Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Soluble purine‐converting enzymes circulate in human blood and regulate extracellular ATP level via counteracting pyrophosphatase and phosphotransfer reactions

Extracellular ATP and other purines play a crucial role in the vasculature, and their turnover is selectively governed by a network of ectoenzymes expressed both on endothelial and hematopoietic cells. By studying the whole pattern of purine metabolism in human serum, we revealed the existence of soluble enzymes capable of both inactivating and transphosphorylating circulating purines. Evidence for this was obtained by using independent assays, including chromatographic analyses with 3H‐labeled and unlabeled nucleotides and adenosine, direct transfer of γ‐terminal phosphate from [γ‐32P]ATP to NDP/AMP, and bioluminescent measurement of ATP metabolism. Based on substrate‐specificity and competitive studies, we identified three purine‐inactivating enzymes in human serum, nucleotide pyrophosphatase (EC 3.6.1.9), 5′‐nucleotidase (EC 3.1.3.5), and adenosine deaminase (EC 3.5.4.4), whereas an opposite ATP‐generating pathway is represented by adenylate kinase (EC 2.7.4.3) and NDP kinase (EC 2.7.4.6). Comparative kinetic analysis revealed that the Vmax values for soluble nucleotide kinases significantly exceed those of counteracting nucleotidases, whereas the apparent Km values for serum enzymes were fairly comparable and varied within a range of 40–70 µmol/l. Identification of soluble enzymes contributing, along with membrane‐bound ectoenzymes, to the active cycling between circulating ATP and other purines provides a novel insight into the regulatory mechanisms of purine homeostasis in the blood.
Cache memory design for network processors

The exponential growth in Internet traffic has motivated the development of a new breed of microprocessors called network processors, which are designed to address the performance problems resulting from the explosion in Internet traffic. The development efforts of these network processors concentrate almost exclusively on streamlining their data paths to speed up network packet processing, which mainly consists of routing and data movement. Rather than blindly pushing the performance of packet processing hardware, an alternative approach is to avoid repeated computation by applying the time-tested architecture idea of caching to network packet processing. Because the data streams presented to network processors and general-purpose CPUs exhibit different characteristics, detailed cache design tradeoffs for the two also differ considerably. This research focuses on cache memory design specifically for network processors. Using a trace-drive simulation methodology, we evaluate a series of three progressively more aggressive routing-table cache designs. Our simulation results demonstrate that the incorporation of hardware caches into network processors, when combined with efficient caching algorithms, can significantly improve the overall packet forwarding performance due to a sufficiently high degree of temporal locality in the network packet streams. Moreover, different cache designs can result in up to a factor of 5 difference in the average routing table lookup time, and thus in the packet forwarding rate.
Does Ownership Matter? An Overview of Systematic Reviews of the Performance of Private For-Profit, Private Not-For-Profit and Public Healthcare Providers

Introduction Ownership of healthcare providers has been considered as one factor that might influence their health and healthcare related performance. The aim of this article was to provide an overview of what is known about the effects on economic, administrative and health related outcomes of different types of ownership of healthcare providers -namely public, private non-for-profit (PNFP) and private for-profit (PFP)- based on the findings of systematic reviews (SR). Methods and Findings An overview of systematic reviews was performed. Different databases were searched in order to select SRs according to an explicit comprehensive criterion. Included SRs were assessed to determine their methodological quality. Of the 5918 references reviewed, fifteen SR were included, but six of them were rated as having major limitations, so they weren't incorporated in the analyses. According to the nine analyzed SR, ownership does seem to have an effect on health and healthcare related outcomes. In the comparison of PFP and PNFP providers, significant differences in terms of mortality of patients and payments to facilities have been found, both being higher in PFP facilities. In terms of quality and economic indicators such as efficiency, there are no concluding results. When comparing PNFP and public providers, as well as for PFP and public providers, no clear differences were found. Conclusion PFP providers seem to have worst results than their PNFP counterparts, but there are still important evidence gaps in the literature that needs to be covered, including the comparison between public and both PFP and PNFP providers. More research is needed in low and middle income countries to understand the impact on and development of healthcare delivery systems.
Locality of Global Stochastic Interaction in Directed Acyclic Networks

The hypothesis of invariant maximization of interaction (IMI) is formulated within the setting of random fields. According to this hypothesis, learning processes maximize the stochastic interaction of the neurons subject to constraints. We consider the extrinsic constraint in terms of a fixed input distribution on the periphery of the network. Our main intrinsic constraint is given by a directed acyclic network structure. First mathematical results about the strong relation of the local information flow and the global interaction are stated in order to investigate the possibility of controlling IMI optimization in a completely local way. Furthermore, we discuss some relations of this approach to the optimization according to Linsker's Infomax principle.
The Prognostic Value of BRCA1 mRNA Expression Levels Following Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Breast Cancer

