Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Pathophysiology of HIV-/HAART-Related Metabolic Syndrome Leading to Cardiovascular Disorders: The Emerging Role of Adipokines

Individuals infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) frequently demonstrate metabolic syndrome (MS) associated with increased incidence of cardiovascular disorders. Characteristics of HIV infection, such as immunodeficiency, viral load, and duration of the disease, in addition to the highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) have been suggested to induce MS in these patients. It is well documented that MS involves a number of traditional cardiovascular risk factors, like glucose, lipids, and arterial blood pressure abnormalities, leading to extensive atherogenic arterial wall changes. Nevertheless, the above traditional cardiovascular risk factors merely explain the exacerbated cardiovascular risk in MS. Nowadays, the adipose-tissue derivatives, known as adipokines, have been suggested to contribute to chronic inflammation and the MS-related cardiovascular disease. In view of a novel understanding on how adipokines affect the pathogenesis of HIV/HAART-related MS and cardiovascular complications, this paper focuses on the interaction of the metabolic pathways and the potential cardiovascular consequences. Based on the current literature, we suggest adipokines to have a role in the pathogenesis of the HIV/HAART-related MS. It is crucial to understand the pathophysiology of the HIV/HAART-related MS and apply therapeutic strategies in order to reduce cardiovascular risk in HIV patients.
Loyalty and the ritualistic consumption of entertainment

Entertainment is consumer-driven culture, and some consumers of entertainment products display uncommon levels of loyalty towards their favourite sports star, actor or musician. This essay examines fanaticism and loyalty through the prism of consumer rituals. Further, a Ritual–Loyalty model is proposed to help investigate the relationship between the constructs. Finally, the paper offers directions for future research regarding entertainment consumers.
Oral Health Related Quality of Life Impact in Dentistry

In spite of its recent emergence over the past 30 years, oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) has important impact on the clinical practice of dentistry and dental research. OHRQoL is a multidimensional paradigm that involves a subjective evaluation of the individual’s oral health, functional wellbeing, emotional well-being, expectations and satisfaction with care, and sense of self. It has been beneficial in relation to clinical research and health policies regulation. OHRQoL is an integral part of general health and well-being, World Health Organization (WHO) had considered Oral health related quality of life as an important section of the Global Oral Health Program (2003).
Cross-situational word learning is better modeled by associations than hypotheses

Research has shown that people can learn many nouns (i.e., word-referent mappings) from a short series of ambiguous situations containing multiple word-referent pairs. Associative models assume that people accomplish such cross-situational learning by approximately tracking which words and referents co-occur. However, some researchers posit that learners hypothesize only a single referent for each word, and retain and test this hypothesis unless it is disconfirmed. To compare these two views, we fit two models to individual learning trajectories in a cross-situational word-learning task, in which each trial presents four objects and four spoken words-16 possible word-object pairings per trial. The model that maintains a single hypothesis for each word does not fit as well as the associative model that roughly learns the co-occurrence structure of the data using competing attentional biases for familiar pairings and uncertain stimuli. We conclude that language acquisition is likely supported by memory, not sparse hypotheses.
Neutrophil Proteases Promote Experimental Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm via Extracellular Trap Release and Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cell Activation

