Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pioglitazone Decreases Hepatitis C Viral Load in Overweight, Treatment Naïve, Genotype 4 Infected-Patients: A Pilot Study

Background Insulin resistance (IR) is induced by chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotypes 1 and 4 infections. It is not known whether drugs that affect IR such as Pioglitazone and Prednisone also affect serum HCV RNA titers independently of PEG-Interferon-α2/ribavirin treatment. The primary aim was to assess whether Pioglitazone by improving IR and/or inflammation decreases HCV viral load independently of standard of care HCV treatment. A secondary aim was to assess whether Prednisone, a drug that induces insulin resistance and stimulates HCV viral entry and replication in replicon culture systems, increases HCV viral load in this population. Methodology/Principal Findings We designed a two-arm, parallel Pilot Study of overweight, treatment naïve genotype 4 HCV-infected patients at a public referral Liver Clinic in Giza, Egypt. The subjects received Pioglitazone (30 mg/day for 14 days) or Prednisone (40 mg/day for 4 days) in a randomized fashion, but the two arms can be considered independent pilot studies. Only changes from baseline within each arm were assessed and no contrasts of the interventions were made, as this was not an aim of the study. Among 105 consecutive HCV genotype 4 patients, 39 were enrolled based on the optimal sample size and power analysis according to the CONSORT statement; 20 to the Pioglitazone group and 19 to the Prednisone group. Pioglitazone was effective in decreasing serum HCV RNA at day-14 (n = 10; difference of means = 205,618 IU/ml; 95% CI 26,600 to 384,600; P<0.001). Although Prednisone did increase serum HCV RNA at day-4 (n = 10; change from baseline = −42,786 IU/ml; 95% CI −85,500 to −15,700; P = 0.049), the log10 HCV RNA titers were statistically not different from baseline day-0. Conclusion/Significance This is the first documentation that Pioglitazone decreases the serum HCV RNA titers independently of PEG-Interferon-α2/ribavirin treatment. The novel findings of our Study provide the foundation for basic and clinical investigations on the molecular mechanisms responsible for the Pioglitazone-induced decrease in HCV genotype 4 RNA titers. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01157975
Income Support for the Unemployed: Issues and Options

With the aim to provide guidelines for countries wishing to introduce or improve income support systems for the unemployed, the book summarizes the evidence about the performance of five such systems: unemployment insurance, unemployment assistance, unemployment insurance savings accounts, severance pay, and public works. These systems are evaluated by two sets of criteria: (1) performance criteria, evaluating how well these systems work - how they protect incomes and what other, particularly efficiency related, effects they may have; and (2) design and implementation criteria, evaluating how these systems fit the country - how suitable are these programs given country-specific conditions, chief among them being labor market and other institutions, the capacity needed for administering income support programs, the size of the informal sector, and prevalence of private transfers. This report also offers summary evaluations of alternative systems by describing the strengths and weaknesses of each system and pointing out the country specific circumstances that are particularly conducive to performance.
Statistical Arbitrage and Robust Tests for Cointegration

One application of cointegration tests is screening candidate stocks for the investment strategy known as statistical arbitrage. This paper develops two robust tests for cointegration by using rank-based and least absolute deviation regression to modify the seminal Engle-Granger test. Critical values are generated and power calculated for various error distributions. Finally, the tests are utilized in a simple pairs trading strategy and backtested on daily data from 2001 to 2010. The rank-based cointegration test has superior qualities in that context, suggesting one application of this new statistical test.
Effectiveness of artemether/lumefantrine for the treatment of uncomplicated Plasmodium vivax and P. falciparum malaria in young children in Papua New Guinea.

BACKGROUND Artemisinin combination therapy is recommended as treatment for uncomplicated Plasmodium falciparum (Pf) malaria, whereas chloroquine is still widely used for non-Pf infections. A common treatment for both vivax and falciparum malaria would be welcome. METHODS A longitudinal prospective effectiveness study of 1682 children aged 3-27 months in outpatient clinics in Papua New Guinea. The main outcome was clinical treatment failure rate following treatment with artemether/lumefantrine (AL). RESULTS Among 5670 febrile episodes, 1682 (28%) had positive rapid diagnostic test (RDT) results and were treated with AL. A total of 1261 (22%) had an infection confirmed by blood slide examination. Of these, 594 Pv and 332 Pf clinical malaria cases were included in the primary effectiveness analysis. Clinical treatment failure rates at 7, 28, and 42 days were 0.2%, 2.2%, and 12.0%, respectively, for Pv and 0.3%, 1.2%, and 3.6%, respectively, for Pf. A single malaria-unrelated death occurred within 42 days following treatment with AL, in a child who was aparasitemic by blood slide at reattendance. CONCLUSIONS AL provides a rapid clinical response against both Pf and Pv malaria, but is associated with a high rate of Pv recurrent clinical episodes between days 28 and 42. In order to prevent relapsing infections from long-lasting hypnozoites, AL should ideally be complemented with a course of primaquine. In the absence of better treatment and diagnostic options, the use of AL in young children in routine practice is an acceptable, interim option in coendemic areas where Pv is resistant to chloroquine and specific treatment for Pv hypnozoites not feasible.
Spliced DNA Sequences in the Paramecium Germline: Their Properties and Evolutionary Potential

