Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clinical and epidemiological profile and prevalence of tuberculosis/HIV co-infection in a regional health district in the state of Maranhão, Brazil.

OBJECTIVE To describe the clinical and epidemiological profile, as well as the prevalence, of tuberculosis/HIV co-infection in the Regional Health District of Tocantins, which serves 14 cities in the state of Maranhão, Brazil. METHODS This was a descriptive epidemiological study based on secondary data obtained from individual tuberculosis reporting forms in the Brazilian Case Registry Database. We included all reported cases of tuberculosis/HIV co-infection, by city, between January of 2001 and December of 2010. RESULTS In the district, 1,746 cases of tuberculosis were reported. Of those tested for HIV, 100 had positive results, which corresponded to a tuberculosis/HIV co-infection prevalence of 39%. Of the co-infected patients, 79% were male, 42% were Mulatto, and 64% were in the 20- to 40-year age bracket, 31% had had < 4 years of schooling, and 88% resided in the city of Imperatriz. Cases of pulmonary tuberculosis and new cases of tuberculosis predominated (in 87% and 73%, respectively). Of the co-infected patients, 27% had positive sputum smear microscopy results, and 89% had chest X-ray findings suggestive of tuberculosis. Sputum culture was performed in only 7% of the cases. CONCLUSIONS Our results show that, because of its clinical and epidemiological profile, tuberculosis/HIV co-infection is still a major public health problem in the southwestern region of Maranhão. This situation calls for better coordination between tuberculosis and sexually transmitted disease/AIDS control programs, as well as a political commitment and greater involvement on the part of administrators and health care professionals in the planning of interventions and the functioning of health care facilities.
A Short-term Intervention for Long-term Fairness in the Labor Market

The persistence of racial inequality in the U.S. labor market against a general backdrop of formal equality of opportunity is a troubling phenomenon that has significant ramifications on the design of hiring policies. In this paper, we show that current group disparate outcomes may be immovable even when hiring decisions are bound by an input-output notion of "individual fairness. " Instead, we construct a dynamic reputational model of the labor market that illustrates the reinforcing nature of asymmetric outcomes resulting from groups» divergent accesses to resources and as a result, investment choices. To address these disparities, we adopt a dual labor market composed of a Temporary Labor Market (TLM), in which firms» hiring strategies are constrained to ensure statistical parity of workers granted entry into the pipeline, and a Permanent Labor Market (PLM), in which firms hire top performers as desired. Individual worker reputations produce externalities for their group; the corresponding feedback loop raises the collective reputation of the initially disadvantaged group via a TLM fairness intervention that need not be permanent. We show that such a restriction on hiring practices induces an equilibrium that, under particular market conditions, Pareto-dominates those arising from strategies that statistically discriminate or employ a "group-blind" criterion. The enduring nature of equilibria that are both inequitable and Pareto suboptimal suggests that fairness interventions beyond procedural checks of hiring decisions will be of critical importance in a world where machines play a greater role in the employment process.
Tetramethylammonium hydroxide poisoning

Introduction. Tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) is widely used as a developer or etchant in semiconductor and photoelectric industries. In addition to alkalinity-related chemical burn, dermal exposure to TMAH may also result in respiratory failure and/or sudden death. The latter toxic effect has been of great concern in Taiwan after the occurrence of three fatalities in recent years. To better understand the toxicity following dermal exposure to TMAH, we analyzed all cases with TMAH exposure reported to the Taiwan Poison Control Center (PCC-Taiwan). Case reports. In total, there were 13 cases of such exposure, including three patients who died after being exposed to 25% TMAH. A worker also developed severe effects manifesting muscle weakness, dyspnea, hyperglycemia, and chemical burn (28% of total body surface area) shortly after an accidental exposure to 2.38% TMAH. He received endotracheal intubation with assisted ventilation for 2 days and survived. Conclusion. Skin corrosive injury related to the alkalinity of TMAH and the ganglionic toxicity of tetramethylammonium ion might contribute to the clinical manifestations that occurred after dermal TMAH exposure. Thorough skin decontamination followed by prompt respiratory support should be the mainstay in the management of dermal TMAH exposure. Preventive strategies are warranted as well to decrease future occupational TMAH exposures.
Mosaic RAS/MAPK variants cause sporadic vascular malformations which respond to targeted therapy

