Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Natural History of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) Infection

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a leading cause of chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma, as well as the most common indication for liver transplantation in many countries. Although the incidence of hepatitis C infection has dramatically decreased during the past decade, the worldwide reservoir of chronically infected persons is estimated at 170 million, or 3% of the global population. There is much controversy surrounding the natural history of hepatitis C infection. The rate of chronic HCV infection is affected by a person's age, gender, race, and viral immune response. Approximately 75%-85% of HCV-infected persons will progress to chronic HCV infection, and are at risk for the development of extrahepatic manifestations, compensated and decompensated cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The rate of progression to cirrhosis is highly variable, and is influenced by several factors, including the amount of alcohol consumption, age of initial HCV infection, degree of inflammation and fibrosis on liver biopsy, HIV and HBV coinfection, and comordid conditions. An estimated 10%-15% of HCV-infected persons will advance to cirrhosis within the first 20 years. Persons with cirrhosis are at increased risk of developing HCC. An understanding of the natural history of hepatitis C is essential to effectively manage, treat, and counsel individuals with HCV infection.
Leveraging Sentence-level Information with Encoder LSTM for Natural Language Understanding

Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) and one of its specific architectures, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), have been widely used for sequence labeling. In this paper, we first enhance LSTM-based sequence labeling to explicitly model label dependencies. Then we propose another enhancement to incorporate the global information spanning over the whole input sequence. The latter proposed method, encoder-labeler LSTM, first encodes the whole input sequence into a fixed length vector with the encoder LSTM, and then uses this encoded vector as the initial state of another LSTM for sequence labeling. Combining these methods, we can predict the label sequence with considering label dependencies and information of whole input sequence. In the experiments of a slot filling task, which is an essential component of natural language understanding, with using the standard ATIS corpus, we achieved the state-of-the-art F1-score of 95.66%.
Effect of prior statin use on outcome after severe traumatic brain injury in a South-East Asian population

Abstract Introduction: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a global concern associated with high mortality and morbidity. Costs to individuals and society are extensive due to poor recovery, long-term disability and the young age group affected. Statins have emerged as potential therapeutic agents in TBI. This study aimed to investigate the protective effect of statins in severe TBI. Methods: This case-control study included adults with severe TBI. A sliding dichotomy approach was used to dichotomize mortality at 14-days and Glasgow Outcome Score (GOS) at 6 months. Logistic regression analysis was used to calculate the odds ratios (OR) for 14-day mortality and 6-month GOS. Results: Equivalent cohorts of 59 age- and sex-matched statin and non-statin users were selected, resulting in population of 118 (mean age = 70.2 years, SD = 10.3), with a median Glasgow Coma Score of 5. Statins did not reduce the likelihood of mortality at 14 days (adjusted OR = 1.23, p = 0.68) or unfavourable outcome at 6 months (adjusted OR = 1.19, p = 0.78). Conclusions: Despite increasing evidence for benefit of statins in TBI, this study in an Asian population does not support this association, demonstrating no significant improvement in outcome for statin users. Further research is required to understand the mechanisms and impact of statins in TBI.
Presepsin (sCD14-ST) in preoperative diagnosis of abdominal sepsis

Abstract Background: The aim of the study was to identify the diagnostic significance of presepsin in acute abdominal conditions and also to examine the correlation between presepsin, procalcitonin (PCT) and other parameters. Methods: To detect presepsin we used a new rapid method based on a chemiluminescent enzyme immunoassay. The clinical usefulness of presepsin to differentiate bacterial and non-bacterial infection [including systemic inflammation response syndrome (SIRS)] was studied and compared with PCT, C-reactive protein (CRP) and white blood cells (WBC). Results: The presepsin values in different conditions were (mean±standard deviation): healthy group (n=70) 258.7±92.53 pg/mL; SIRS (n=30) 430.0±141.33 pg/mL; sepsis (n=30) 1508.3±866.6 pg/mL. The presepsin values were significantly higher in patients with sepsis than the SIRS group (p<0.0001, Mann-Whitney U-test). The area under the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve (AUC) for discriminating of the SIRS from the sepsis patients was 0.996 for presepsin and it was greater than the AUC of PCT (0.912), CRP (0.857) or WBC (0.777). Conclusions: The ROC curve of the SIRS patient without infection and the sepsis patient showed that the presepsin concentration was a significantly sensitive indicator of sepsis and useful marker for the rapid diagnosis of sepsis.
Knowledge Management in Strategic Alliances: A Review of Empirical Evidence

