Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antiviral Effect of Oral Administration of Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate in Woodchucks with Chronic Woodchuck Hepatitis Virus Infection

ABSTRACT Tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) is a nucleotide analogue approved for treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. TDF also has been shown in vitro to inhibit replication of wild-type hepatitis B virus (HBV) and lamivudine-resistant HBV mutants and to inhibit lamivudine-resistant HBV in patients and HBV in patients coinfected with the HIV. Data on the in vivo efficacy of TDF against wild-type virus in non-HIV-coinfected or lamivudine-naïve chronic HBV-infected patients are lacking in the published literature. The antiviral effect of oral administration of TDF against chronic woodchuck hepatitis virus (WHV) infection, an established and predictive animal model for antiviral therapy, was evaluated in a placebo-controlled, dose-ranging study (doses, 0.5 to 15.0 mg/kg of body weight/day). Four weeks of once-daily treatment with TDF doses of 0.5, 1.5, or 5.0 mg/kg/day reduced serum WHV viremia significantly (0.2 to 1.5 log reduction from pretreatment level). No effects on the levels of anti-WHV core and anti-WHV surface antibodies in serum or on the concentrations of WHV RNA or WHV antigens in the liver of treated woodchucks were observed. Individual TDF-treated woodchucks demonstrated transient declines in WHV surface antigen serum antigenemia and, characteristically, these woodchucks also had transient declines in serum WHV viremia, intrahepatic WHV replication, and hepatic expression of WHV antigens. No evidence of toxicity was observed in any of the TDF-treated woodchucks. Following drug withdrawal there was prompt recrudescence of WHV viremia to pretreatment levels. It was concluded that oral administration of TDF for 4 weeks was safe and effective in the woodchuck model of chronic HBV infection.
Semantic 3D Octree Maps based on Conditional Random Fields

In this paper we present a 3D semantic outdoor mapping system with multi-label and resolution octree maps based on the OctoMap mapping framework. The semantic labeling of point clouds uses conditional random fields. Speeding up the conditional random field, we use an adaptive graph downsampling method based on voxel grids and the histogram-of-oriented-residuals operator to describe the local point cloud distribution. We validate the proposed classification and map representation approach on real-world 3D point cloud data. The presented classification approach achieves an overall precision about 96 %. The integration of the classification results into the map data structure offers the opportunity to solve complex task settings. Furthermore, the runtime of the presented approach allows an integration of the classification into a real-time 3D semantic outdoor mapping system.
Pharmacokinetics of Fentanyl in Neonatal Humans and Lambs: Effects of Age

To determine whether the clearance of fentanyl in neonates varies with age, the authors determined the pharmacokinetics of fentanyl in 14 humans ages 1–71 days and 15 lambs ages 3–37 days. In humans, fentanyl, 54.1 ± 2.3 (mean ± SD) μg/kg, was administered as a 2-min iv infusion; in lambs, fentanyl, 50 μg/kg, was administered as an iv bolus. Ventilation was controlled to maintain end-tidal or arterial Pco2 normal, and potent inhaled anesthetics were not administered; in humans, additional anesthesia was provided with iv morphine. Arterial or venous samples were obtained for 12 h, and plasma concentrations of fentanyl were determined by radioimmunoassay. Plasma concentration versus time data were fitted to two- and three-compartment pharmacokinetic models, and clearance, volume of distribution at steady-state (Vd32), and elimination halflife were determined. Clearance increased with age in both humans and lambs. Two humans who had intraabdominal surgery had no clearance of fentanyl: plasma concentrations of fentanyl remained constant for approximately 10 h after an initial distribution phase. In lambs, but not in humans, Vd32 increased with age; elimination half-life did not change with age in either lambs or humans. The authors conclude that at least two factors—postnatal age and the type of surgery—affect fentanyl clearance during the neonatal period. The effect of other factors, such as inhaled anesthetics, remains to be determined.
Intra-individual Variation of Plasma Adipokine Levels and Utility of Single Measurement of These Biomarkers in Population-Based Studies