BACKGROUND. Sporadic vascular malformations (VMs) are complex congenital anomalies of blood vessels that lead to stroke, life-threatening bleeds, disfigurement, overgrowth, and/or pain. Therapeutic options are severely limited, and multidisciplinary management remains challenging, particularly for high-flow arteriovenous malformations (AVM). METHODS. To investigate the pathogenesis of sporadic intracranial and extracranial VMs in 160 children in which known genetic causes had been excluded, we sequenced DNA from affected tissue and optimized analysis for detection of low mutant allele frequency. RESULTS. We discovered multiple mosaic-activating variants in 4 genes of the RAS/MAPK pathway, KRAS, NRAS, BRAF, and MAP2K1, a pathway commonly activated in cancer and responsible for the germline RAS-opathies. These variants were more frequent in high-flow than low-flow VMs. In vitro characterization and 2 transgenic zebrafish AVM models that recapitulated the human phenotype validated the pathogenesis of the mutant alleles. Importantly, treatment of AVM-BRAF mutant zebrafish with the BRAF inhibitor vemurafinib restored blood flow in AVM. CONCLUSION. Our findings uncover a major cause of sporadic VMs of different clinical types and thereby offer the potential of personalized medical treatment by repurposing existing licensed cancer therapies. FUNDING. This work was funded or supported by grants from the AVM Butterfly Charity, the Wellcome Trust (UK), the Medical Research Council (UK), the UK National Institute for Health Research, the L’Oreal-Melanoma Research Alliance, the European Research Council, and the National Human Genome Research Institute (US).
Gluteus Maximus and Hamstring Activation During Selected Weight-Bearing Resistance Exercises

Abstract McCurdy, K, Walker, J, and Yuen, D. Gluteus maximus and hamstring activation during selected weight-bearing resistance exercises. J Strength Cond Res 32(3): 594–601, 2018—The purpose of this study was to compare the gluteus maximus (GM) and hamstring group (HG) electromyographic (EMG) activation levels among selected weight-bearing resistance exercises. Eighteen young adult females with previous resistance training experience completed the study. Strength was assessed on the bilateral squat (BS) (3 repetition maximum [RM]), modified single-leg squat (MSLS) (3RM), and stiff-leg deadlift (SLDL) (8RM) to determine an 8RM load for all lifts. Surface EMG was collected after 48 hours of rest using wireless Trigno IM Sensors using EMMA software (Delsys), which also collected and synchronized 3D hip and knee motion. A maximum voluntary isometric contraction was determined for the GM and HG to normalize the EMG data. During EMG data collection, 3 repetitions were completed using an 8RM load on all 3 exercises. Gluteus maximus EMG was significantly greater than HG EMG on the BS (40.3 vs. 24.4%, p < 0.001), MSLS (65.6 vs. 40.1 %, p < 0.012), and SLDL (40.5 vs. 29.9 %, p < 0.047). The MSLS produced significantly greater HG EMG (p = 0.001) compared with the SLDL, whereas the SLDL was significantly greater (p = 0.004) than the BS. The MSLS GM EMG was also significantly greater (p < 0.001) than the SLDL and BS, whereas no difference was found between the SLDL and BS. Comparing the activation of the 2 muscle groups in all exercises, the GM seems to be the primary muscle recruited whereas the MSLS seems to produce greater GM and HG activation. The data indicate that it would be most beneficial to include the MSLS during GM and HG training.
Fuzzy-neural-network control for robot manipulator via sliding-mode design

