Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Discrimination against HIV-Infected People and the Spread of HIV: Some Evidence from France

Background Many people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) suffer from stigma and discrimination. There is an ongoing debate, however, about whether stigma, fear and discrimination actually fuel the persisting spread of HIV, or slow it down by reducing contacts between the whole population and high-risk minorities. To contribute to this debate, we analysed the relationship between perceived discrimination and unsafe sex in a large sample of French PLWHAs. Methodology/Principal Findings In 2003, we conducted a national cross-sectional survey among a random sample of HIV-infected patients. The analysis was restricted to sexually active respondents (N = 2,136). Unsafe sex was defined as sexual intercourse without a condom with a seronegative/unknown serostatus partner during the prior 12 months. Separate analyses were performed for each transmission group (injecting drug use (IDU), homosexual contact, heterosexual contact). Overall, 24% of respondents reported experiences of discrimination in their close social environment (relatives, friends and colleagues) and 18% reported unsafe sex during the previous 12 months. Both prevalences were higher in the IDU group (32% for perceived discrimination, 23% for unsafe sex). In multivariate analyses, experience of discrimination in the close social environment was associated with an increase in unsafe sex for both PLWHAs infected through IDU and heterosexual contact (OR = 1.65 and 1.80 respectively). Conclusions Our study clearly confirms a relationship between discrimination and unsafe sex among PLWHAs infected through either IDU or heterosexual contact. This relationship was especially strong in the heterosexual group that has become the main vector of HIV transmission in France, and who is the more likely of sexual mixing with the general population. These results seriously question the hypothesis that HIV-stigma has no effect or could even reduce the infection spread of HIV.
An algorithm for the general Petri net reachability problem

An algorithm is presented for the general Petri net reachability problem based on a generalization of the basic reachability construction which is symmetric with respect to the initial and final marking. Sets of transition sequences described by finite automata are used for approximations to firing sequences, and the approximation error is assessed by uniformly constructable Presburger expressions. The approximation algorithm is iterated until a sufficient criterion for reachability can be given, not-withstanding the remaining uncertainty.
Therapies from Fucoidan; Multifunctional Marine Polymers

Published research on fucoidans increased three fold between 2000 and 2010. These algal derived marine carbohydrate polymers present numerous valuable bioactivities. This review discusses the role for fucoidan in the control of acute and chronic inflammation via selectin blockade, enzyme inhibition and inhibiting the complement cascade. The recent data on toxicology and uptake of fucoidan is detailed together with a discussion on the comparative activities of fractions of fucoidan from different sources. Recent in vivo, in vitro and clinical research related to diverse clinical needs is discussed. Targets include osteoarthritis, kidney and liver disease, neglected infectious diseases, hemopoietic stem cell modulation, protection from radiation damage and treatments for snake envenomation. In recent years, the production of well characterized reproducible fucoidan fractions on a commercial scale has become possible making therapies from fucoidan a realizable goal.
The effect of information structure on the distribution of stress degree in Chinese reading texts

Based on phonetic experiment and statistical analysis, we investigate the effect of information structure on the distribution of stress degree in Chinese reading texts. Different types of information status and stress degree are examined on lexical and referential levels. The lexical information status consists of given, accessible and new information, while the referential information status consists of given, bridging, unused, new and generic information. The results show that i) on both levels, new information is more prominent than given information, and the newer the information is, the higher stress degree it gets; ii) on referential level specifically, stress degree varies in different types of new information, with a referring expression regarded as definite discourse-new more prominent than other new information; iii) a combined investigation of both referential and lexical levels could reveal the relationship between information structure and stress degree in Chinese reading texts.
Development and validation of risk prediction algorithms to estimate future risk of common cancers in men and women: prospective cohort study