Background A fraction of sporadic breast cancers has low BRCA1 expression. BRCA1 mutation carriers are more likely to achieve a pathological complete response with DNA-damage-based chemotherapy compared to non-mutation carriers. Furthermore, sporadic ovarian cancer patients with low levels of BRCA1 mRNA have longer survival following platinum-based chemotherapy than patients with high levels of BRCA1 mRNA. Methodology/Principal Findings Tumor biopsies were obtained from 86 breast cancer patients who were candidates for neoadjuvant chemotherapy, treated with four cycles of neoadjuvant fluorouracil, epirubicin and cyclophosphamide. Estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), HER2, cytokeratin 5/6 and vimentin were examined by tissue microarray. HER2 were also assessed by chromogenic in situ hybridization, and BRCA1 mRNA was analyzed in a subset of 41 patients for whom sufficient tumor tissue was available by real-time quantitative PCR. Median time to progression was 42 months and overall survival was 55 months. In the multivariate analysis for time to progression and overall survival for 41 patients in whom BRCA1 could be assessed, low levels of BRCA1 mRNA, positive PR and negative lymph node involvement predicted a significantly lower risk of relapse, low levels of BRCA1 mRNA and positive PR were the only variables associated with significantly longer survival. Conclusions/Significance We provide evidence for a major role for BRCA1 mRNA expression as a marker of time to progression and overall survival in sporadic breast cancers treated with anthracycline-based chemotherapy. These findings can be useful for customizing chemotherapy.
Reproductive Justice as Intersectional Feminist Activism

Reproductive justice activists have dynamically used the concept of intersectionality as a source of empowerment to propel one of the most important shifts in reproductive politics in recent history. In the tradition of the Combahee River Collective, twelve Black women working within and outside the pro-choice movement in 1994 coined the term “reproductive justice” to “recognize the commonality of our experiences and, from the sharing and growing consciousness, to a politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our oppression. ” Its popularity necessitates an examination of whether reproductive justice is sturdy enough to be analyzed as a novel critical feminist theory and a surprising success story of praxis through intersectionality. Offered to the intellectual commons of inquiry, reproductive justice has impressively built bridges between activists and the academy to stimulate thousands of scholarly articles, generate new women of color organizations, and prompt the reorganization of philanthropic foundations. This article defines reproductive justice, examines its use as an organizing and theoretical framework, and discusses Black patriarchal and feminist theoretical discourses through a reproductive justice lens.
The body-mass index, airflow obstruction, dyspnea, and exercise capacity index in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

BACKGROUND Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterized by an incompletely reversible limitation in airflow. A physiological variable--the forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1)--is often used to grade the severity of COPD. However, patients with COPD have systemic manifestations that are not reflected by the FEV1. We hypothesized that a multidimensional grading system that assessed the respiratory and systemic expressions of COPD would better categorize and predict outcome in these patients. METHODS We first evaluated 207 patients and found that four factors predicted the risk of death in this cohort: the body-mass index (B), the degree of airflow obstruction (O) and dyspnea (D), and exercise capacity (E), measured by the six-minute-walk test. We used these variables to construct the BODE index, a multidimensional 10-point scale in which higher scores indicate a higher risk of death. We then prospectively validated the index in a cohort of 625 patients, with death from any cause and from respiratory causes as the outcome variables. RESULTS There were 25 deaths among the first 207 patients and 162 deaths (26 percent) in the validation cohort. Sixty-one percent of the deaths in the validation cohort were due to respiratory insufficiency, 14 percent to myocardial infarction, 12 percent to lung cancer, and 13 percent to other causes. Patients with higher BODE scores were at higher risk for death; the hazard ratio for death from any cause per one-point increase in the BODE score was 1.34 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.26 to 1.42; P<0.001), and the hazard ratio for death from respiratory causes was 1.62 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.48 to 1.77; P<0.001). The C statistic for the ability of the BODE index to predict the risk of death was larger than that for the FEV1 (0.74 vs. 0.65). CONCLUSIONS The BODE index, a simple multidimensional grading system, is better than the FEV1 at predicting the risk of death from any cause and from respiratory causes among patients with COPD.
How Caching Affects Hashing