This study presents the design and analysis of an intelligent control system that inherits the robust properties of sliding-mode control (SMC) for an n-link robot manipulator including actuator dynamics in order to achieve a high-precision position tracking with a firm robustness. First, the coupled higher-order dynamic model of an n-link robot manipulator is introduced briefly. Then, a conventional SMC scheme is developed for the joint position tracking of the robot manipulator. Moreover, a fuzzy-neural-network inherited SMC (FNNISMC) scheme is proposed to relax the requirement of detailed system information and deal with chattering control efforts in the SMC system. In the FNNISMC strategy, the FNN framework is designed to mimic the SMC law, and adaptive tuning algorithms for network parameters are derived in the sense of projection algorithm and Lyapunov stability theorem to ensure the network convergence as well as stable control performance. Numerical simulations of a two-link robot manipulator actuated by DC servo motors are provided to justify the claims of the proposed FNNISMC system, and the superiority of the proposed FNNISMC scheme is also evaluated by quantitative comparison with previous intelligent control schemes.
The impact of on-pump coronary artery bypass surgery vs. off-pump coronary artery bypass surgery on sexual function.

INTRODUCTION Erectile dysfunction and ischemic heart disease are common health problems that affect elderly individuals. Despite advances in treatment strategies, cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) has been used for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) for over three decades for surgical myocardial revascularization. AIM To discuss the difference between the on pump and the newer alternative-the off-pump CABG (OPCABG) surgery-on the sexual function. METHODS This prospective study included 100 patients who underwent CABG. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The patients were evaluated by an abridged form of International Index of Erectile Function questionnaire (IIEF-5), Pharmaco-Penile Duplex Ultrasound and finally by the European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation. The patients were underwent either on-pump CABG or OPCABG. Six months after surgery, the erectile function was revaluated according to the same preoperative measures. RESULTS Patients included in the study were classified into two matched groups: group I-patients who underwent on-pump CABG (N = 50); and group II-patients who underwent OPCABG (N = 50). The frequency of intercourse was significantly higher in OPCABG (P < 0.05) after surgery. The mean +/- standard deviation of the IIEF-5 scores of the on-pump group postoperatively became 12.48 +/- 7.19 whereas it became 15.88 +/- 6.67 in the off-pump group (P < 0.05). Moreover, the number of patients who reported postoperative improvement of their IIEF-5 score was significantly higher in OPCABG group (N = 23) compared with the conventional on-pump CABG group (N = 13) (P < 0.05). There was no significant change in the duplex ultrasound after surgery between both groups. CONCLUSIONS The OPCABG has a diminished impact on the sexual function of patients compared with the conventional on-pump CABG. Therefore, the type of operation can be considered a predictive factor of sexual function following CAB surgery.
MicroRNA 9-3p Targets β1 Integrin To Sensitize Claudin-Low Breast Cancer Cells to MEK Inhibition

ABSTRACT MEK1/2 inhibitors such as AZD6244 are in clinical trials for the treatment of multiple cancers, including breast cancer. Targeted kinase inhibition can induce compensatory kinome changes, rendering single therapeutic agents ineffective. To identify target proteins to be used in a combinatorial approach to inhibit tumor cell growth, we used a novel strategy that identified microRNAs (miRNAs) that synergized with AZD6244 to inhibit the viability of the claudin-low breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231. Screening of a miRNA mimic library revealed the ability of miR-9-3p to significantly enhance AZD6244-induced extracellular signal-regulated kinase inhibition and growth arrest, while miR-9-3p had little effect on growth alone. Promoter methylation of mir-9 genes correlated with low expression of miR-9-3p in different breast cancer cell lines. Consistent with miR-9-3p having synthetic enhancer tumor suppressor characteristics, miR-9-3p expression in combination with MEK inhibitor caused a sustained loss of c-MYC expression and growth inhibition. The β1 integrin gene (ITGB1) was identified as a new miR-9-3p target, and the growth inhibition seen with small interfering RNA knockdown or antibody blocking of ITGB1 in combination with MEK inhibitor phenocopied the growth inhibition seen with miR-9-3p plus AZD6244. The miRNA screen led to identification of a druggable protein, ITGB1, whose functional inhibition synergizes with MEK inhibitor.
Practical Secure Computation Outsourcing

