Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exhaled NO and plasma cGMP increase after endotoxin infusion in healthy volunteers

Nitric oxide (NO) is believed to be involved in the pathophysiology of sepsis. This study evaluated the activity of the NO pathway in a human endotoxin model. At baseline and after endotoxin, on-line measurements of exhaled NO (eNO) were made using a chemiluminescence technique with a single-breath method. NO-free air was inhaled prior to exhalation against a resistance. NO in orally and nasally exhaled air and in rectal gas was investigated. Plasma nitrite, nitrate, and guanosine 3′, 5′-monophosphate (cGMP) and the events after diclophenac administration were also studied. Endotoxin infusion resulted in tachycardia and fever. An early increase in oral eNO concentration was observed and oral eNO decreased after diclophenac administration. NO exhaled nasally, NO in rectum gas and nitrite/nitrate levels remained unchanged over the study period. cGMP increased after 4 h. These findings suggest an early increase in nitric oxide production from the lungs, probably due to increased activity of the constitutive nitric oxide synthase upon endotoxin stimulation. In contrast, nitric oxide production in the upper airways, measured as nasally exhaled nitric oxide and nitric oxide in rectal gas, remained unchanged. Further studies will elucidate if exhaled nitric oxide is a valuable marker of sepsis-induced lung injury and if monitoring of treatment is possible.
Highly Available Transactions: Virtues and Limitations

To minimize network latency and remain online during server failures and network partitions, many modern distributed data storage systems eschew transactional functionality, which provides strong semantic guarantees for groups of multiple operations over multiple data items. In this work, we consider the problem of providing Highly Available Transactions (HATs): transactional guarantees that do not suffer unavailability during system partitions or incur high network latency. We introduce a taxonomy of highly available systems and analyze existing ACID isolation and distributed data consistency guarantees to identify which can and cannot be achieved in HAT systems. This unifies the literature on weak transactional isolation, replica consistency, and highly available systems. We analytically and experimentally quantify the availability and performance benefits of HATs--often two to three orders of magnitude over wide-area networks--and discuss their necessary semantic compromises.
Medical report from the 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany

Objective: To continue the injury surveillance of FIFA-sponsored football tournaments and report on other medical aspects of the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Design: Prospective epidemiological injury surveillance and descriptive summary of additional medical aspects. Setting: Major international football tournament. Participants: National team players, doctors and referees at the 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany. Main outcome measures: Injury type, location and rate. Results: 145 injuries were reported for the 64 matches of the 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany—an overall injury rate of 68.7 per 1000 match hours (95% CI 57.5 to 79.9) or 2.3 injuries per match, in comparison with 2.7 injuries per match in the 2002 FIFA World Cup (p = NS). Physical examinations before participation uncovered no hidden cardiovascular problems. Once the tournament started, no referees were unable to complete their duties. There were no positive doping tests. Conclusions: The injury rate for this World Cup was below that of 2002, but consistent with the overall injury rate per match since data collection began in 1998. There continues to be no evidence of systematic doping in international football.
Impact of IL 12 B Gene rs 3212227 Polymorphism on Fibrosis , Liver Inflammation , and Response to Treatment in Genotype 4 Egyptian Hepatitis C Patients

Introduction. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection affects almost 3% of the world’s population with the highest prevalence in Egypt (15%). The standard therapy; pegylated interferon (PEG-IFN) and ribavirin, is effective in only 60% of Egyptian patients; moreover it is costly, prolonged, and has severe side effects, so prediction of response is essential to reduce burden of unfavorable treatment. Several viral and host factors have been proved to affect response to the treatment PEG-IFN and ribavirin; the strongest of them is polymorphisms near IL28B; nonetheless, nonresponse in patients with favorable IL28B is still unexplained, which implies the importance of studying other immunological factors that may correlate with response. Interleukin 12 (IL-12) is one of the most important proinflammatory cytokine presented with the initiation of immune response, determining Th1 and Th2 differentiation. A functional single nucleotide polymorphism (A/C) at the 3 untranslated region (3UTR) at position 1188 (NCBI SNP database no 3212227) was reported to be associated with responding more efficiently to antiviral combination therapy in HCV genotype 1 infected patients. The present study aims to evaluate association between this polymorphism with fibrosis stages, necroinflammation activity, response to the combined therapy, and gender in Egyptian HCV genotype 4.Material and Methods. A total of 133 Egyptian chronic HCV (CHCV) patients were treated with IFN/RBV and were followed up. IL12B 1188 A/C genotyping was performed using polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PRC-RFLP) analysis. Results. A nonsignificant trend for higher sustained virological response (SVR) was observed in patients homozygote for IL12B 1188 A/C SNP CC genotype (69% SVR versus 30.8% NR) only but not in AC and AA genotypes. No association was detected between IL12B 1188 A/C polymorphism and less severe fibrosis or less liver activity. By stratification of response according to gender genotype, a significant difference in response between males and females was seen among AA genotype carriers only due to high number of non responder females. Conclusion. IL12B CC genotype appears to have some influence on SVR achievement but not on severe fibrosis and severe necroinflamation activity. Females carrying A/A genotype of IL12B 1188 A/C SNP achieve less SVR than those carrying AC and CC genotypes.
Perfect matchings and Hamiltonian cycles in the preferential attachment model