Despite playing a crucial role in germline-soma differentiation, the evolutionary significance of developmentally regulated genome rearrangements (DRGRs) has received scant attention. An example of DRGR is DNA splicing, a process that removes segments of DNA interrupting genic and/or intergenic sequences. Perhaps, best known for shaping immune-system genes in vertebrates, DNA splicing plays a central role in the life of ciliated protozoa, where thousands of germline DNA segments are eliminated after sexual reproduction to regenerate a functional somatic genome. Here, we identify and chronicle the properties of 5,286 sequences that putatively undergo DNA splicing (i.e., internal eliminated sequences [IESs]) across the genomes of three closely related species of the ciliate Paramecium (P. tetraurelia, P. biaurelia, and P. sexaurelia). The study reveals that these putative IESs share several physical characteristics. Although our results are consistent with excision events being largely conserved between species, episodes of differential IES retention/excision occur, may have a recent origin, and frequently involve coding regions. Our findings indicate interconversion between somatic—often coding—DNA sequences and noncoding IESs, and provide insights into the role of DNA splicing in creating potentially functional genetic innovation.
Self-Supervised Synonym Extraction from the Web

Current synonym extraction methods work in a “closed” way. Given the problem word and set of target words, researchers have to choose words synonymous with the problem word using features such as lexical patterns and distributional similarities. This paper tries to discover synonyms in an “open” way and presents a synonym extraction framework based on self-supervised learning. We first analysis the nature of the open method and argue that a trained pattern-independent model for synonym extraction is feasible. We then model the extraction of synonyms from sentences as a sequential labeling problem and automatically generate labeled training samples by using structured knowledge from online encyclopedias and some generic heuristic rules. Finally, we train some Conditional Random Field (CRF) models and use them to extract synonyms from the web. We successfully extract more than 20 million facts, which contain 826,219 distinct pairs of synonyms.
Fourier analysis of stochastic sampling strategies for assessing bias and variance in integration

Each pixel in a photorealistic, computer generated picture is calculated by approximately integrating all the light arriving at the pixel, from the virtual scene. A common strategy to calculate these high-dimensional integrals is to average the estimates at stochastically sampled locations. The strategy with which the sampled locations are chosen is of utmost importance in deciding the quality of the approximation, and hence rendered image. We derive connections between the spectral properties of stochastic sampling patterns and the first and second order statistics of estimates of integration using the samples. Our equations provide insight into the assessment of stochastic sampling strategies for integration. We show that the amplitude of the expected Fourier spectrum of sampling patterns is a useful indicator of the bias when used in numerical integration. We deduce that estimator variance is directly dependent on the variance of the sampling spectrum over multiple realizations of the sampling pattern. We then analyse Gaussian jittered sampling, a simple variant of jittered sampling, that allows a smooth trade-off of bias for variance in uniform (regular grid) sampling. We verify our predictions using spectral measurement, quantitative integration experiments and qualitative comparisons of rendered images.
Direct and indirect measurement of inter-cell capacitance in NAND flash memory

As the density of NAND flash memory grows, the cell-to-cell interference caused by capacitive coupling among neighboring cells becomes a critical source of bit errors. Thus, it is important to precisely measure the value of capacitances to remove the interferences and lower the bit-error rate. Previous approaches have employed the least mean square (LMS) or the least square adaptive filtering approaches to remove the interference and thereby indirectly assess the capacitance values. In this paper, we measure the capacitance values directly by using specific cell programming patterns. It is found that the capacitance values do not change according to the PE (program erase) cycles, thus the measurement can be conducted only once for a fresh chip. We show the comparison results between the direct and the least squares based methods. The direct method not only provides the statistical distribution of the capacitance values but also shows more accurate estimation when the interference is very severe. The indirect methods that employ adaptive filtering have the advantage of using existing data instead of writing specific patterns.
Set-Based Prediction of Traffic Participants on Arbitrary Road Networks