Objective To derive and validate a set of clinical risk prediction algorithm to estimate the 10-year risk of 11 common cancers. Design Prospective open cohort study using routinely collected data from 753 QResearch general practices in England. We used 565 practices to develop the scores and 188 for validation. Subjects 4.96 million patients aged 25–84 years in the derivation cohort; 1.64 million in the validation cohort. Patients were free of the relevant cancer at baseline. Methods Cox proportional hazards models in the derivation cohort to derive 10-year risk algorithms. Risk factors considered included age, ethnicity, deprivation, body mass index, smoking, alcohol, previous cancer diagnoses, family history of cancer, relevant comorbidities and medication. Measures of calibration and discrimination in the validation cohort. Outcomes Incident cases of blood, breast, bowel, gastro-oesophageal, lung, oral, ovarian, pancreas, prostate, renal tract and uterine cancers. Cancers were recorded on any one of four linked data sources (general practitioner (GP), mortality, hospital or cancer records). Results We identified 228 241 incident cases during follow-up of the 11 types of cancer. Of these 25 444 were blood; 41 315 breast; 32 626 bowel, 12 808 gastro-oesophageal; 32 187 lung; 4811 oral; 6635 ovarian; 7119 pancreatic; 35 256 prostate; 23 091 renal tract; 6949 uterine cancers. The lung cancer algorithm had the best performance with an R2 of 64.2%; D statistic of 2.74; receiver operating characteristic curve statistic of 0.91 in women. The sensitivity for the top 10% of women at highest risk of lung cancer was 67%. Performance of the algorithms in men was very similar to that for women. Conclusions We have developed and validated a prediction models to quantify absolute risk of 11 common cancers. They can be used to identify patients at high risk of cancers for prevention or further assessment. The algorithms could be integrated into clinical computer systems and used to identify high-risk patients. Web calculator: There is a simple web calculator to implement the Qcancer 10 year risk algorithm together with the open source software for download (available at http://qcancer.org/10yr/).
Acute forms of pemphigus.

IN A DISCUSSION of acute pemphigus we must be careful to distinguish between the rare form designated as acute febrile grave pemphigus (so-called pemphigus acutus) and the acute forms or phases of pemphigus vulgaris. It is the latter condition with which we are chiefly concerned here, but the former will be discussed briefly. ACUTE FEBRILE GRAVE PEMPHIGUS Acute febrile grave pemphigus is characterized by a peracute bullous eruption, accompanied by marked symptoms of a severe septic state, and a fatal termination. The onset is sudden and the eruption extensive, beginning as large bullae that often become hemorrhagic. The bullae grow rapidly and soon burst, leaving large, moist or bloody denuded areas that become confluent, resembling in appearance an extensive burn. A high septic fever, chills, and often diarrhea accompany the cutaneous eruption. The patient's course is rapidly downhill, and death ensues in one to three weeks. The condition
BIOINFORMATICS ORIGINAL PAPER

Background: Metagenomics is the study of the genomic content of an environmental sample of microbes. Advances in the through-put and cost-efﬁciency of sequencing technology is fueling a rapid increase in the number and size of metagenomic datasets being generated. Bioinformatics is faced with the problem of how to handle and analyze these datasets in an efﬁcient and useful way. One goal of these metagenomic studies is to get a basic understanding of the microbial world both surrounding us and within us. One major challenge is how to compare multiple datasets. Furthermore, there is a need for bioinformatics tools that can process many large datasets and are easy to use. Results: This article describes two new and helpful techniques for comparing multiple metagenomic datasets. The ﬁrst is a visualization technique for multiple datasets and the second is a new statistical method for highlighting the differences in a pairwise comparison. We have developed implementations of both methods that are suitable for very large datasets and provide these in Version 3 of our standalone metagenome analysis tool MEGAN. Conclusion: These new methods are suitable for the visual comparison of many large metagenomes and the statistical comparison of two metagenomes at a time. Nevertheless, more work needs to be done to support the comparative analysis of multiple metagenome datasets.
The effete in the heat: heat-related hospital presentations during a ten day heat wave.

BACKGROUND Severe heat-related illness can result in hospitalisation and possibly death. These illnesses are potentially preventable; in Australia high environmental temperatures are common. AIMS To identify (i) possible risk factors for hospital attendance with heat-related illness during a heat wave, (ii) problems with diagnosis and therapy, (iii) issues in prevention, and (iv) areas for further study. METHODS A retrospective descriptive survey from four major teaching hospitals in Adelaide, South Australia (SA), was conducted during a ten day period of exceptional heat in February 1993, in order to review all emergency department presentations (i.e. deaths, casualty treatment or hospital admissions) with a heat-related illness as determined by attending doctors' documentation. Demographic, clinical, management and outcome data were collected. RESULTS Ninety-four patients were classified as having a heat-related illness of whom 78% had heat exhaustion. Eighty-five per cent were age 60 years or over; 20% came from institutional care; 48% lived alone; 30% had poor mobility. Peak presentation followed high daily temperatures for four consecutive days. Severity was related to pre-existing cognitive impairment, diuretic use and presenting temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, plasma sodium and plasma creatinine. Treatment tended to be non-standardised. Mortality was 12%. Seventeen per cent required a more dependent level of residential care upon discharge. CONCLUSION Problems were identified in accuracy of diagnosis and appropriate intervention. Awareness of the risk factor profile is needed among health workers, to ensure early preventative strategies. Populations to target for future prevention include elderly people (including those in institutional care), patients with cognitive impairment and patients taking diuretics, multiple medication and/or with other severe co-existing illnesses. Treatment could be more standardised.
ASM Refinement Preserving Invariants

