conclusions The current lack of reporting on the success of blinding provides little evidence that success of blinding is maintained in placebo controlled trials. Trialists and editors should make a concerted effort to incorporate, report, and publish such information and its potential effect on study results.
Gene expression and promoter polymorphisms of DNA methyltransferase 3 B in nasopharyngeal carcinomas in Taiwanese people : A case-control study

Overexpression of the DNA methyltransferase 3B (DNMT3B) gene and its effect on carcinogenesis has been demonstrated for various types of cancer. Recently, three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the DNMT3B promoter region, C46359T (-149C>T), -283T>C, and -579G>T have also been reported to be stratification markers that can predict an individual's susceptibility to cancers. In this study, we analyzed expression of DNMT3B in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) specimens and did not find elevated levels of DNMT3B in tumors using cDNA microarray analysis and RT-PCR. Meanwhile, 259 NPC patients and 250 controls were genotyped for the above three SNPs using a MALDI-TOF based minisequencing method. For C46359T (-149C>T), only the T/T genotype was found to be present in both patient and control groups (100% frequency). The frequency of the genotypes, -283CC, -283CT and -283TT, amongst NPC patients versus controls was, respectively, 86.1% versus 84.0%, 13.5% versus 15.6%, and 0.4% versus 0.4% (P=0.589). The allele frequency, -597TT, -597GT and -597GG, for patients versus controls was, respectively, 87.3% versus 84.8%, 12.0% versus 15.2%, and 0.8% versus 0 (P=0.501). The distribution of SNPs among cancer patients either featuring or not featuring cervical metastasis also did not reveal any significant difference. In conclusion, our data indicate that neither overexpression of DNMT3B nor the presence of three DNMT3B SNPs are associated with NPC, which suggests that DNMT3B might not play a role in hypermethylation of many tumor suppressor genes during carcinogenesis of NPC.
Effect of Glycoprotein IIb/IIIa Antagonist Abciximab on Monocyte-Platelet Aggregates and Tissue Factor Expression

Objective—Activated platelets rapidly adhere to monocytes and upregulate the expression of tissue factor (TF), the major trigger of the coagulation cascade. In this study, we examined the effect of abciximab, a nonselective glycoprotein IIb/IIIa-receptor antagonist, on monocyte TF expression in thrombin receptor activator–stimulated whole blood in vitro. Methods and Results—Abciximab (50 &mgr;g/mL) reduced the mass of platelets attached to monocytes, measured by the mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) of CD42b on CD14+ cells, 1 (CD42b, 471±197 versus 1073±217 MFI, mean±SD, P <0.05), 5, and 10 minutes after thrombin receptor activator stimulation of whole blood to the same extent as anti–P-selectin (50 &mgr;g/mL; 288±177 MFI, P <0.05) when determined by flow cytometry. In parallel, the expression of the platelet activation marker P-selectin colocalized with CD14+ monocytes was reduced up to 25% by abciximab at the same time points. Expression of monocyte TF antigen (CD14+/TF+, 39.9±8.7% versus 66.3±19.9%, P <0.05), chromogenic TF-activity (TF, 8.4±1.9 versus 13.2±2.8 U, arbitrary units, P <0.05), and TF mRNA was suppressed in the presence of abciximab as a consequence of reduced platelet mass attached to monocytes. Conclusions—Our data suggest that heterotypic monocyte-platelet aggregates are a target for abciximab, which suppresses monocyte TF because of a reduction of monocyte-platelet cross talk.
Implementing News Article Category Browsing Based on Text Categorization Technique

We propose a feature called category browsing to enhance the full-text search function of Thai-language news article search engine. The category browsing allows users to browse and filter search results based on some predefined categories. To implement the category browsing feature, we applied and compared among several text categorization algorithms including decision tree, Naive Bayes (NB) and Support Vector Machines (SVM). To further increase the performance of text categorization, we performed evaluation among many feature selection techniques including document frequency thresholding (DF), information gain (IG) and x2 (CHI). Based on our experiments using a large news corpus, the SVM algorithm with the IG feature selection yielded the best performance with the F1 measure equal to 95.42%.
Adaptive Temperature Compensation in Circadian Oscillations

A temperature independent period and temperature entrainment are two defining features of circadian oscillators. A default model of distributed temperature compensation satisfies these basic facts yet is not easily reconciled with other properties of circadian clocks, such as many mutants with altered but temperature compensated periods. The default model also suggests that the shape of the circadian limit cycle and the associated phase response curves (PRC) will vary since the average concentrations of clock proteins change with temperature. We propose an alternative class of models where the twin properties of a fixed period and entrainment are structural and arise from an underlying adaptive system that buffers temperature changes. These models are distinguished by a PRC whose shape is temperature independent and orbits whose extrema are temperature independent. They are readily evolved by local, hill climbing, optimization of gene networks for a common quality measure of biological clocks, phase anticipation. Interestingly a standard realization of the Goodwin model for temperature compensation displays properties of adaptive rather than distributed temperature compensation.
CXC chemokine receptors in the central nervous system: Role in cerebellar neuromodulation and development

Chemokines and their receptors are constitutively present in the central nervous system (CNS), expressed in neurons and glial cells. Much evidence suggests that, beyond their involvement in neuroinflammation, these proteins play a role in neurodevelopment and neurophysiological signaling. The goal of this review is to summarize recent information concerning expression, signaling, and function of CXC chemokine receptor in the CNS, with the main focus on the developmental and neuromodulatory actions of chemokines in the cerebellum.
An Availability-on-Demand Mechanism for Datacenters