Adipokines, soluble mediators produced by adipocytes, may link adipose tissue to the inflammatory, metabolic, and immune dysregulation that characterize many obesity-related diseases. The stability of plasma adipokine levels within individuals, their seasonal variability, intercorrelations, and relationships to well-established measures of adiposity are incompletely defined. We measured levels of 12 adipokines [interleukin 1β (IL-1β), IL-6, IL-8, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1), high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP), monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1), nerve growth factor (NGF), leptin, adiponectin, hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), and resistin] in four seasonal random plasma samples of 48 male participants of a population-based cohort study. The representativeness of single measurements was assessed by correlating the adipokine levels of a single, random sample with the mean levels from the remaining three samples using a bootstrap approach and using intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC). Spearman correlations between adipokine levels, age, body mass index (BMI), and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) were estimated. Correlations between plasma adipokine levels from one random sample and the mean of the remaining three seasonal samples ranged from 0.57 to 0.89. Over the 1-year study period, the ICCs for adipokine levels ranged from 0.44 (PAI-1) to 0.83 (HGF). IL-8, MCP-1, and resistin levels were positively associated with age; HGF and PAI-1 levels were correlated with BMI and WHR. This study suggests that adipokine levels in a single blood sample may be useful biomarkers of inflammation in population-based studies of obesity-related disease. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2007;16(11):2464–70)
You’re either with us or against us! Moral conviction determines how the politicized distinguish friend from foe

Three studies investigated how politicized collective identification affects individuals’ reactions towards others. We hypothesized that a strong politicized identity tends to be accompanied by a moral conviction about the politicized cause, which in turn determines how the politicized respond to those less committed to their cause. Consistent with this, Study 1 showed that politicized (feminist) identification is associated with lower identification with women who place moderate (vs. high) moral value on gender equality. Study 2 showed that politicized identification was associated with negative emotions towards people who disagree with this cause and this was mediated by the extent to which participants saw supporting the activist goal as morally obligatory. Study 3 showed that politicized identification, to the extent to which it implied holding a moral conviction about the activist cause, is associated with a desire for more social distance to an attitudinally dissimilar other, but not from an attitudinally similar other.
VGRIS: virtualized GPU resource isolation and scheduling in cloud gaming

Fueled by the maturity of virtualization technology for Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), there is an increasing number of data centers dedicated to GPU-related computation tasks in cloud gaming. However, GPU resource sharing in these applications is usually poor. This stems from the fact that the typical cloud gaming service providers often allocate one GPU exclusively for one game. To achieve the efficiency of computational resource management, there is a demand for cloud computing to employ the multi-task scheduling technologies to improve the utilization of GPU. In this paper, we propose VGRIS, a resource management framework for Virtualized GPU Resource Isolation and Scheduling in cloud gaming. By leveraging the mature GPU paravirtualization architecture, VGRIS resides in the host through library API interception, while the guest OS and the GPU computing applications remain unmodified. In the proposed framework, we implemented three scheduling algorithms in VGRIS for different objectives, i.e., Service Level Agreement (SLA)-aware scheduling, proportional-share scheduling, and hybrid scheduling that mixes the former two. By designing such a scheduling framework, it is possible to handle different kinds of GPU computation tasks for different purposes in cloud gaming. Our experimental results show that each scheduling algorithm can achieve its goals under various workloads.
An integrated academic literacy approach to improving students’ understanding of plagiarism in an accounting course