In this paper, we study the existence of perfect matchings and Hamiltonian cycles in the preferential attachment model. In this model, vertices are added to the graph one by one, and each time a new vertex is created it establishes a connection with m random vertices selected with probabilities proportional to their current degrees. (Constant m is the only parameter of the model.) We prove that if m≥1253 , then asymptotically almost surely there exists a perfect matching. Moreover, we show that there exists a Hamiltonian cycle asymptotically almost surely, provided that m≥29 500 . One difficulty in the analysis comes from the fact that vertices establish connections only with vertices that are “older” (ie, are created earlier in the process). However, the main obstacle arises from the fact that edges in the preferential attachment model are not generated independently. In view of that, we also consider a simpler setting—sometimes called uniform attachment—in which vertices are added one by one and each vertex connects to m older vertices selected uniformly at random and independently of all other choices. We first investigate the existence of perfect matchings and Hamiltonian cycles in the uniform attachment model, and then extend the argument to the preferential attachment version.
The financial impact of HIV/AIDS on poor households in South Africa

Background:Rising mortality rates caused by HIV/AIDS in South Africa have substantial and lingering impacts on poor households. Methods:This is a descriptive paper using a new dataset of daily income, expenditure and financial transactions collected over a year from a total of 181 poor households in South African rural and urban areas. One of the key pathways through which HIV/AIDS impacts on household wellbeing is through the socioeconomic impacts of death, which this dataset is especially useful in quantifying. Results:The key impacts of death on households are funerals and the loss of income. Funerals often cost up to 7 months of income. Nearly all households in the sample attempt to cover such costs by holding a portfolio of funeral insurance. Despite these efforts to insure against funeral costs, 61% of households are underinsured against the cost of a funeral. Nearly half the sample households are dependent on a regular wage earner, and another quarter are dependent on a grant recipient. Eighty per cent of these households would lose over half of their monthly income should the highest income recipient in the household die. Even by selling liquid assets, only one third of the sample households would be able to maintain their pre-death living standards for a year or more. Conclusion:Death poses substantial and lingering burdens from the funerals that surviving household members need to finance and the ongoing loss of income once brought into the household by the deceased. These costs pose so great a threat to households that they dominate household saving and insurance behavior.
Partly Polarized Speckles and Speckle Reduction in Interferometry

In this paper we discuss problems in an interferometer which arise when the interferometer uses a conventional, so-called 'non-cooperative' target rather than a mirror. Under these conditions, the reflected light assumes the character of a speckle field which requires that we describe its statistical properties by applying first order statistics of Stokes parameters. Next we discuss how the interference signal is influenced by a speckle field with an arbitrary degree of polarization. Finally we show how the detrimental effects arising from the speckle field can be reduced when the target surface fluctuations are sufficiently (compared to the wavelength) small.
Modelling the hyper-viscoelastic behaviour of synthetic rubbers applied to rubber pad forming

Henrique Manuel Alferes Simões Vieira da Mota iii Abstract Fuel cells are a promising alternative to the combustion engines in the automotive industry, allowing to reduce significantly the air pollution generated by cars. However, this new technology still presents some economic issues due to the cost involved in the production of the bipolar plates (main component of fuel cells). In order to reduce the production costs, the rubber pad forming has been adopted in the manufacturing of thin stamped bipolar plates. Since the plastic deformation of the sheet is induced by a pad of rubber like material, the numerical modelling of this manufacturing process requires a deep knowledge about the mechanical behaviour of rubber materials. The main objective of this study is the numerical modelling of rubber-like materials, which typically present a hyper-viscoelastic behaviour. Accordingly, the constitutive law currently implemented in the V-Biomech finite element code, used to describe the mechanical behaviour of rubbers, is presented in detail. Hence, the hyperelastic behaviour is described by the Mooney-Rivlin model, while the viscoelasticity is modelled by a series of Maxwell elements. Considering the case of uniaxial compression stress state, the closed-form solution is derived for the hyper-viscoelastic behaviour, which is posteriorly used in the procedure to identify the material parameters involved in the constitutive model. Two different polyurethane materials are experimentally evaluated by means of uniaxial compression tests and relaxation tests, allowing to identify the material parameters by fitting the numerical model to the experimental data. Then, these rubber materials are adopted in the numerical simulation of the rubber pad forming process, using the Abaqus software to study numerically the forming of metallic bipolar plates. Taking into account the experimental results from both the uniaxial compression tests and relaxations tests performed on two different polyurethanes, the viscosity effect is small considering the range of velocity applied, particularly for the rubber with lower hardness value. Moreover, the predicted mechanical behaviour of both rubbers is in good agreement with the experimental values. The numerical results of the rubber pad forming process show that the final thickness of the stamped bipolar plate is not significantly influenced by the rubber hardness. However, the predicted final thickness distribution is more uniform in comparison with the one obtained with the conventional stamping process. Modelling the hyper-viscoelastic behaviour of synthetic rubbers applied to rubber pad forming iv 2018 The maximum value of thinning occurs always in the fillet radius of the rib, which is the zone with large plastic deformation.
Extracting Factors with Maximum Explanatory Power ∗