Data enters are at the core of a wide variety of daily ICT utilities, ranging from scientific computing to online gaming. Due to the scale of today's data enters, the failure of computing resources is a common occurrence that may disrupt the availability of ICT services, leading to revenue loss. Although many high availability (HA) techniques have been proposed to mask resource failures, datacenter users' -- who rent datacenter resources and use them to provide ICT utilities to a global population' -- still have limited management options for dynamically selecting and configuring HA techniques. In this work, we propose Availability-on-Demand (AoD), a mechanism consisting of an API that allows datacenter users to specify availability requirements which can dynamically change, and an availability-aware scheduler that dynamically manages computing resources based on user-specified requirements. The mechanism operates at the level of individual service instance, thus enabling fine-grained control of availability, for example during sudden requirement changes and periodic operations. Through realistic, trace-based simulations, we show that the AoD mechanism can achieve high availability with low cost. The AoD approach consumes about the same CPU hours but with higher availability than approaches which use HA techniques randomly. Moreover, comparing to an ideal approach which has perfect predictions about failures, it consumes 13% to 31% more CPU hours but achieves similar availability for critical parts of applications.
Safety Incidents in the Primary Care Office Setting

BACKGROUND: In the United Kingdom, 26% of child deaths have identifiable failures in care. Although children account for 40% of family physicians’ workload, little is known about the safety of care in the community setting. Using data from a national patient safety incident reporting system, this study aimed to characterize the pediatric safety incidents occurring in family practice. METHODS: We undertook a retrospective, cross-sectional, mixed methods study of pediatric reports submitted to the UK National Reporting and Learning System from family practice. Analysis involved detailed data coding using multiaxial frameworks, descriptive statistical analysis, and thematic analysis of a special-case sample of reports. Using frequency distributions and cross-tabulations, the relationships between incident types and contributory factors were explored. RESULTS: Of 1788 reports identified, 763 (42.7%) described harm to children. Three crosscutting priority areas were identified: medication management, assessment and referral, and treatment. The 4 incident types associated with the most harmful outcomes are errors associated with diagnosis and assessment, delivery of treatment and procedures, referrals, and medication provision. Poor referral and treatment decisions in severely unwell or vulnerable children, along with delayed diagnosis and insufficient assessment of such children, featured prominently in incidents resulting in severe harm or death. CONCLUSION: This is the first analysis of nationally collected, family practice–related pediatric safety incident reports. Recommendations to mitigate harm in these priority areas include mandatory pediatric training for all family physicians; use of electronic tools to support diagnosis, management, and referral decision-making; and use of technological adjuncts such as barcode scanning to reduce medication errors.
Sunitinib Combined with Angiotensin-2 Type-1 Receptor Antagonists Induces More Necrosis: A Murine Xenograft Model of Renal Cell Carcinoma

Background. Angiotensin-2 type-1 receptor antagonists not are only antihypertensive drugs but also can inhibit VEGF production. We hypothesised that adding telmisartan to sunitinib could potentiate the antiangiogenic effects. Material and Methods. 786-O cell lines were injected in nude mice. After tumor development, mice were divided into 4 groups: the first was the control group (DMSO), the second group was treated with sunitinib alone, the third group was treated with telmisartan alone, and the fourth group was treated with the combination. Drugs were orally administered every day for four weeks. Animals were sacrificed after treatment. Blood and tumor tissues were collected for analysis by immunohistochemistry, Western Blot, and ELISA methods. Results. All animals developed a ccRCC and ten in each group were treated. Using a kinetic model, tumors tended to grow slower in the combination group compared to others (P = 0.06). Compared to sunitinib alone, the addition of telmisartan significantly increased tissue necrosis (P = 0.038). Central microvascular density decreased (P = 0.0038) as well as circulating VEGF (P = 0.003). There was no significant variation in proliferation or apoptosis markers. Conclusion. The combination of sunitinib and telmisartan revealed an enhancement of the blockage of the VEGF pathway on renal tumor resulting in a decrease in neoangiogenesis and an increase in necrosis.
The dynamic complexity of formal languages

The article investigates the power of the dynamic complexity classes D<scp>yn</scp>FO, D<scp>yn</scp>QF, and D<scp>yn</scp>PROP over string languages. The latter two classes contain problems that can be maintained using quantifier-free first-order updates, with and without auxiliary functions, respectively. It is shown that the languages maintainable in D<scp>yn</scp>PROP are exactly the regular languages, even when allowing arbitrary precomputation. This enables lower bounds for D<scp>yn</scp>PROP and separates D<scp>yn</scp>PROP from D<scp>yn</scp>QF and D<scp>yn</scp>FO. Further, it is shown that any context-free language can be maintained in D<scp>yn</scp>FO and a number of specific context-free languages, for example all Dyck-languages, are maintainable in D<scp>yn</scp>QF. Furthermore, the dynamic complexity of regular tree languages is investigated and some results concerning arbitrary structures are obtained: There exist first-order definable properties which are not maintainable in D<scp>yn</scp>PROP. On the other hand, any existential first-order property can be maintained in D<scp>yn</scp>QF when allowing precomputation.