The rapid development of cloud computing promotes a wide deployment of data and computation outsourcing to cloud service providers by resource-limited entities. Based on a pay-per-use model, a client without enough computational power can easily outsource large-scale computational tasks to a cloud. Nonetheless, the issue of security and privacy becomes a major concern when the customer’s sensitive or confidential data is not processed in a fully trusted cloud environment. Recently, a number of publications have been proposed to investigate and design specific secure outsourcing schemes for different computational tasks. The aim of this survey is to systemize and present the cutting-edge technologies in this area. It starts by presenting security threats and requirements, followed with other factors that should be considered when constructing secure computation outsourcing schemes. In an organized way, we then dwell on the existing secure outsourcing solutions to different computational tasks such as matrix computations, mathematical optimization, and so on, treating data confidentiality as well as computation integrity. Finally, we provide a discussion of the literature and a list of open challenges in the area.
High-intensity ultrasound enhances the immunoglobulin (Ig)G and IgE binding of ovalbumin.

BACKGROUND Hen eggs are widely used in food industry as a result of their excellent nutritional and processing properties and ovalbumin (OVA) is the major allergen of hen egg whites. Ultrasound has been widely used in the food processing industry, although the effect of high-intensity ultrasound on the immunoglobulin (Ig)G binding, IgE binding and conformational structure of OVA remains unclear. RESULTS Ultrasound treatment at 600-800 W dramatically increased the IgG and IgE binding of OVA, with the highest values observed at 600 W. The free sulfhydryl content, surface hydrophobicity and ultraviolet absorption were gradually increased when the power was increased from 200 to 600 W, implying the occurrence of molecule unfolding. When the power was 800 W, the binding ability was slightly decreased and was associated with the aggregation of OVA molecules. Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis analysis implied that ultrasound treatment at 800 W could induce the aggregation of OVA molecules via disulfide bonds and/or hydrophobic interactions. CONCLUSION High-intensity ultrasound can increase the potential allergenicity of OVA. Therefore, high-intensity ultrasound processing of some egg products alone may improve the risk of an allergenic reaction in egg allergy patients to some extent. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry.
A genome-integrated massively parallel reporter assay reveals DNA sequence determinants of cis-regulatory activity in neural cells

Abstract Recent large-scale genomics efforts to characterize the cis-regulatory sequences that orchestrate genome-wide expression patterns have produced impressive catalogues of putative regulatory elements. Most of these sequences have not been functionally tested, and our limited understanding of the non-coding genome prevents us from predicting which sequences are bona fide cis-regulatory elements. Recently, massively parallel reporter assays (MPRAs) have been deployed to measure the activity of putative cis-regulatory sequences in several biological contexts, each with specific advantages and distinct limitations. We developed LV-MPRA, a novel lentiviral-based, massively parallel reporter gene assay, to study the function of genome-integrated regulatory elements in any mammalian cell type; thus, making it possible to apply MPRAs in more biologically relevant contexts. We measured the activity of 2,600 sequences in U87 glioblastoma cells and human neural progenitor cells (hNPCs) and explored how regulatory activity is encoded in DNA sequence. We demonstrate that LV-MPRA can be applied to estimate the effects of local DNA sequence and regional chromatin on regulatory activity. Our data reveal that primary DNA sequence features, such as GC content and dinucleotide composition, accurately distinguish sequences with high activity from sequences with low activity in a full chromosomal context, and may also function in combination with different transcription factor binding sites to determine cell type specificity. We conclude that LV-MPRA will be an important tool for identifying cis-regulatory elements and stimulating new understanding about how the non-coding genome encodes information.
Five-year Antibody Persistence and Booster Response After 1 or 2 Doses of Meningococcal A, C, W and Y Tetanus Toxoid Conjugate Vaccine in Healthy Children

