Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does increased use of private health care reduce the demand for NHS care? A prospective survey of general practice referrals.

BACKGROUND The use of the private sector for health care is increasing, but it is unclear whether this will reduce demand on the NHS. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between private and NHS outpatient referral rates accounting for their association with deprivation. METHODS This is a prospective survey of general practitioner referrals to private and NHS consultant-led services between 1 January and 31 December 2001 from 10 general practices in the Trent Focus Collaborative Research Network, United Kingdom. Patient referrals were aggregated to give private and NHS referral rates for each electoral ward in each practice. RESULTS Of 17,137 referrals, 90.4 percent (15,495) were to the NHS and 9.6 percent (1642) to the private sector. Private referral rates were lower in patients from the most deprived fifth of wards compared with the least deprived fifth (rate ratio 0.25, 95 percent CI 0.15 to 0.41, p < 0.001), whereas NHS referral rates were slightly higher in patients in the most deprived fifth of wards (rate ratio 1.18, 95 percent CI 0.98 to 1.42, p = 0.08) both after age standardisation and adjustment for practice. The NHS referral rate was significantly higher (rate ratio 1.40, 95 percent CI 1.15 to 1.71, p = 0.001) in wards with private referral rates in the top fifth compared with the bottom fifth after adjustment for deprivation and practice. CONCLUSIONS Increased private health care activity does not reduce the demand for NHS care: NHS and private referral rates were positively associated with each other after adjusting for age, deprivation and practice.
Multi-Walled Microchannels : Free-Standing Porous Silicon Membranes for Use in TAS

Electrochemically formed porous silicon (PS) can be released from the bulk silicon substrate by underetching at increased current density. Using this technique, two types of channels containing free-standing layers of PS were constructed, which were called multi-walled microchannels (MW Cs). They can be used in devices like microsieves, microbatteries, and porous electrodes. Two types of MW C were made: the “conventional” version, consisting of two or more coaxially constructed microchannels separated by a suspended PS membrane, and the buried variety, where a PS membrane is suspended halfway an etched cavity surrounded by silicon nitride walls. The latter is more robust. The pore size of the PS was measured using transmission electron microscopy and field emission gun scanning electron microscopy (FEGSEM) and found to be of the order of 7 nm. [462]
Observer bias in randomized clinical trials with time-to-event outcomes: systematic review of trials with both blinded and non-blinded outcome assessors.

BACKGROUND We wanted to evaluate the impact of nonblinded outcome assessors on estimated treatment effects in time-to-event trials. METHODS Systematic review of randomized clinical trials with both blinded and nonblinded assessors of the same time-to-event outcome. Two authors agreed on inclusion of trials and outcomes. We compared hazard ratios based on nonblinded and blinded assessments. A ratio of hazard ratios (RHR)<1 indicated that nonblinded assessors generated more optimistic effect estimates. We pooled RHRs with inverse variance random-effects meta-analysis. RESULTS We included 18 trials. Eleven trials (1969 patients) with subjective outcomes provided hazard ratios, RHR 0.88 (0.69 to 1.12), (I2=44%, P=0.06), but unconditional pooling was problematic because of qualitative heterogeneity. Four atypical cytomegalovirus retinitis trials compared experimental oral administration with control intravenous administration of the same drug, resulting in bias favouring the control intervention, RHR 1.33 (0.98 to 1.82). Seven trials of cytomegalovirus retinitis, tibial fracture and multiple sclerosis compared experimental interventions with standard control interventions, e.g. placebo, no-treatment or active control, resulting in bias favouring the experimental intervention, RHR 0.73 (0.57 to 0.93), indicating an average exaggeration of nonblinded hazard ratios by 27% (7% to 43%). CONCLUSIONS Lack of blinded outcome assessors in randomized trials with subjective time-to-event outcomes causes high risk of observer bias. Nonblinded outcome assessors typically favour the experimental intervention, exaggerating the hazard ratio by an average of approximately 27%; but in special situations, nonblinded outcome assessors favour control interventions, inducing a comparable degree of observer bias in the reversed direction.
Treadmill: Attributing the Source of Tail Latency through Precise Load Testing and Statistical Inference