ABSTRACT Plagiarism in higher education is a widespread and complex issue. Students' understanding of plagiarism differs as a result of combining their prior learning about referencing with their current experience of institutional policies and generic resources. Plagiarism was identified as a major learning issue in a core second-year undergraduate accounting course at an Australian university. The purpose of this field study was to implement and evaluate an educative, integrated, discipline-specific intervention designed to address this learning issue. In the study, the theoretical and practical components of understanding plagiarism are identified as conceptualisation and application. Evaluation of students’ questionnaire responses pre and post the implementation of the intervention showed an improvement in their understanding of plagiarism, both conceptually and in the application of their knowledge. Furthermore, students’ reflections evidenced that they perceived positive changes in their understanding of plagiarism post intervention.
A convex programming approach to the multiobjective H/sup 2//H/sup /spl infin// problem

In this paper, Banach space duality theory for the multiobjective H/sup 2//H/sup /spl infin// problem developed recently by the authors, is used to develop algorithms to solve this problem by approximately reducing the dual and predual representations to finite variable convex optimizations. The Ellipsoid algorithm is then applied to these problems to obtain polynomial-time, nonheuristic programs which find "nearly" optimal control laws. These algorithms have been implemented numerically to compute an example.
Detectability of distributed consensus-based observer networks: An elementary analysis and extensions

This paper continues the study of local detectabil-ity and observability requirements on components of distributed observers networks to ensure detectability properties of the network. First, we present a sketch of an elementary proof of the known result equating the multiplicity of the zero eigenvalue of the Laplace matrix of a digraph to the number of its maximal reachable subgraphs. Unlike the existing algebraic proof, we use a direct analysis of the graph topology. This result is then used in the second part of the paper to extend our previous results which connect the detectability of an observer network with corresponding local detectability and observability properties of its node observers. The proposed extension allows for nonidentical matrices to be used in the interconnections.
Quantitative Analysis of Deformable Model-Based 3-D Reconstruction of Coronary Artery From Multiple Angiograms

Three-dimensional (3-D) reconstruction of the coronary artery is important for the diagnosis and interventional treatment of cardiovascular diseases. In this paper, a novel mean composited external force back-projective composition model is proposed and integrated into the deformable model framework for the 3-D reconstruction of coronary arteries from multiple angiograms. The parametric snake evolves toward the real vascular centerline in 3-D space based on the integrated internal energy and composited external energy. In addition, a polynomial function is constructed to determine the diameter of the cross section of the vascular segments, which fully utilizes the back-projection information of multiple angiograms. The deformable and proposed methods are comparatively validated using phantom datasets and routine angiographic images with respect to space and reprojection Euclidean distance errors. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed model, which can achieve a mean space error of 0.570 mm and a mean reprojection error of 0.351 mm. In addition, the influence of the angle difference to the reconstruction accuracy is discussed and validated on phantom datasets, which demonstrate that an angle difference of for any two angiograms is suitable for the 3-D reconstruction process.
“I can’t breathe”: A case study—Helping Black men cope with race-related trauma stemming from police killing and brutality

ABSTRACT It is impossible for individuals to survive without the ability to breathe. Eric Garner, an unarmed Black man, uttered “I can’t breathe” during an arrest by the police, who placed him a chokehold and caused his death (Goldstein & Schweber, 2014). Seeing this inhuman image on videotape pierced the consciousness of the nation. The grand jury failed to indict the police officer who killed Mr. Garner, and this sparked civil protests, which birthed the notion “Black Lives Matter” (Owens, 2015). Protestors chanted “I can’t breathe” to decry this injustice. This underscored literally and metaphorically how difficult it is for Black men to thrive in a hostile environment where their civil rights are denied. This article addresses the killings of unarmed Black men by the police, arguing that such killings are motivated by factors including how race, racism, and gender contribute to the “othering” of their humanity. Ideas from Critical Race Theory, the nexus among policing, criminality and racial profiling, critical consciousness, relational theory, and narrative therapy will provide a foundation for understanding the racialized experiences of Black men in America—where multiple forms of injustices exist—and where police killings are viewed as lawful. Highlighting practice themes from a case vignette involving an adolescent Black male engaged in psychotherapy will explicate how racial profiling by the police triggered race-based traumatic stress. The vignette will illuminate the implications for psychotherapeutic work with Black men who have been affected by race-based traumatic stress stemming from “living while Black. ”
A new simplified dietary history method for measuring intake of energy and macronutrients.