Security returns are heteroscedastic both cross-sectionally and over time, which affects the accuracy of standard factor extraction methods. In order to reduce the impact of such heterogeneity and to preserve the true factor structure, this paper studies the performance of a factor extracting method based on maximizing the explanatory power of the extracted factors. The implementation of the methodology is largely based on the principal components analysis on a correlation structure of asset returns. However, such a simple extension allows us to improve the finite sample performance over other popular approaches when returns are heteroscedastic both across individual assets and over time. Moreover, the out-of-sample study suggests that the extracted factors are not only stable across different sample groups, but also more pervasive in explaining the out-of-sample individual stock returns than other methods. These factors even have better out-of-sample explanatory power than the Fama and French factors. In addition, we shed light on the issue of choosing the correct number of factors. ∗I am grateful to Stephen J. Brown, Lewis Chan, Nai-fu Chen, Ted Day, Yacine Hammami, Chris Jones, Raymond Kan, Bob Korajczyk, Craig MacKinlay, Jianping Mei, Larry Merville, John Wei, Steven Wei, Chu Zhang, Guofu Zhou, and seminar participants at SMU, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong Polytech University, 2002 Western Finance Association Conference, and 2002 European Financial Management Association Conference for helpful comments. Address correspondence to: Yexiao Xu, School of Management, The University of Texas at Dallas, PO Box 688, Richardson, Texas 75080, USA; Email: yexiaoxu@utdallas.edu Extracting Factors with Maximum Explanatory Power
Nonlinearity of Range Corrections in Meta-Analysis: Test of an Improved Procedure

The authors evaluated an improved procedure for range-restriction corrections in meta-analysis . When population correlations were approximately normally distributed, the new nonlinear rangecorrection procedure improved the accuracy of the Schmidt-Hunter (S-H) interactive method in estimating both the mean (Me) and standard deviation (SDf) of population correlations, making it the most accurate of the procedures examined. In the homogeneous case (SDP = 0), the nonlinear range correction again improves accuracy of estimates ofSDf. In this important case, Taylor Series Approximation (TSA) 1 is considerably less accurate than the S-H interactive and the TSA2 procedures, and N. S. Raju, M. J. Burke, J. Normand, and G. M. Langlois's (1991) procedure yields the least accurate estimates of SDP. Finally, the authors found that the nonlinear range-correction procedure produces improvements in the accuracy of the interactive method even under extreme violations of the normality assumption.
Low-Dose Interleukin-2 Therapy: A Driver of an Imbalance between Immune Tolerance and Autoimmunity

For many years, the role of interleukin-2 (IL-2) in autoimmune responses was established as a cytokine possessing strong pro-inflammatory activity. Studies of the past few years have changed our knowledge on IL-2 in autoimmune chronic inflammation, suggesting its protective role, when administered at low-doses. The disrupted balance between regulatory and effector T cells (Tregs and Teffs, respectively) is a characteristic of autoimmune diseases, and is dependent on homeostatic cytokines, including IL-2. Actually, inherent defects in the IL-2 signaling pathway and/or levels leading to Treg compromised function and numbers as well as Th17 expansion have been attributed to autoimmune disorders. In this review, we discuss the role of IL-2 in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases. In particular, we highlight the impact of the dysregulated IL-2 pathway on disruption of the Treg/Th17 balance, reversal of which appears to be a possible mechanism of the low-dose IL-2 treatment. The negative effects of IL-2 on the differentiation of follicular helper T cells (Tfh) and pathogenic Th17 cells, both of which contribute to autoimmunity, is emphasized in the paper as well. We also compare the current IL-2-based therapies of animal and human subjects with immune-mediated diseases aimed at boosting the Treg population, which is the most IL-2-dependent cell subset desirable for sufficient control of autoimmunity. New perspectives of therapeutic approaches focused on selective delivery of IL-2 to inflamed tissues, thus allowing local activity of IL-2 to be combined with its reduced systemic and pleiotropic toxicity, are also proposed in this paper.
Mental Health and Interpersonal Factors Associated with HIV-Related Risk Behaviors Among Non-Institutionalized Female Injection Drug Users Who Are Also Sex Workers in China