Objective—We previously established that neutrophil-derived dipeptidyl peptidase I (DPPI) is essential for experimental abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) development. Because DPPI activates several neutrophil serine proteases, it remains to be determined whether the AAA-promoting effect of DPPI is mediated by neutrophil serine proteases. Approach and Results—Using an elastase-induced AAA model, we demonstrate that the absence of 2 neutrophil serine proteases, neutrophil elastase and proteinase-3, recapitulates the AAA-resistant phenotype of DPPI-deficient mice. DPPI and neutrophil serine proteases direct the in vitro and in vivo release of extracellular structures termed neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). Administration of DNase1, which dismantles NETs, suppresses elastase-induced AAA in wild-type animals and in DPPI-deficient mice reconstituted with wild-type neutrophils. NETs also contain the cathelicidin-related antimicrobial peptide that complexes with self-DNA in recruiting plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs), inducing type I interferons (IFNs) and promoting AAA in DPPI-deficient mice. Conversely, depletion of pDCs or blockade of type I IFNs suppresses experimental AAA. Moreover, we find an abundance of human cathelicidin peptide, a 37 amino acid sequence starting with 2 leucines and the human orthologue of cathelicidin-related antimicrobial peptide, in the vicinity of pDCs in human AAA tissues. Increased type I IFN mRNA expression is observed in human AAA tissues and circulating IFN-&agr; is detected in ≈50% of the AAA sera examined. Conclusions—These results suggest that neutrophil protease–mediated NET release contributes to elastase-induced AAA through pDC activation and type I IFN production. These findings increase our understanding of the pathways underlying AAA inflammatory responses and suggest that limiting NET, pDC, and type I IFN activities may suppress aneurysm progression.
Efficient Scheduling for Heterogeneous Traffic in Downlink

This paper studies optimal allocation of resources to users in a fading broadcast channel (BC) to support heterogeneous traffic. Resource allocation is done in a cross-layer manner for both deadline-sensitive (DS) and best-effort (BE) data to provide users guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS). Given the user queue-states, the proposed algorithm allocates the minimum resource to 'just' meet the deadlines for DS packets a fixed % of time. The remaining resources are then optimally split between the users for their BE data to maximize sum-rate, minimize buffer holding cost or any general utility function. The resource allocation problem is formulated as a linear program (LP) followed by a geometric program (GP) which can be solved very efficiently. Simulation results are presented for Poisson packet arrivals and exponentially distributed packet lengths on a Rayleigh fading channel for both the DS and BE traffic.
Entertaining Politics – New Political Television and Civic Culture

This book challenges the view, widely held especially among political scientists, that the meeting of entertainment and politics means the ‘dumbing down’ of political communication and the decline of civic participation. In his book Entertaining Politics – New Political Television and Civic Culture, Jeffrey P. Jones highlights how, through dramas, situation comedies and satire, ‘television producers, audiences and politicians have shown their desire or willingness to entertain politics in newly creative ways’ (p. 9). This use of what the author calls the ‘new political television’ ‘highlights the fact that politics can be pleasurable’ (p. 9) – audiences engage with it as part of their daily lives. Therefore, in opposition to the arguments that regard television entertainment as detrimental to democracy (Hart, 1994; Postman, 1986; Putnam, 2000), Jones claims that new forms of politics on television shape (American) ‘civic culture’ (in Dahlgren’s [2001] sense) and have important positive consequences for citizenship. This thesis is developed in Chapter 2, one of the most engaging of the book. Here Jones investigates the link between the proliferation of popular television programming and ‘traditional measures of democratic vitality – voting, political party affiliation, trust in leaders, political knowledge and voluntary activism’ (p. 15). Opposing the ‘civic malaise’ theory, Jones argues that ‘daily citizen engagement with politics is more frequently textual than organisational or “participatory” in any traditional sense’ (pp. 16–17). He claims that ‘politics is increasingly a textual practice’ (p. 18), which is mainly communicated to citizens through the media. In this context, television becomes ‘a pluralist forum of social conversation that offers accessible interpretive procedures for making sense of the world’ (p. 19), since it provides audiences with the ‘common sense’ narratives they need in order to make sense of politics (p. 27). Jones adds that it is through the emotional link with popular culture that the citizen/viewer grasps mediated politics – ‘for political life to be meaningful, its presence in venues that we ritually attend to, understand, are comfortable and familiar with and maintain feelings and commitments to should not necessarily be seen in a negative light’ (p. 31). The rest of the book focuses on a number of US humorous political talk shows (paying particular attention to Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher) and is divided into three parts, which explore the ways in which these programmes are produced, their content in relation to political discourse and audience participation and engagement. E U R O P E A N J O U R N A L O F C O M M U N I C A T I O N 2 1 ( 3 )
The transmission of Plasmodium cynomolgi to man.