In this dietary history method, which preserves the characteristic features of the full dietary history, the principle of simplification is to group several food items into common codes. This enables us to complete both an interview and all nutrient calculations within 35-45 min. In this study we investigated whether the method could replace a 4-day food record for assessing individual intakes of energy and macronutrients. Dietary data were collected from 75 individuals (57 males and 18 females). Protein intake was validated by comparison with 24 h urinary nitrogen excretion (33 subjects), and energy intake was compared to weight maintenance energy intake from a later controlled diet study (19 subjects). When average intakes according to the two methods were compared, dietary history intakes were slightly higher than food record results (0-13%) except for alcohol. Comparison with urinary nitrogen excretion and energy intake data indicate that this is due to an overestimation by the dietary history method, rather than an underestimation by the food record. For individuals most of the correlations between the two methods were in the range 0.5-0.7, but alcohol correlation was down to 0.2. About 75% (53-93%) of the individuals at the extremes of the intake distribution were classified similarly by both methods. Although the ability of the dietary history to predict the individual food record results was unreliable the two methods agreed better when classifying individuals relative to certain cut-off points (sensitivity and specificity values of 0.7-0.9, relative to the food records). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Characterization of Olfactory Stem Cells

There is worldwide enthusiasm for the prospect of some kind of cellular transplant therapy for repair of failing organs. The olfactory mucosa of a patient's nose is easily biopsied to provide a ready source of multipotent cells. In this article we address practical issues pertinent to using olfactory neural stem cells for tissue repair. These cells are emerging as potentially most significant candidates for human tissue repair strategies. Previously we have shown that stem cells from olfactory mucosa are multipotent. As well, we have recently published three potential clinical applications. Their expression of dopaminergic markers in vitro and in a Parkinson's rat transplant model has been demonstrated. Their conversion to chondrogenic phenotype in vitro and in vivo has also been described, as has their transplant into a rat model of cardiac infarction. Here we examine in detail the biology of the olfactory neural stem cell using the rat as our animal model cell source. We establish its presence by examining self-renewal capacity and for phenotypic acquisition in inductive circumstances. We determine its frequency within the cell population and show that our culture system selects for this putative stem cell. Our studies demonstrate that adult olfactory stem cells, when transplanted into an environmental niche different from that of their origin, are able to demonstrate multipotency by acquiring the phenotype of the resident cells. We investigate how immediate the instruction need be. We test the hypothesis that olfactory neurospheres contain stem cells whose capacity for differentiation is triggered by signals of the immediate environmental niche. Significantly, of importance to any tissue regeneration endeavor, stem cell numbers were shown to be enriched by our culture methods. This was confirmed whether measured by sphere-forming capacity or differentiation response rate.
The effects of frequency of exposure, elaboration, and individual differences on incidental vocabulary learning

Incidental vocabulary learning from meaning-focused input has received increased attention in second language acquisition research (Nation, 2007). However, few have investigated the role of oral input (listening) in acquiring word knowledge, especially in the case of young EFL learners. Therefore, the present study measured the short-term word retention of young Saudi EFL learners after listening to a story from the three dimensions of spoken form recognition, meaning recognition, and meaning recall. It also examined the separate and joint effects of frequency of exposure and +/elaboration on the degree of word retention in addition to the possible moderating effect of a number of individual differences on word retention from listening, namely that of prior vocabulary knowledge, listening competence, and phonological short-term and working memory capacity. Results showed that words could be learned incidentally from listening. Explanation of target words appeared to affect the recognition of form and meaning and recall of meaning while frequency of exposure seemed to only to affect the recall of meaning. Moreover, regression analyses revealed that the provision of definitions of the new words during listening was the most significant predictor of word knowledge retention in all three post-tests.
Mediation of lung metastasis of murine melanomas by a lung-specific endothelial cell adhesion molecule.