A number of recent papers have considered the influence of modern computer memory hierarchies on the performance of hashing algorithms [1, 2, 3]. Motivation for these papers is drawn from recent technology trends that have produced an ever-widening gap between the speed of CPUs and the latency of dynamic random access memories. The result is an emerging computing folklore which contends that inferior hash functions, in terms of the number of collisions they produce, may in fact lead to superior performance because these collisions mainly occur in cache rather than main memory. This line of reasoning is the antithesis of that used to justify most of the improvements that have been proposed for open address hashing over the past forty years. Such improvements have generally sought to minimize collisions by spreading data elements more randomly through the hash table. Indeed the name “hashing itself is meant to convey this notion [12]. However, the very act of spreading the data elements throughout the table negatively impacts their degree of spatial locality in computer memory, thereby increasing the likelihood of cache misses during long probe sequences. In this paper we study the performance tradeoffs that exist when implementing open address hash functions on contemporary computers. Experimental analyses are reported that make use of a variety of different hash functions, ranging from linear probing to highly “chaotic forms of double hashing, using data sets that are justified through information-theoretic analyses. Our results, contrary to those in a number of recently published papers, show that the savings gained by reducing collisions (and therefore probe sequence lengths) usually compensate for any increase in cache misses. That is, linear probing is usually no better than, and in some cases performs far worse than double hash functions that spread data more randomly through the table. ∗We wish to thank to Bernard Moret for suggesting this topic to us. Thus, for general-purpose use, a practitioner is well-advised to choose double hashing over linear probing. Explanations are provided as to why these results differ from those previ-
Traversal recursion: a practical approach to supporting recursive applications

Many capabilities that are needed for recursive applications in engineering and project management are not well supported by the usual formulations of recursion. We identify a class of recursions called “traversal recursions” (which model traversals of a directed graph) that have two important properties they can supply the necessary capabilities and efficient processing algorithms have been defined for them. First we present a taxonomy of traversal recursions based on properties of the recursion on graph structure and on unusual types of metadata. This taxonomy is exploited to identify solvable recursions and to select an execution algorithm. We show how graph traversal can sometimes outperform the more general iteration algorithm. Finally we show how a conventional query optimizer architecture can be extended to handle recursive queries and views.
Explaining physicians' use of EMR systems and performance in the shakedown phase

OBJECTIVE This work seeks to complement and extend prior work by using a multidisciplinary approach to explain electronic medical records (EMR) system use and consequent performance (here, patient satisfaction) among physicians during early stages of the implementation of an EMR. DESIGN This was a quantitative study, with data obtained from three distinct sources: individual-level and social-network data from employees; use data from EMR system logs; and patient satisfaction data from patients and/or authorized decision-makers. Responses were obtained from 151 physicians and 8440 patient satisfaction surveys over the course of a 1-year period at the shakedown phase of an EMR system implementation. RESULTS Physicians who were better connected, both directly and indirectly, to their peers-that is, other physicians-for advice on their work, used the system less than those who were less connected. In addition to such social network ties, demographic characteristics (gender and age), three personality characteristics (openness to experience, agreeableness and extroversion) and a key technology perception (perceived usefulness) predicted EMR system use. CONCLUSIONS For hospital administrators and other stakeholders, understanding the contributors to, and the relative importance of, various factors in explaining EMR system use, and its impact on patient satisfaction is of great importance. The factors identified in this work that influence a physician's use of EMR systems can be used to develop interventions and applications that can increase physician buy-in and use of EMR systems.
E-Government Strategies in Developed and Developing Countries: An Implementation Framework and Case Study

Given the fact that more and more governments invest heavily in e-government design and implementation, e-government has become an evolving and important research area in the IS field. Most, if not all, currently published e-government strategies are based on successful experiences from developed countries, which may not be directly applicable to developing countries. Based on a literature review, this study summarizes differences between developed/developing countries. It identifies key factors for a successful e-government implementation and proposes an implementation framework. As a demonstration, we follow the guidance of the proposed framework in conducting a case study to analyze the implementation strategies of e-government in developed and developing countries.
A Generic Mean Field Convergence Result for Systems of Interacting Objects

We consider a model for interacting objects, where the evolution of each object is given by a finite state Markov chain, whose transition matrix depends on the present and the past of the distribution of states of all objects. This is a general model of wide applicability; we mention as examples: TCP connections, HTTP flows, robot swarms, reputation systems. We show that when the number of objects is large, the occupancy measure of the system converges to a deterministic dynamical system (the "mean field") with dimension the number of states of an individual object. We also prove a fast simulation result, which allows to simulate the evolution of a few particular objects imbedded in a large system. We illustrate how this can be used to model the determination of reputation in large populations, with various liar strategies.
Unconditionally Secure Key Agreement and the Intrinsic Conditional Information