Safety is of paramount importance in automated driving. One of the main challenges ensuring safety is the unknown future behavior of surrounding traffic participants. Previous works ignore this uncertainty or often address it by computing probability distributions of other traffic participants over time. Probabilistic approaches make it possible to predict the collision probability with other traffic participants, but cannot formally guarantee (i.e., cannot mathematically prove for given assumptions) whether a planned maneuver is collision-free. Our approach addresses exactly this problem: instead of computing probability distributions, we compute an over-approximation of all possible occupancies of surrounding traffic participants over time. This makes it possible to prove whether an automated vehicle can possibly collide with other traffic participants. The presented algorithm for occupancy prediction works on arbitrary road networks and produces results within a fraction of the prediction horizon. Experiments based on real-world data validate our approach and show that we could not find a behavior of a traffic participant that is not enclosed in our prediction.
Microbubbly drag reduction in Taylor–Couette flow in the wavy vortex regime

We investigate the effect of microbubbles on Taylor–Couette flow by means of direct numerical simulations. We employ an Eulerian–Lagrangian approach with a gas–fluid coupling based on the point-force approximation. Added mass, drag, lift and gravity are taken into account in the modelling of the motion of the individual bubble. We find that very dilute suspensions of small non-deformable bubbles (volume void fraction below 1%, zero Weber number and bubble Reynolds number ≲10) induce a robust statistically steady drag reduction (up to 20%) in the wavy vortex flow regime (Re=600–2500). The Reynolds number dependence of the normalized torque (the so-called torque reduction ratio (TRR) which corresponds to the drag reduction) is consistent with a recent series of experimental measurements performed by Murai et al. (J. Phys. Conf. Ser. vol. 14, 2005, p. 143). Our analysis suggests that the physical mechanism for the torque reduction in this regime is due to the local axial forcing, induced by rising bubbles, that is able to break the highly dissipative Taylor wavy vortices in the system. We finally show that the lift force acting on the bubble is crucial in this process. When it is neglected, the bubbles preferentially accumulate near the inner cylinder and the bulk flow is less efficiently modified. Movies are available with the online version of the paper.
The Psychology of Neoliberalism and the Neoliberalism of Psychology

In this article, we approach the relationship between neoliberalism and psychological science from the theoretical perspective of cultural psychology. In the first section, we trace how engagement with neoliberal systems results in characteristic tendencies—including a radical abstraction of self from social and material context, an entrepreneurial understanding of self as an ongoing development project, an imperative for personal growth and fulfillment, and an emphasis on affect management for self-regulation—that increasingly constitute the knowledge base of mainstream psychological science. However, as we consider in the second section, psychological science is not just an observer of neoliberalism and its impact on psychological experience. Instead, by studying psychological processes independent of cultural–ecological or historical context and by championing individual growth and affective regulation as the key to optimal well-being, psychological scientists reproduce and reinforce the influence and authority of neoliberal systems. Rather than a disinterested bystander, hegemonic forms of psychological science are thoroughly implicated in the neoliberal project.
Cross-age peer mentoring for elementary students with behavioral and academic risk factors

Abstract In many cases, the school failure cycle begins in elementary school for students with specific risk factors. Young students with learning difficulties and behavioral problems require a timely and sufficient program to prevent poor school outcomes. After-school mentoring programs are effective in providing meaningful relationships, structure, and academic support, thus mitigating risk factors and improving academic achievement. This case example describes a year-long, cross-age peer mentoring program between high school students identified as gifted and elementary students with risk factors attending adjacent schools with support from a local university. The positive results of this community-based mentoring program include improved academic grades, teacher perceptions, student-rated self-efficacy, and social validity. These results are presented along with implications for practice.
Cosmological Mestel Disks and the Rossby Vortex Instability: The Origin of Supermassive Black Holes

A scenario is put forth for the formation of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. It depends uon the formation of a Mestel disk with a flat rotation curve, M<r ∝ r and Σ ∝ 1/r. Such disks could form from the collapse of uniformly rotating, isolated, gaseous clouds, either protogalactic, galaxy-mass damped Lyα clouds or the gas that survives galaxy mergers. We propose that in either case the disk will be unstable to the Rossby vortex instability (RVI). This instability grows from any large, steep pressure gradient in an optically thick disk. Such pressure gradients either occur adjacent to compact objects or could be triggered by heating from individual supernovae in and around the disk. Upon excitation, the RVI transports angular momentum outward, accreting nearly all mass within the initiation radius. We have calculated that in very thin disks, the nonlinear vortices initiated by the RVI can transport angular momentum far more efficiently than turbulence. Compared to a viscosity-based Shakura-Sunyaev disk, the RVI transports angular momentum out to a much larger radius, so more mass is accreted into the central black hole. A typical galaxy rotational velocity is vrot = 200 km s-1, and the critical column density, necessary to initiate the RVI, is ΣCCD ≃ 100 g cm-2. For M<r = 2πr2Σ, we have rCCD = v/(2πΣCCDG), and the mass accreted becomes MBH = v/(2πΣCCDG2) = 3 × 107 M☉. Both the black hole mass MBH and its v dependence are in good agreement with recent observations, because vrot = σc, where σc is the velocity dispersion of the bulge at the radius of mutual contact.
The Performance of Japanese Mutual Funds