Managing tail latency of requests has become one of the primary challenges for large-scale Internet services. Data centers are quickly evolving and service operators frequently desire to make changes to the deployed software and production hardware configurations. Such changes demand a confident understanding of the impact on one's service, in particular its effect on tail latency (e.g., 95th-or 99th-percentile response latency of the service). Evaluating the impact on the tail is challenging because of its inherent variability. Existing tools and methodologies for measuring these effects suffer from a number of deficiencies including poor load tester design, statistically inaccurate aggregation, and improper attribution of effects. As shown in the paper, these pitfalls can often result in misleading conclusions. In this paper, we develop a methodology for statistically rigorous performance evaluation and performance factor attribution for server workloads. First, we find that careful design of the server load tester can ensure high quality performance evaluation, and empirically demonstrate the inaccuracy of load testers in previous work. Learning from the design flaws in prior work, we design and develop a modular load tester platform, Treadmill, that overcomes pitfalls of existing tools. Next, utilizing Treadmill, we construct measurement and analysis procedures that can properly attribute performance factors. We rely on statistically-sound performance evaluation and quantile regression, extending it to accommodate the idiosyncrasies of server systems. Finally, we use our augmented methodology to evaluate the impact of common server hardware features with Facebook production workloads on production hardware. We decompose the effects of these features on request tail latency and demonstrate that our evaluation methodology provides superior results, particularly in capturing complicated and counter-intuitive performance behaviors. By tuning the hardware features as suggested by the attribution, we reduce the 99th-percentile latency by 43% and its variance by 93%.
Diaphragm dysfunction in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

RATIONALE Hypercapnic respiratory failure because of inspiratory muscle weakness is the most important cause of death in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, the pathophysiology of failure of the diaphragm to generate force in COPD is in part unclear. OBJECTIVES The present study investigated contractile function and myosin heavy chain content of diaphragm muscle single fibers from patients with COPD. METHODS Skinned muscle fibers were isolated from muscle biopsies from the diaphragm of eight patients with mild to moderate COPD and five patients without COPD (mean FEV(1) % predicted, 70 and 100%, respectively). Contractile function of single fibers was assessed, and afterwards, myosin heavy chain content was determined in these fibers. In diaphragm muscle homogenates, the level of ubiquitin-protein conjugation was determined. RESULTS Diaphragm muscle fibers from patients with COPD showed reduced force generation per cross-sectional area, and reduced myosin heavy chain content per half sarcomere. In addition, these fibers had decreased Ca2+ sensitivity of force generation, and slower cross-bridge cycling kinetics. Our observations were present in fibers expressing slow and 2A isoforms of myosin heavy chain. Ubiquitin-protein conjugation was increased in diaphragm muscle homogenates of patients with mild to moderate COPD. CONCLUSIONS Early in the development of COPD, diaphragm fiber contractile function is impaired. Our data suggest that enhanced diaphragm protein degradation through the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway plays a role in loss of contractile protein and, consequently, failure of the diaphragm to generate force.
Identifying temporal and causal contributions of neural processes underlying the Implicit Association Test (IAT)

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a popular behavioral measure that assesses the associative strength between outgroup members and stereotypical and counterstereotypical traits. Less is known, however, about the degree to which the IAT reflects automatic processing. Two studies examined automatic processing contributions to a gender-IAT using a data driven, social neuroscience approach. Performance on congruent (e.g., categorizing male names with synonyms of strength) and incongruent (e.g., categorizing female names with synonyms of strength) IAT blocks were separately analyzed using EEG (event-related potentials, or ERPs, and coherence; Study 1) and lesion (Study 2) methodologies. Compared to incongruent blocks, performance on congruent IAT blocks was associated with more positive ERPs that manifested in frontal and occipital regions at automatic processing speeds, occipital regions at more controlled processing speeds and was compromised by volume loss in the anterior temporal lobe (ATL), insula and medial PFC. Performance on incongruent blocks was associated with volume loss in supplementary motor areas, cingulate gyrus and a region in medial PFC similar to that found for congruent blocks. Greater coherence was found between frontal and occipital regions to the extent individuals exhibited more bias. This suggests there are separable neural contributions to congruent and incongruent blocks of the IAT but there is also a surprising amount of overlap. Given the temporal and regional neural distinctions, these results provide converging evidence that stereotypic associative strength assessed by the IAT indexes automatic processing to a degree.
Learning Subjective Functions with Large Margins

In this paper, the authors study optimization and decision making. They propose an algorithm that is based on the theory of support vector machines. The algorithm is advantageous in that prior knowledge about the domain can be used to constrain the solution. The algorithm is demonstrated in a route recommendation system which adapts to the driver's route preferences.
The Role of Informative and Ambiguous Feedback in Avoidance Behavior: Empirical and Computational Findings