This paper is concerned with secret-key agreement by public discussion. Assume that two parties Alice and Bob and an adversary Eve have access to independent realizations of random variables X, Y, and Z, respectively, with joint distribution P/sub XYZ/. The secret-key rate S(X;Y/spl par/Z) has been defined as the maximal rate at which Alice and Bob can generate a secret key by communication over an insecure, but authenticated channel such that Eve's information about this key is arbitrarily small. We define a new conditional mutual information measure, the intrinsic conditional mutual information between S and Y when given Z, denoted by I(X;Y/spl darr/Z), which is an upper bound on S(X;Y/spl par/Z). The special scenarios are analyzed where X, Y, and Z are generated by sending a binary random variable R, for example a signal broadcast by a satellite, over independent channels, or two scenarios in which Z is generated by sending X and Y over erasure channels. In the first two scenarios it can be shown that the secret-key rate is strictly positive if and only if I(X;Y/spl darr/Z) is strictly positive. For the third scenario, a new protocol is presented which allows secret-key agreement even when all the previously known protocols fail.
Cross-Cultural Validation of the Short Form of the Physical Self Inventory (PSI-S)

The study examined the cross-cultural validity of the short form of the Physical Self-Inventory (PSI-S) among samples of adolescents speaking French, Dutch, Turkish, Italian, and Arab. A total of 4,867 adolescents (1,173 Belgian Flemish, 598 French, 1,222 Italian, 643 Turkish, 646 Kuwaiti, and 585 Tunisian) completed the original PSI-S version, and a revised version including a positively worded reformulation of the 3 negatively worded PSI-S items. The results supported the factor validity and reliability of revised PSI-S version across all cultural groups, and its superiority when compared to the original version. Compared with confirmatory factor analyses, relying on an exploratory structural equation modeling measurement model resulted in superior solution, and in more cleanly differentiated factors. PSI-S responses proved to be fully invariant across cultural groups, and presented no evidence of differential item functioning as a function of age, gender, body mass index (BMI), and sport involvement. However, the results revealed meaningful mean level differences as a function of gender, age, sport involvement, and BMI that were mostly consistent with the results from previous studies.
Hybrid FEC/ARQ schemes for real-time traffic in wireless networks

Real-time applications over wireless networks often suffers from jitter, delay and packet loss. The traditional techniques for error control are FEC (Forward Error Correction) and ARQ (Automatic Repeat Request). In this paper a hybrid FEC/ARQ mechanisms with limiting the slots number between the loss of the last retransmission of the original block n and the reception of block n + φ is analyzed in an environment of real time applications. We assume that the packet size increases when adding redundancy so that the amount of useful information contained in a packet is unchanged. We evalute analytically the performance of TFRC (TCP Friendly Rate Control) and ARC (Analytical Rate Control Protocol) as a function of the parameters of the FEC scheme, the limit number of retransmission used by ARQ scheme and the number of slots threshold Sth. We show that the combination of FEC and ARQ with limiting the Sth reduces the number of retransmissions and keeps a reasonable delay for real time traffic in wireless networks.
Carcass Characteristics and Qualitative Attributes of Pork from Immunocastrated Animals

An investigation was carried out to assess the carcass characteristics and meat quality aspects of immunocastrated male pigs of medium genetic potential for lean meat deposition in carcass (53 to 55%). When the crossbred Large White x Landrace pigs (n = 45) were 70 days old, they were distributed in a totally randomized design in three treatments (castrated males, females and immunocastrated males) with three replicates of five animals. The pigs were slaughtered when they were 140 days old. Carcass temperature and pH were recorded twice, at 45 min and 24 h after slaughter. The carcasses were evaluated for hot and cold carcass yield, commercial cuts yield, length and depth, back fat thickness, loin eye area and lean meat percentage. The Longissimus dorsi muscle was extracted for analysis of color (L*, a*, b*), exudate loss, cooking loss and centesimal and sensorial analysis of the meat. There were no significant differences for the evaluated parameters between castrated males, immunocastrated males and females, except for backfat thickness between the 7th and 8th thoracic vertebra and the point P2 (lower for immunocastrated males) and carcass temperature at 45 min post slaughter (higher in immunocastrated males), however, this did not interfer with the rate of pH decrease post mortem and the meat quality. The results from this research did not indicate a benefit of immunocastration on carcass characteristics of pigs of medium genetic potential for lean meat deposition in carcass, when compared to surgical castration.
Harnack Type Inequality : the Method of Moving Planes

A Harnack type inequality is established for solutions to some semilinear elliptic equations in dimension two. The result is motivated by our approach to the study of some semilinear elliptic equations on compact Riemannian manifolds, which originated from some Chern–Simons Higgs model and have been studied recently by various authors.