We analyze the performance of Japanese opentype stock mutual funds for the 1981-1992 period. The results show that, regardless of the performance measures and benchmarks employed, most of the Japanese mutual funds underperform the benchmarks by between 3.6% and 10.8% per annum. These funds tend to invest more in large stocks with low book-to-market ratios. But this feature does not explain the underperformance. A potential explanation is the dilution effect caused by inflows offends. In Japan, a new investor of an open-type fund only pays in the after-tax value of the net asset value. We conduct a bootstrap experiment to assess the magnitude of this dilution effect. Article published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Financial Studies in its journal, The Review of Financial Studies.
The Relationship Between Depression and Internet Addiction

Prior research has utilized the Zung Depression Inventory (ZDI) and found that moderate to severe rates of depression coexist with pathological Internet use.1 Although the ZDI was utilized for its expediency with on-line administration, its limitations include poor normative data and less frequent clinical use. Therefore, this study utilized the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), which has more accurate norms and frequent usage among dual diagnostic patient populations. An on-line survey administered on a World Wide Web site utilized the BDI as part of a larger study. A total of 312 surveys was collected with 259 valid profiles from addicted users, which again supported significant levels of depression to be associated with pathological Internet use. This article discusses how a treatment protocol should emphasis the primary psychiatric condition if related to a subsequent impulse control problem such as pathological Internet use. Effective management of psychiatric symptoms may indirectly correct pathologi.
Discovery of Novel ncRNA Sequences in Multiple Genome Alignments on the Basis of Conserved and Stable Secondary Structures

Recently, non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) have been discovered with novel functions, and it has been appreciated that there is pervasive transcription of genomes. Moreover, many novel ncRNAs are not conserved on the primary sequence level. Therefore, de novo computational ncRNA detection that is accurate and efficient is desirable. The purpose of this study is to develop a ncRNA detection method based on conservation of structure in more than two genomes. A new method called Multifind, using Multilign, was developed. Multilign predicts the common secondary structure for multiple input sequences. Multifind then uses measures of structure conservation to estimate the probability that the input sequences are a conserved ncRNA using a classification support vector machine. Multilign is based on Dynalign, which folds and aligns two sequences simultaneously using a scoring scheme that does not include sequence identity; its structure prediction quality is therefore not affected by input sequence diversity. Additionally, ensemble defect was introduced to Multifind as an additional discriminating feature that quantifies the compactness of the folding space for a sequence. Benchmarks showed Multifind performs better than RNAz and LocARNATE+RNAz, a method that uses RNAz on structure alignments generated by LocARNATE, on testing sequences extracted from the Rfam database. For de novo ncRNA discovery in three genomes, Multifind and LocARNATE+RNAz had an advantage over RNAz in low similarity regions of genome alignments. Additionally, Multifind and LocARNATE+RNAz found different subsets of known ncRNA sequences, suggesting the two approaches are complementary.
Risk-Neutral Kurtosis, Jumps, and Option Pricing: Evidence from 100 Most Actively Traded Firms on the CBOE

Distinct from the market-index, most individual firms’ risk-neutral return distributions share three characteristics: they are far more volatile, substantially less negatively-skewed, and more leptokurtotic. But, what are the implications of these properties for models of individual equity options? We present and empirically investigate a double-jump option-pricing model that allows for stochastic volatility, returnjumps, volatility-jumps, and admits many existing models as special cases. Using a sample of 100 most active firms on the CBOE, we find that (i) the double-jump process is the least misspecified and the least demanding in fitting the tail-size and tail-asymmetry of the individual return distributions; (ii) the double-jump model improves pricing performance beyond return-jumps absent volatility-jumps, and beyond volatility-jumps absent return-jumps; and (iii) between return-jumps and volatilityjumps, the former is empirically more relevant than the latter for pricing options. The inverse link between volatility-jumps and return-jumps is instrumental for reconciling the valuation of deep out-of-money options. Compared to risk-neutral skewness, the excess kurtosis is, by far, a more crucial determinant of the cross-section of pricingerrors, especially for puts. JEL Classification Numbers: G10, G12, G13