Avoidance behavior is a critical component of many psychiatric disorders, and as such, it is important to understand how avoidance behavior arises, and whether it can be modified. In this study, we used empirical and computational methods to assess the role of informational feedback and ambiguous outcome in avoidance behavior. We adapted a computer-based probabilistic classification learning task, which includes positive, negative and no-feedback outcomes; the latter outcome is ambiguous as it might signal either a successful outcome (missed punishment) or a failure (missed reward). Prior work with this task suggested that most healthy subjects viewed the no-feedback outcome as strongly positive. Interestingly, in a later version of the classification task, when healthy subjects were allowed to opt out of (i.e. avoid) responding, some subjects (“avoiders”) reliably avoided trials where there was a risk of punishment, but other subjects (“non-avoiders”) never made any avoidance responses at all. One possible interpretation is that the “non-avoiders” valued the no-feedback outcome so positively on punishment-based trials that they had little incentive to avoid. Another possible interpretation is that the outcome of an avoided trial is unspecified and that lack of information is aversive, decreasing subjects’ tendency to avoid. To examine these ideas, we here tested healthy young adults on versions of the task where avoidance responses either did or did not generate informational feedback about the optimal response. Results showed that provision of informational feedback decreased avoidance responses and also decreased categorization performance, without significantly affecting the percentage of subjects classified as “avoiders. ” To better understand these results, we used a modified Q-learning model to fit individual subject data. Simulation results suggest that subjects in the feedback condition adjusted their behavior faster following better-than-expected outcomes, compared to subjects in the no-feedback condition. Additionally, in both task conditions, “avoiders” adjusted their behavior faster following worse-than-expected outcomes, and treated the ambiguous no-feedback outcome as less rewarding, compared to non-avoiders. Together, results shed light on the important role of ambiguous and informative feedback in avoidance behavior.
One hand clapping: lateralization of motor control

Lateralization of motor control refers to the ability to produce pure unilateral or asymmetric movements. It is required for a variety of coordinated activities, including skilled bimanual tasks and locomotion. Here we discuss the neuroanatomical substrates and pathophysiological underpinnings of lateralized motor outputs. Significant breakthroughs have been made in the past few years by studying the two known conditions characterized by the inability to properly produce unilateral or asymmetric movements, namely human patients with congenital “mirror movements” and model rodents with a “hopping gait”. Whereas mirror movements are associated with altered interhemispheric connectivity and abnormal corticospinal projections, abnormal spinal cord interneurons trajectory is responsible for the “hopping gait”. Proper commissural axon guidance is a critical requirement for these mechanisms. Interestingly, the analysis of these two conditions reveals that the production of asymmetric movements involves similar anatomical and functional requirements but in two different structures: (i) lateralized activation of the brain or spinal cord through contralateral silencing by cross-midline inhibition; and (ii) unilateral transmission of this activation, resulting in lateralized motor output.
Phenotypic progression of a rat lymphoid cell line immortalized by human T-lymphotropic virus type I to induce lymphoma/leukemia-like disease in rats

Rat lymphoid cells, TARS-1, immortalized by coculture with adult T-cell leukemia cells, were intraperitoneally injected into 65 newborn, inbred WKAH/Hkm rats. In most of the rats, tumor nodules were discernible 7 to 15 days after transplantation but were completely rejected within 5 to 6 weeks. Two rats with no tumor nodules exhibited gait disturbances and paralysis of the hind legs 3 to 4 weeks after transplantation. Histological and hematological examinations revealed that a lymphoma/leukemia-like disease had developed in one of the two rats, and the T-lymphoid cell line WLeuk-1 was established from peripheral blood mononuclear cells from this rat. When the WLeuk-1 cells were transplanted into newborn WKAH/Hkm rats, the animals died of a lymphoma/leukemia-like disease within several weeks after transplantation, in contrast to their rejection of the TARS-1 cells. Southern blot and karyotype analyses revealed that WLeuk-1 cells had retained the marker chromosomes and human T-lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) integration patterns of the parent cell line, TARS-1. The additional specific chromosome abnormalities 3p+,t (12;13), and Xq+ were found in the WLeuk-1 cells. Moreover, the expression of HTLV-I structural proteins was slightly depressed in WLeuk-1 cells, while that of the transacting factors p40tax and p21x, but not that of p27rex, was enhanced about fivefold compared with that in TARS-1. The transactivating function of p40tax was intact in WLeuk-1, as evidenced by enhanced interleukin-2 receptor alpha chain expression. These results suggest that aberrant expression of HTLV-I regulatory genes and alteration of cellular genes were associated with the phenotypic progression of the WLeuk-1 cell line.
Optimization of hysteresis parameters for the Jiles-Atherton model using a genetic algorithm

A dynamic model with hysteretic nonlinearity for magnetostrictive actuators has been established, combined with the Jiles-Atherton model. The hysteresis parameters for the model have been optimized using the genetic algorithm (GA). Simulation and experimental results demonstrated the effectiveness of the model and parameter identification approach.
Diversity-Multiplexing Tradeoff in MIMO System with Finite SNR

In this paper, the diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) for a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel with two transmitter and two receiver antennas (2times2 MIMO) at finite signal to noise ratio (SNR) has been studied. To characterize the trade-off, the outage probability of the mutual information between transmitted and received signals versus SNR is extracted. The diversity gain is the slope of the outage probability versus SNR curve at a particular SNR while the multiplexing gain is the ratio of the system spectral efficiency to the capacity of an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. This paper provides a useful tool to examine the diversity-multiplexing trade-off at the 2times2 MIMO system in practical (finite SNR) situation.
Role of Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha in Helicobacter pylori Gastritis in Tumor Necrosis Factor Receptor 1-Deficient Mice