Background: We evaluated antibody persistence up to 5 years postvaccination with a quadrivalent meningococcal serogroups A, C, W and Y tetanus toxoid conjugate vaccine (MenACWY-TT), and subsequent booster responses to MenACWY-TT in healthy US children. Methods: In the initial phase II, open, multicenter study (NCT00471081), 349 infants were randomized (1:1) to receive MenACWY-TT (1 or 2 doses). In the follow-up study (NCT00718666), we evaluated antibody persistence at years 1, 3 and 5 by serum bactericidal assay using human complement (hSBA). At year 5, children received a booster dose of MenACWY-TT. We compared their immune responses at 1 month postbooster with those from 100 age-matched, meningococcal naive children, who received a primary MenACWY-TT dose. We recorded solicited adverse events for 4 days and unsolicited adverse events for 31 days, followed by an additional 5-month extended safety follow-up. Results: At year 5, ≥64.0% of 1-dose and ≥74.6% of 2-dose recipients had hSBA titers ≥8 for MenC, MenW and MenY. For MenA, 31.7% of 1-dose and 38.0% of 2-dose recipients had hSBA titers ≥8. One month postvaccination, all booster dose recipients and ≥78.5% of primary dose recipients exhibited hSBA titers ≥8 for all serogroups. Geometric mean titers were higher in primed than in naive children. MenACWY-TT had a clinically acceptable safety profile. Conclusions: With the exception of serogroup W, antibody persistence 5 years after MenACWY-TT vaccination did not differ substantially between children who received 1 or 2 doses in infancy. A booster dose of MenACWY-TT elicited robust anamnestic responses and was well tolerated.
Unraveling the drivers of the storm time radiation belt response

We present a new framework to study the time evolution and dynamics of the outer Van Allen belt electron fluxes. The framework is entirely based on the large‐scale solar wind storm drivers and their substructures. The Van Allen Probe observations, revealing the electron flux behavior throughout the outer belt, are combined with continuous, long‐term (over 1.5 solar cycles) geosynchronous orbit data set from GOES and solar wind measurements A superposed epoch analysis, where we normalize the timescales for each substructure (sheath, ejecta, and interface region) allows us to avoid smearing effects and to distinguish the electron flux evolution during various driver structures. We show that the radiation belt response is not random: The electron flux variations are determined by the combined effect of the structured solar wind driver and prestorm electron flux levels. In particular, we find that loss mechanisms dominate during stream interface regions, coronal mass ejection (CME) ejecta, and sheaths while enhancements occur during fast streams trailing the stream interface or the CME.
Evolutionary Feature Learning for 3-D Object Recognition

3-D object recognition is a challenging task for many applications including autonomous robot navigation and scene understanding. Accurate recognition relies on the selection/learning of discriminative features that are in turn used to uniquely characterize the objects. This paper proposes a novel evolutionary feature learning (EFL) technique for 3-D object recognition. The proposed novel automatic feature learning approach can operate directly on 3-D raw data, alleviating the need for data pre-processing, human expertise and/or defining a large set of parameters. EFL offers smart search strategy to learn the best features in a huge feature space to achieve superior recognition performance. The proposed technique has been extensively evaluated for the task of 3-D object recognition on four popular data sets including Washington RGB-D (low resolution 3-D Video), CIN 2D3D, Willow 2D3D and ETH-80 object data set. Reported experimental results and evaluation against existing state-of-the-art methods (e.g., unsupervised dictionary learning and deep networks) show that the proposed EFL consistently achieves superior performance on all these data sets.
New theoretical and experimental methods for the design of fiber optic tweezers

This paper presents a study of optical forces acting on dielectric particles in media of distinct refractive index. The radiation pressure forces produced by optical tweezers are calculated using the finite difference time domain method as well as the Lorentz force on electric dipoles. The model considers a 2-dimension structure composed of a waveguide and a dielectric microparticle. Furthermore, the paper presents preliminary experimental results concerning the implementation of fiber optical tweezers system based on polymeric lensed fibers.