Summary On May 8, 1960, one of the staff of the Parasitology Section of this Institute developed a febrile illness subsequently diagnosed as malaria. Paroxysms of tertian periodicity were produced by a parasite morphologically indistinguishable from Plasmodium vivax. Transfer of the infections from this laboratory worker to a normal rhesus monkey suggested the possibility of accidental transmission to man of one of the strains of Plasmodium cynomolgi under study in the Institute. Systematic efforts to confirm the above suggestion followed. Human volunteers were bitten by mosquitoes heavily infected with either the bastianellii or M strain of P. cynomolgi. Two of two volunteers inoculated with the bastianellii strain developed patent infections which could be transferred back to the rhesus monkey via injection of human blood. None of the 7 volunteers inoculated with the M strain developed a parasitemia detectable on examination of thick blood films. Blood from one of these volunteers, taken at a time of low-grade fever, did produce an atypical malarial infection in a rhesus monkey. However, typical infections resulted from either blood or sporozoite transfer of the parasites from this monkey to other normal animals. These developments appear to warrant the conclusions: (1) that the original infection was doubtless caused by accidental transmission of the bastianellii strain of P. cynomolgi; (2) that infection with either the bastianellii or M strain of P. cynomolgi can be transmitted to man; and (3) that transmission of the more recently isolated bastianellii strain can be accomplished more readily than can transmission of the M strain which has been carried in the laboratory by blood to blood transfer for more than 25 years. Stress has been laid on the need for open-minded evaluation of the significance of these findings to malaria eradication and control problems in various parts of the world.
Addition of sialidase or p38 MAPK inhibitors does not ameliorate decrements in platelet in vitro storage properties caused by 4 °C storage

Bacterial proliferation is inhibited in platelets (PLTs) stored at refrigerated temperatures, but also dramatically decreases PLT in vivo survival. Recent studies have demonstrated that cold temperature (CT) stored PLTs secrete sialidases upon re‐warming, removing sialic acid from the PLT surface, which may be responsible for clustering of GPIbα and PLT clearance from circulation. In this study, the influence of a sialidase inhibitor or a p38 MAP kinase inhibitor was evaluated in units stored at 4 °C.
Moderator- und Mediatoreffekte bei dyadischen Daten

Zusammenfassung: Zur Analyse von Moderator- und Mediatoreffekten bei dyadischen Daten werden zwei Erweiterungen des Akteur-Partner-Interdependenz-Modells (z. B. Kenny, 1996) vorgestellt. Die Modelle, die als Akteur-Partner-Moderator-Modell und Akteur-Partner-Mediator-Modell bezeichnet werden, dienen im Rahmen von dyadischen Untersuchungen der Uberprufung von Drittvariablen, welche die Zusammenhange zwischen abhangigen und unabhangigen Variablen moderieren bzw. mediieren. Neben einer Anleitung zur Analyse des Moderatormodells mittels Regressionsanalysen finden sich Hinweise zur Durchfuhrung von Bootstrap-Analysen bei Verwendung von Strukturgleichungsanalysen. Zur Einschatzung der Mediation werden verschiedene Indikatoren erortert. Beide Modelle werden anhand von Daten zu Alltagsstress, Partnerschaftsqualitat, Depressivitat und sexuellen Storungen bei 198 Paaren illustriert. Die zum Akteur-Partner-Moderator-Modell durchgefuhrten Regressions- und Bootstrap-Analysen stutzen die Hypothese, dass der Zusammenhan.
COMPARATIVE PATTERNS OF CRANIOFACIAL DEVELOPMENT IN EUTHERIAN AND METATHERIAN MAMMALS