Knowledge-related and organizational learning processes in alliances have received much attention throughout the last 25 years. The field has generated a rapidly growing body of empirical evidence on how knowledge is managed in alliances. However, the sphere is highly complex, fragmented, incoherent, and heterogeneous in terms of the theoretical approaches applied. This paper presents an integrative and organizing framework for the empirical literature on knowledge management in strategic alliances. It illustrates how the knowledge management outcomes of knowledge creation, transfer and application are determined by four distinct sets of factors: knowledge characteristics, partner characteristics, partner interaction, and active knowledge management. Based on this framework, this review analyses and integrates empirical evidence in order to identify where findings converge and where results conflict. So far, research has focused strongly on singular interrelations between these four sets of factors and the transfer of knowledge. Conversely, the questions of how knowledge is created, retained, retrieved and applied and how the interplay of the different factors affects knowledge management in strategic alliances remain widely unexplored. The review concludes with a summary of the current state of the art in empirical research and discusses some promising avenues for future investigation.
Electric Field and Potential Distributions for Unequal Spheres Using Symmetric and Asymmetric Applied Voltages

The electrostatic field and the potential distributions between a pair of spherical electrodes having unequal diameters are calculated using the charge simulation method when symmetric (+ V/2 and -V/2) and asymmetric (V and 0) voltages are applied across the gap. The variation of the electric field and the potential along the shortest distance between the spheres are studied over a wide range of sphere diameters (ratio 0. 1 to 50) and a range of gap separation to sphere radius (ratio 0.05 to 100). The present results are compared with those previously determined in a restricted range of diameter ratios, using a finite difference method for solving the Laplace equation. Good agreement is obtained.
Active micromixer for microfluidic systems using lead‐zirconate‐titanate(PZT)‐generated ultrasonic vibration

A micromixer using direct ultrasonic vibration is first reported in this paper. The ultrasonic vibration was induced by a bulk lead‐zirconate‐titanate (PZT; 5 × 4 × 0.2 mm), which was excited by a 48 kHz square wave at 150 V (peak‐to‐peak). Liquids were mixed in a chamber (6 × 6 × 0.06 mm) with an oscillating diaphragm driven by the PZT. The oscillating diaphragm was in the size of 6 × 6 × 0.15 mm. Ethanol and water were used to test the mixing effectiveness. The laminar flows of ethanol (115 μL/min) and water (100 μL/min) were mixed effectively when the PZT was excited. The entire process was recorded using a video camera.
A Wideband H-Band Image Detector Based on SiGe HBT Technology

A wideband H-band detector operating near 300 GHz has been developed based on SiGe HBT technology. The detector consists of an on-chip antenna and a HBT differential pair for square-law detection. It showed responsivity of more than 1,700 V/W and noise equivalent power (NEP) smaller than 180 pW/Hz 0.5 for the measured frequency range of 250–350 GHz. The maximum responsivity and the minimum NEP were 5,155 V/W and 57 pW/Hz 0.5 , respectively; both were obtained at 330 GHz with DC power dissipation at 9.1 W.
Opioid Receptor Pharmacological Chaperones Act by Binding and Stabilizing Newly Synthesized Receptors in the Endoplasmic Reticulum*

Accumulating evidence has indicated that membrane-permeable G protein-coupled receptor ligands can enhance cell surface targeting of their cognate wild-type and mutant receptors. This pharmacological chaperoning was thought to result from ligand-mediated stabilization of immature receptors in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). In the present study, we directly tested this hypothesis using wild-type and mutant forms of the human δ-opioid receptor as models. ER-localized receptors were isolated by expressing the receptors in HEK293 cells under tightly controlled tetracycline induction and blocking their ER export with brefeldin A. The ER-retained δ-opioid receptor precursors were able to bind [3H]diprenorphine with high affinity, and treatment of cells with an opioid antagonist naltrexone led to a 2-fold increase in the number of binding sites. After removing the transport block, the antagonist-mediated increase in the number of receptors was detectable at the cell surface by flow cytometry and cell surface biotinylation assay. Importantly, opioid ligands, both antagonists and agonists, were found to stabilize the ER-retained receptor precursors in an in vitro heat inactivation assay and the treatment enhanced dissociation of receptor precursors from the molecular chaperone calnexin. Thus, we conclude that pharmacological chaperones facilitate plasma membrane targeting of δ-opioid receptors by binding and stabilizing receptor precursors, thereby promoting their release from the stringent ER quality control.
Biotransformation of caffeine in human liver microsomes from foetuses, neonates, infants and adults.