Organ-specific adhesion molecules expressed by vascular endothelial cells have been implicated in the arrest of blood-borne cancer cells in selective, secondary sites. A lung-specific endothelial cell adhesion molecule (Lu-ECAM-1) localized on endothelia of distinct branches of lung blood vessels has been purified by immunoaffinity chromatography from detergent extracts of lung matrix-modulated endothelial cells using monoclonal antibody (mAb) 6D3. It has a molecular mass of 90 kDa and promotes the selective attachment of lung-metastatic B16 melanoma cells. Corresponding with their metastatic performance, B16-F10 tumor cells selected for higher lung colonization bind to Lu-ECAM-1 in significantly higher numbers than their low lung metastatic counterpart B16-F0. Binding of B16-F0 and B16-F10 is reduced with mAb 6D3 to slightly lower levels than B16-F0 bound to Lu-ECAM-1. mAb 6D3 injected into C57BL/6 mice 1 hr prior to an i.v. challenge with B16-F10 causes a 90% reduction in the number of lung colonies compared with animals injected with control mAb (6D8 or 3C6). Lu-ECAM-1 neither binds nor effects metastasis of other lung-colonizing tumor cells (e.g., KLN205). Thus, site-specific metastasis of tumor cells is regulated by similar mechanisms as the homing of lymphocytes--namely, by the ability of blood-borne cancer cells to recognize and adhere to distinct endothelial cell adhesion molecules.
End-to-End Throughput Maximization for Underlay Multi-Hop Cognitive Radio Networks With RF Energy Harvesting

This paper studies a green paradigm for the underlay coexistence of primary users (PUs) and secondary users (SUs) in energy harvesting cognitive radio networks (EH-CRNs), wherein battery-free SUs capture both the spectrum and the energy of PUs to enhance spectrum efficiency and green energy utilization. To lower the transmit powers of SUs, we employ multi-hop transmission with time division multiple access, by which SUs first harvest energy from the RF signals of PUs, and then, transmit data in the allocated time concurrently with PUs, all in the licensed spectrum. In this way, the available transmit energy of each SU mainly depends on the harvested energy before the turn to transmit, namely energy causality. Meanwhile, the transmit powers of SUs must be strictly controlled to protect PUs from harmful interference. Thus, subject to the energy causality constraint and the interference power constraint, we study the end-to-end throughput maximization problem for optimal time and power allocation. To solve this nonconvex problem, we first equivalently transform it into a convex optimization problem and then propose the joint optimal time and power allocation (JOTPA) algorithm that iteratively solves a series of feasibility problems until convergence. Extensive simulations evaluate the performance of EH-CRNs with JOTPA in three typical deployment scenarios and validate the superiority of JOTPA by making comparisons with two other resource allocation algorithms.
The Prevalence of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in an Adolescent Inpatient Unit

Objective: To examine the prevalence and comorbidity of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in an adolescent inpatient population. A 2-year retrospective chart study was conducted. Method: Computer-registered data of discharge records from 1993 and 1994 were recovered. Patients were grouped by diagnosis; frequency and chi-square statistical analyses were performed to ascertain the prevalence and the comorbidity of various diagnoses with PTSD. Results: A total of 187patients, 114 females and 73 males, with a mean age of 15 years were reviewed, and 42% (79) of all patients had a diagnosis of PTSD using DSM-III-R criteria. There were 54 females and 25 males with PTSD; however, gender effect was not clinically significant. Associated comorbidity reaching clinical significance included other anxiety disorders (P = 0.008) and depressive disorders (P = 0.003). Asthma was diagnosed as a significant clinical disorder (P = 0.05) comorbid with PTSD. PTSD diagnoses correlated strongly with a history of abuse (P = 0.0001). Conclusions: PTSD occurs frequently in adolescent inpatients and is commonly comorbid with other diagnostic presentations. These findings may affect the management of PTSD and prognosis for this population.