The sequence of differentiation of major elements of the skeletal, muscular and nervous systems of the head is examined in developmental series of five eutherian (placental) and four metatherian (marsupial) mammals. The analysis identifies the elements that are conserved across the Theria, those that are unique to the Metatheria and to the Eutheria, and those that are variable. It is shown that although there are slight shifts in the sequence of development within the somatic tissues of the head, the primary difference between marsupial and placental mammals involves the timing and rate of differentiation of structures of the central nervous system (CNS) relative to a specific subset of structures of the cranial skeleton and musculature. In eutherians, CNS morphogenesis is well underway before the somatic tissues of the head begin differentiation. In metatherians, CNS development is delayed considerably and certain elements of the skeletal and muscular systems are advanced. It is concluded that the developmental differences between marsupial and placental mammals are best explained by the interaction of several processes including neurogenesis as a potential rate‐limiting step, the developmental requirements of somatic elements, and the extremely short period of organogenesis of marsupial mammals. Several other issues, including the way that these data may be applied to determine the primitive therian developmental condition, and the use of comparative developmental data to address basic questions on morphogenetic processes, are discussed.
Comparison of heparin and steroids in the treatment of moderate and severe ulcerative colitis.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Unfractionated heparin has been found to reduce symptoms and improve healing as adjuvant therapy in patients with ulcerative colitis. The current study evaluated the efficacy and safety of unfractionated heparin in the treatment of ulcerative colitis in comparison with methylprednisolone. METHODS A multicenter randomized trial with blinded endpoint evaluation was conducted in patients hospitalized for moderate or severe ulcerative colitis. Patients were randomized to receive heparin as a continuous infusion or methylprednisolone (0.75-1 mg x kg(-1) x day(-1)). RESULTS Twenty-five patients entered the study: 13 received methylprednisolone and 12 received heparin. By day 10, 69% of patients in the methylprednisolone group, but none in the heparin group, achieved significant improvement or remission. C-reactive protein levels significantly decreased in the methylprednisolone group but not in the heparin group. Three patients in the heparin group were withdrawn before day 10 because of an adverse event: rectal bleeding needing transfusion (2 cases) or surgery (1 case). The proportion of patients with persistent rectal bleeding at day 10 was 31% in the methylprednisolone group and 90% in the heparin group (P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS Unfractionated heparin as monotherapy is not effective in the treatment of moderate or severe ulcerative colitis and is associated with significant bleeding complications.
Designing a Highly-Scalable Operating System: The Blue Gene/L Story

Blue Gene/L, is currently the world's fastest and most scalable supercomputer. It has demonstrated essentially linear scaling all the way to 131,072 processors in several benchmarks and real applications. The operating systems for the compute and I/O nodes of Blue Gene/L are among the components responsible for that scalability. Compute nodes are dedicated to running application processes, whereas I/O nodes are dedicated to performing system functions. The operating systems adopted for each of these nodes reflect this separation of junction. Compute nodes run a lightweight operating system called the compute node kernel. I/O nodes run a port of the Linux operating system. This paper discusses the architecture and design of this solution for Blue Gene/L in the context of the hardware characteristics that led to the design decisions. It also explains and demonstrates how those decisions are instrumental in achieving the performance and scalability for which Blue Gene/L is famous
Automatic Timed Test Case Generation for Web Services Composition

In order to specify the composition of Web services, WSBPEL was defined as an orchestrating language by an international standards consortium. In this paper, we propose a method to test composite Web service described in BPEL. As a first step, the BPEL specification is transformed into an Intermediate Format (IF) model that is based on timed automata, which enables modeling of timing constraints.We defined a conformance relation between two timed automata(of implementation and specification) and then proposed an algorithm to generate test cases. Test case generation is based on simulation where the exploration is guided by test purposes. The proposed method was implemented in a set of tools which were applied to a common Web service as a case study.
Socialization in Context

This study investigated the relation to school grades, feelings of depression, and antisocial behavior of youth perceptions of three central dimensions of socialization (connection with significantothers, regulation of behavior, andpsychological autonomy) as they are experienced infour social contexts: family, school, neighborhood, ndpeers. Analyses of a random sample of 900 fifth and eighth-grade youth included both descriptive accounts of youth experience in these contexts and testedfor various models predicting independent and interactive effects among contexts on youth functioning. Findings showed that connection, regulation, and autonomy were meaningful dimensions of socialization experience in the four contexts, thatfamily and peers were primary socialization domains, and that discrete aspects of youth functioning were related to specific contexts. There was some evidence that deficits in experience in one context can be compensatedfor by experience in other contexts.
Calculus of Variations Hamiltonian stationary tori in Kähler manifolds