This paper gives a definition of ASM refinement suitable for the verification that a protocol implements atomic transactions. We used this definition as the basis of the formal verification of the refinements of the Mondex case study with the interactive theorem prover KIV. The refinement definition we give differs from the one we gave in earlier work which preserves partial and total correctness assertions of ASM runs. The reason is that the main goal of the refinement of the Mondex protocol is to preserve a security invariant, while total correctness is not preserved. To preserve invariants, the definition of generalized forward simulation is limited to the use of “small” diagrams, which contain of a single protocol step. We show a technique that allows to use the natural “big” diagrams that consist of an atomic action being refined by a full protocol
Apolipoprotein E Promotes the Regression of Atherosclerosis Independently of Lowering Plasma Cholesterol Levels

Objective— The mechanisms by which apolipoprotein E (apoE) can promote the regression of atherosclerosis are not well understood. This study examined whether apoE can promote atherosclerosis regression independently of lowering plasma cholesterol levels. Methods and Results— We studied hypomorphic apoE mice (Apoeh/h), which express an apoE4-like form of mouse apoE at ≈2% to 5% of normal levels in plasma and are normolipidemic. After 18 weeks of diet-induced hypercholesterolemia, which resulted in advanced aortic atherosclerotic lesions composed of a lipid-rich layer of foam cells covering a fibrotic core, 2 groups of mice were fed a chow diet for 16 weeks. One group continued to express low levels of apoE; the other was induced to express physiological levels of plasma apoE by Cre-mediated recombination of the hypomorphic Apoe allele. In both groups, plasma cholesterol levels fell rapidly to similar levels, and histological analysis at 16 weeks revealed elimination of the foam-cell layer. However, physiological levels of plasma apoE also enhanced the removal of neutral lipids from the fibrotic cores. Conclusion— These findings demonstrate for the first time that apolipoprotein E promotes the regression of atherosclerosis independently of lowering plasma cholesterol levels.
Halide: a language and compiler for optimizing parallelism, locality, and recomputation in image processing pipelines

Image processing pipelines combine the challenges of stencil computations and stream programs. They are composed of large graphs of different stencil stages, as well as complex reductions, and stages with global or data-dependent access patterns. Because of their complex structure, the performance difference between a naive implementation of a pipeline and an optimized one is often an order of magnitude. Efficient implementations require optimization of both parallelism and locality, but due to the nature of stencils, there is a fundamental tension between parallelism, locality, and introducing redundant recomputation of shared values. We present a systematic model of the tradeoff space fundamental to stencil pipelines, a schedule representation which describes concrete points in this space for each stage in an image processing pipeline, and an optimizing compiler for the Halide image processing language that synthesizes high performance implementations from a Halide algorithm and a schedule. Combining this compiler with stochastic search over the space of schedules enables terse, composable programs to achieve state-of-the-art performance on a wide range of real image processing pipelines, and across different hardware architectures, including multicores with SIMD, and heterogeneous CPU+GPU execution. From simple Halide programs written in a few hours, we demonstrate performance up to 5x faster than hand-tuned C, intrinsics, and CUDA implementations optimized by experts over weeks or months, for image processing applications beyond the reach of past automatic compilers.
Community Attitudes Towards the Mentally Ill: The Results of a National Survey of the Taiwanese Population

Background: In Taiwan, to strengthen the psychiatric rehabilitation system has been one of the primary goals of the Department of Health since 1985. Unfortunately, this endeavor has not been successful and it is believed that one of the barriers is social stigma towards the mentally ill. However, to date no national survey has been conducted for Chinese population on the focal topic using a random sample. Aims: In this study we explored the attitudes of the general population towards the mentally ill in Taiwan. Specifically, we examined the effect of contact on one’s attitudes after controlling for demographic variables. Methods: A national survey was conducted on 1,203 subjects drawn through a stratified proportional random sampling. Data were collected using the Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview System. We conducted MANOVA and multiple regression analyses to explore the correlates of the attitudes. Results: The results revealed that the general population held relatively higher levels of benevolence, tolerance on rehabilitation in the community, and nonsocial restrictiveness. However, they held relatively less positive attitudes on non-authoritarianism and normalization. Overall, direct contact and age were the two most important correlates of community attitudes. Education and occupation were also significant. Conclusions: Benevolent thoughts do not necessarily guarantee the acceptance of rehabilitation in the community or treating the mentally ill as a person like anyone else. However, the benevolent thought could be transformed into compassion and acceptance of another human being if people are given the opportunity to have direct contact with mentally ill persons. The results also indicated that community education should specifically target laborers of all age groups.
HSDPA Performance Enhancement Using Repeaters and Remote RF Heads