ABSTRACT Increased gastric production of interleukin 8 and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) has been implicated in the pathogenesis of Helicobacter pylori-associated gastroduodenal disease. In the present study we used a mouse model to demonstrate whether loss of the tumor necrosis factor receptor 1 (TNF-R1) function leads to differences in gastric inflammation or the systemic immune response in H. pylori infection. Six different clinical isolates of H. pylori (three cytotoxin-positive and three cytotoxin-negative strains) were adapted to C57BL/6 mice. TNF-R1-deficient (TNF-R1−/−) mice (n = 19) and isogenetic controls (n = 24) were infected and sacrificed after 4 weeks of infection. Inflammation of the stomach and the humoral immune response to H. pylori were evaluated by histological, immunohistochemical, and serological methods. There was no detectable difference in the grade or activity of gastritis in TNF-R1−/− mice when they were compared with wild-type mice, but the number of lymphoid aggregates was slightly reduced in the gastric mucosa of TNF-R1−/− mice. Interestingly, total immunoglobulin G (IgG), as well as IgG1, IgG2b, and IgG3, H. pylori-specific antibody titers were significantly higher in wild-type mice. As revealed by immunoblot analysis, the difference in reactivity against H. pylori antigens was not based on a failure to recognize single H. pylori antigens in TNF-R1−/− mice. We therefore suggest that TNF-R1-mediated TNF-α signals might support a systemic humoral immune response against H. pylori and that the gastric inflammatory response to H. pylori infection seems to be independent of TNF-R1-mediated signals.
The X-Ray Jet in Centaurus A: Clues to the Jet Structure and Particle Acceleration

We report detailed studies of the X-ray emission from the kiloparsec-scale jet in the nearest active galaxy, Centaurus A. By analyzing the highest quality X-ray data obtained with the Chandra ACIS-S, 41 compact sources (mostly bright jet knots) were found within the jet on angular scales less than 4'', 13 of which were newly identified. We construct the luminosity function for the detected jet knots and argue that the remaining emission is most likely to be truly diffuse, rather than resulting from the sum of many unresolved fainter knots. We subtracted the contributions of the bright knots from the total X-ray jet flux, and show that the remaining extended emission has a relatively flat-topped intensity profile in the transverse jet direction, with the intensity peaking at the jet boundaries between 50'' and 170''. We note that limb-brightened morphologies have been observed previously at radio frequencies in a few FR I and FR II jet sources, but never so clearly at higher photon energies. Our result therefore supports a stratified jet model, consisting of a relativistic outflow including a boundary layer with a velocity shear. In addition, we found that the X-ray spectrum of the diffuse component is almost uniform across and along the jet, with an X-ray energy spectral index of αX ≈ 1, similar to those observed in the compact knots. We discuss this spectral behavior within a framework of shock and stochastic particle acceleration processes, connected with the turbulent, supersonic, and nonsteady nature of the relativistic outflow. We note some evidence for a possible spectral hardening at the outer sheath of the jet, and manifesting itself in observed X-ray spectra of αX < 0.5 in the most extreme cases. Due to the limited photon statistics of the present data, further deep observations of Centaurus A are required to determine the reality of this finding; however, we note that the existence of the hard X-ray features at outer jet boundaries would provide an important challenge to theories for the evolution of ultrarelativistic particles within extragalactic jets.
Comparing alternative approaches for networking of named objects in the future Internet

This paper describes and compares alternative architectures for achieving the functional goals of name oriented networking. The CCN (content-centric network) scheme proposed by Van Jacobson is contrasted with hybrid name and address based routing proposed in conjunction with the MobilityFirst (MF) future Internet architecture. In a CCN network, routers forward data directly on content names (such as URNs), achieving elegant and efficient retrieval of content files; the framework can also be extended to other communications services such as VoIP. The MF scheme supports name-based communication services by introducing the concept of a flat `globally unique identifier (GUID)', which is used as the authoritative header for routing. Further, the GUID is dynamically mapped to one or more topological network addresses using a global name resolution service (GNRS). This leads to a hybrid GUID and network address based routing (HGN) scheme in which routers operate with both flat names (GUIDs) and network addresses, reducing routing table size and overhead at the cost of a fast distributed service for dynamic mapping of names to addresses. Protocol operations for both CCN and HGN are outlined in context of specific services including content retrieval, unicast and mobility. Preliminary evaluations of scalability and performance for both schemes are given using simple analytical models and selected results from Internet-scale simulations for GNRS and BGP.