A Hamiltonian stationary Lagrangian submanifold of a Kähler manifold is a Lagrangian submanifold whose volume is stationary under Hamiltonian variations. We find a sufficient condition on the curvature of a Kähler manifold of real dimension four to guarantee the existence of a family of small Hamiltonian stationary Lagrangian tori. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000) 58J37 · 35J20 · 35J48 · 53C15 · 53C21 · 53C38 · 53C55
Repair After Next Turn: The Last Structurally Provided Defense of Intersubjectivity in Conversation

Organizational features of ordinary conversation and other talk-in-interaction provide for the routine display of participants' understanding of one anothers' conduct and of the field of action, thereby building in a routine grounding for intersubjectivity. This same organization provides interactants the resources for recognizing breakdowns of intersubjectivity and for repairing them. This article sets the concern with intersubjectivity in theoretical context, sketches the organization by which it is grounded and defended in ordinary interaction, describes the practices by which trouble in understanding is dealt with, and illustrates what happens when this organization fails to function. Some consequences for contemporary theory and inquiry are suggested.
Health inequity on access to services in the ethnic minority regions of Northeastern Myanmar: a cross-sectional study

Objectives To evaluate health inequity on access to services in the ethnic regions of Northeastern Myanmar from three points of analysis: geographic barrier, gender-based disparity and financial burden of health services. Setting A multistage-stratified random cluster survey was conducted in Shan State Special Region 2 and Eastern Shan State Special Region 4 of Northeastern Myanmar in 2016, including a total number of 774 households. Participants A total number of 4235 participants were recruited during the survey. Primary and secondary outcome measures Geographic distance, gender, household income and inpatient/outpatient service utilisation. Results The study results showed that residents living within 5 km of any form of healthcare facilities paid more outpatient visits (90.06 visits per thousand population) in the past 2 weeks, compared with those living 5–20 km and over 20 km (54.84 and 54.02 per thousand population, respectively) from healthcare facilities. A similar trend with little significant differences was found for inpatient service use. Regarding household income, adults with an annual household income of above US$720 were more likely to seek outpatient service (OR=1.43, 95% CI 0.98 to 2.10) compared with those with an annual income of <US$360. After adjusting for other covariates, female adults were less likely to seek inpatient treatment (OR=0.55, 95% CI 0.35 to 0.84) and outpatient services (OR=0.86, 95% CI 0.64 to 1.15) than male adults. Conclusions Geographic barrier, gender-based disparity and financial burdens were identified as key causes that significantly restrict ethnic people’s access to healthcare facilities. The study concludes that tackling health inequity in Northeastern Myanmar ethnic regions requires an improved primary healthcare system, proper financial protection mechanisms and a special focus on women.
Department of Economics Working Paper Series Value Orientations, Income and Displacement Effects, and Voluntary Contributions Value Orientations, Income and Displacement Effects, and Voluntary Contributions

Identifying the value orientations of subjects participating in market or non-market decisions by having them participate in decomposed games may be helpful in understanding the behaviour of these subjects. This experiment presents the results of changes in the centre and the radius of a value orientations ring in an attempt to discover if the value orientations resulting from a ring game exhibit income or displacement effects. Two sets of subjects, 113 from the first and 96 from the second participated in the first two treatments and 72 from the second set of subjects participated in the third and fourth treatments. While the resulting distributions of value orientations are significantly different across the two sets of subjects when the treatments are common, neither significant income effects nor displacement effects are identified. However, an external validity check with a voluntary contribution game provides evidence of a displacement effect. Value orientations from rings centred around the origin of the decision-space explain significant portions of voluntary contributions while value orientations from displaced rings do not.