Applicability of coexistence of repeaters and remote radio frequency (RF) heads as a scheme to enhance high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) network performance has not been studied so far. In this paper, a step-by-step approach is proposed to analyze the usage of repeaters and remote RF heads to enhance over the air (OTA) throughput and HSDPA performance in general. Network constellations with and without repeaters and remote RF heads are developed for a realistic dense urban city centre scenario. Dynamic system level simulations have been conducted for different network configurations and for varying loads of FTP traffic. From the simulation results, it is seen that, scenarios enhanced with repeaters showed significantly better performance than the pure macro cell scenario or the pure RF Head scenario. Networks enhanced with a mixture of repeaters and remote RF heads mounted below rooftop with reduced power levels showed significantly better channel qualities than the macro cell network enhanced with repeaters mounted above rooftop. Approximately 50% increase in OTA throughput accompanied by 50% reduction in downlink power consumption and mean session duration was observed for the RF head scenario enhanced with repeaters, in comparison with macro cell scenario enhanced with repeaters; these are highly beneficial for the HSDPA system as a whole
Effects of intravenous sulfide during resuscitated porcine hemorrhagic shock*

Objective:Controversial data are available on the effects of hydrogen sulfide during hemorrhage. Because the clinical significance of hydrogen sulfide administration in rodents may not be applicable to larger species, we tested the hypothesis whether intravenous Na2S (sulfide) would beneficially influence organ dysfunction during long-term, porcine hemorrhage and resuscitation. Design:Prospective, controlled, randomized study. Setting:University animal research laboratory. Subjects:Forty-five domestic pigs of either gender. Interventions:Anesthetized and instrumented animals underwent 4 hrs of hemorrhage (removal of 40% of the blood volume and subsequent blood removal/retransfusion to maintain mean arterial pressure at 30 mm Hg). Sulfide infusion was started 2 hrs before hemorrhage, simultaneously with blood removal or at the beginning of retransfusion of shed blood, and continued for 12 hrs. Resuscitation comprised hydroxyethyl starch and norepinenephrine infusion titrated to maintain mean arterial pressure at preshock values. Measurements and Main Results:Before, immediately at the end of and 12 and 22 hrs after hemorrhage, we measured systemic and regional hemodynamics (portal vein, hepatic and right kidney artery ultrasound flow probes) and oxygen transport, nitric oxide and cytokine production (nitrate+nitrite, interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-&agr; levels). Postmortem biopsies were analyzed for histomorphology (hematoxylin and eosin staining) and DNA damage (terminal deoxynucleotidyltransferase-mediated dUTP nick-end labeling staining). The progressive kidney (creatinine levels, creatinine clearance), liver (transaminase activities, bilirubin levels), and cardiocirculatory (norepipnehrine requirements, troponin I levels) dysfunction was attenuated in the simultaneous treatment group only, which coincided with reduced lung, liver, and kidney histological damage. Sulfide reduced mortality, however, irrespective of the timing of its administration. Conclusions:While the sulfide-induced protection against organ injury was only present when initiated simultaneously with blood removal, it was largely unrelated to hypothermia. The absence of sulfide-mediated protection in the pretreatment protocol may be due to the accumulation of sulfide during low flow states. In conclusion, sulfide treatment can be effective in hemorrhagic shock, but its effectiveness is restricted to a narrow timing and dosing window.
Are ‘STEM from Mars and SSH from Venus’?: Challenging disciplinary stereotypes of research’s social value

There is a reasonably settled consensus within the innovation community that science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) research is more ‘useful’ to societies than other types of research, notably social sciences and humanities (SSH) research. Our paper questions this assumption, and seeks to empirically test whether STEM researchers’ practices make their research more useful than that of SSH researchers. A critical reading of the discussion around SSH research supports developing a taxonomy of differences. This is tested using a database of 1,583 researchers from the Spanish Council for Scientific Research. Results do not support the view that SSH research is less useful than STEM research, even if differences are found in the nature of both transfer practices and their research users. The assumption that STEM research is more useful than SSH research needs revision if research policy is to properly focus on research which is useful for society.
The potential role of HPV vaccination in the prevention of infectious complications of pregnancy

There is now incontrovertible evidence that HPV is the cause of almost all cases of genital warts, cervical dysplasia and cervical cancer. Moreover the current review of the recent literature on HPV in relation to pregnancy found strong indications that HPV plays an important role in adverse outcomes of pregnancy. HPV may contribute to infertility and may increase the risk of miscarriage. Recent studies indicate a significant rate of vertical transmission of HPV between mother and child but whether the mode of delivery makes a difference to the risk of transmission remains unknown. HPV infection appears to be correlated with both spontaneous preterm birth and preterm prelabor rupture of the membranes.