Female injecting drug users who are sex workers (IDUFSWs) are an important bridge population in HIV transmission. Few studies have investigated the associations between mental health, interpersonal problems, and HIV-related risk behaviors among injecting drug users who are sex workers. A total of 234 non-institutionalized injecting drug users who are sex workers were recruited using the snowball method. Multiple logistic regression was used for data analysis. A high prevalence of mental health (depression, hopelessness, pessimism) and interpersonal (lack of social support and submissive gender power) problems was reported. Optimism and social support were negatively associated with inconsistent condom use during sex work in the last six months (adjusted odds ratios [AOR] = 0.62–0.86); positive associations were observed for depression, hopelessness, pessimism, and gender power (AOR = 1.17 to 1.68). Injecting with others' used syringes in the last six months was negatively associated with social support (AOR = 0.75) and positively associated with hopelessness and gender power (AOR = 1.13–1.27). In two summary models using all significant independent variables as candidates, optimism was negatively (OR = 0.62) and submissive gender powers were positively (OR = 1.67) associated with inconsistent condom use during sex work; submissive gender power was positively associated with injecting with others' used syringes (OR = 1.38). HIV interventions targeting mental health and interpersonal problems are needed among injecting drug users who are sex workers.
Thermo-kinetic behaviour of Ge20Te75I5 glass for infrared optics

ABSTRACT The iodine-doped GeTe4 infrared chalcogenide glass was studied by means of differential scanning calorimetry DSC, X-ray diffraction XRD, Raman spectroscopy and infrared microscopy. Extensive non-isothermal thermo-kinetic characterisation of the glass transition, crystallisation and melting phenomena was performed in dependence on the particle size. The Tool–Narayanaswamy–Moynihan model was applied to describe the enthalpy relaxation processes: the compositional evolution of the relaxation parameters was then explained in terms of the structural changes and movements of the characteristic structural units. Mathematic deconvolution was applied to treat the complex crystallization kinetics – two crystal growth sub-processes were identified and described in terms of the autocatalytic Šesták-Berggren model. Based on the XRD and microscopic analyses the following crystallization mechanisms were revealed: initial precipitation of tellurium (surface-located) followed by a combined surface- and bulk-located formation of GeTe and GeI4 phases. Based on the DSC results obtained for fine powders, the presence of mechanically induced defects was found to accelerate the Te precipitation, the consequences of which are discussed with regard to the performance of nowadays glass stability criteria.
The applicability of advanced composite structural members

Advanced composite materials (ACM) are seeing increased usage in civil and architectural engineering applications. An important distinction should be noted between applications that use advanced composite materials and the term "composite construction", which is frequently used to describe floor system designs that employ steel beam members acting in conjunction with a concrete deck to resist flexural loads. Alternatively, designs with advanced composite materials include structural members that are made up of a large number of fibrous elements, referred to as reinforcement, embedded in a continuous phase of a second material known as the matrix. The scope of this document includes only advanced composite material designs, and is further refined to include only those applications where such designs involve new-construction as opposed to repair or rehabilitation. Evidence is provided that justifies the positive growth trend in the use of advanced composites, and demonstrates that advanced composite materials are both viable and cost competitive in many structural applications. A study of six requirements that are fundamental to the use of composites in new-construction applications is presented: 1) well defined material systems and processing methods are established 2) adequate secondary manufacturing processes exist 3) a sufficient manufacturing base is present 4) design and life predication methods are developed 5) non-destructive evaluation methods are effective 6) life cycle costs are competitive Case studies involving the use of these materials in structural applications are presented and compared to similar designs using conventional materials. THESIS SUPERVISOR: JEROME J. CONNOR TITLE: PROFESSOR OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING
Implementation of O(nmlogn) weighted matchings in general graphs: the power of data structures

We describe the implementation of an algorithm which solves the weighted matching problem in general graphs with n vertices and m edges in time O(nm log n). Our algorithm is a variant of the algorithm of Galil, Micali and Gabow [Galil et al. 1986] and extensively uses sophisticated data structures, in particular concatenable priority queues, so as to reduce the time needed to perform dual adjustments and to find tight edges in Edmonds' blossom-shrinking algorithm.We compare our implementation to the experimentally fastest implementation, named Blossom IV, due to Cook and Rohe [Cook and Rohe 1997]. Blossom IV requires only very simple data structures and has an asymptotic running time of O(n2m). Our experiments show that our new implementation is superior to Blossom IV. A closer inspection reveals that the running time of Edmonds' blossom-shrinking algorithm in practice heavily depends on the time spent to perform dual adjustments and to find tight edges. Therefore, optimizing these operations, as is done in our implementation, indeed speeds-up the practical performance of implementations of Edmonds' algorithm.