1. Caffeine metabolism was studied in human liver microsomes from foetuses (n = 10), neonates (n = 10), infants (n = 9) and adults (n = 5). Caffeine and its metabolites, 1-3-7-trimethyluric acid, paraxanthine, theophylline and theobromine, were assayed by h.p.l.c. Methoxyresorufin-O-demethylase activity (MEROD) was determined and immunoquantifiable levels of CYP1A2 were measured. 2. The formation of the dimethylxanthines by N-3, N-7 or N-1-demethylation was significantly less in foetuses, neonates and infants than in adults, as shown previously in vivo. The formation of 1-3-7-trimethyluric acid (C-8-hydroxylation) was not significantly different between age groups. The production of total dimethylxanthines, paraxanthine and theophylline increased significantly with age within the neonate-infant group over at least the 0-300 day range (rs = 0.739, 0.667, 0.682, respectively). These data differ from those reported in vivo which suggested that N-3 and N-7-demethylations matured at about 120 days. The difference in maturational profiles of each metabolic pathway suggests that the reactions depend on different isoenzymes. The delay in the maturation of N-1 compared with N-3 and N-7-demethylation is in agreement with previous in vivo data. 3. In the neonate-infant group, only N-3-demethylation correlated with both MEROD activity (rs = 0.681; P < 0.05) and CYP1A2 microsomal concentration (rs = 0.454; P approximately 0.05), suggesting that, as in adults, this reaction depends on CYP1A2. 4. In the foetal samples, the production of total dimethylxanthines, paraxanthine and theobromine decreased significantly (rs = -0.879, -0.767, -0.708, respectively) with increasing gestational age. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Early schooling: its influence on reading comprehension at primary level / Escolarización temprana: su influencia sobre la comprensión lectora en primaria

Abstract Early schooling may influence the future academic results of students. In spite of this, there are very few studies providing evidence to demonstrate such an influence, with children under three being included in the notion of early schooling, as is the case in this study. We analyse the influence of this kind of education on the reading comprehension of fourth year primary students in Spain, on the basis of the data obtained from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) of 2011. Given the type of sampling used with PIRLS, with its hierarchical structure, we estimate multilevel educational production functions. The results obtained indicate that early schooling, as well as the socio-economic and cultural background of families, has a positive effect on students’ results in reading comprehension. These results support proposals for widening opportunities for receiving free education in early childhood, at least for socio-economically disadvantaged families, in order to compensate for the lack of early schooling received by their children and the consequent effects this has on their reading skills.
MedScan, a natural language processing engine for MEDLINE abstracts

MOTIVATION The importance of extracting biomedical information from scientific publications is well recognized. A number of information extraction systems for the biomedical domain have been reported, but none of them have become widely used in practical applications. Most proposals to date make rather simplistic assumptions about the syntactic aspect of natural language. There is an urgent need for a system that has broad coverage and performs well in real-text applications. RESULTS We present a general biomedical domain-oriented NLP engine called MedScan that efficiently processes sentences from MEDLINE abstracts and produces a set of regularized logical structures representing the meaning of each sentence. The engine utilizes a specially developed context-free grammar and lexicon. Preliminary evaluation of the system's performance, accuracy, and coverage exhibited encouraging results. Further approaches for increasing the coverage and reducing parsing ambiguity of the engine, as well as its application for information extraction are discussed.
Effectiveness of Auditory and Visual Sensory Feedback for Children When Learning a Continuous Motor Task

Accuracy in control of continuous motor tasks has been reported to be a function of age as well as sensory feedback, with auditory sensory feedback being more effective for adults than visual sensory feedback. In contrast, there are conflicting reports regarding the effectiveness of sensory feedback for children. The present purpose was to examine whether auditory sensory feedback was beneficial for children learning a continuous cycling task. A total of 15 children (M age = 5.2 yr., SD = 1.1) and 15 adults (M age = 27.7 yr., SD = 4.7) were randomly assigned to an auditory feedback, visual feedback, or auditory + visual feedback condition. No significant interaction of group × condition was found, but computation of effect size indicated that the auditory feedback condition produced a moderate to large effect size on error reduction for children compared with other feedback conditions. It was concluded that feedback presented in auditory form was more beneficial than visual form or visual + auditory form for children in learning a continuous motor task.
Impact of Traumatic Events on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder among Danish Survivors of Sexual Abuse in Childhood

Childhood sexual abuse can be extremely traumatic and lead to lifelong symptomatology. The present study examined the impact of several demographic, abuse, and psychosocial variables on posttraumatic stress disorder severity among a consecutive sample of treatment-seeking, adult child sexual abuse survivors (N = 480). The child sexual abuse sample was characterized by severe trauma exposure, insecure attachment, and significant traumatization, with an estimated 77% suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, more than twice the level of the comparison group. Regression analyses revealed risk factors associated with the development of posttraumatic stress disorder in which the strongest predictors being additional traumas, negative affectivity, and somatization. The findings add to existing research confirming the stressful nature of child sexual abuse and the variables that contribute to the development and severity of posttraumatic stress disorder.
Lighting the local area: optical code-division multiple access and quality of service provisioning

Asynchronous, high-speed multiple-access is proposed as a natural solution to achieving asynchronous, high-speed connectivity in a local area network environment. Optical CDMA is shown to be competitive with other networking technologies such as WDMA and TDMA, but has the benefit of more flexibility, simpler protocols, and no need for centralized network control. The limitations of one-dimensional optical orthogonal codes for CDMA have motivated the idea of spectral spreading in both the temporal and wavelength domains. If the constraints on constant weight in these two-dimensional codes are relaxed, differentiated levels of service at the physical layer become possible. Areas for further research are suggested which may allow quality of service levels to be guaranteed at the physical layer.
Biomarkers of Transplantation Tolerance: More Hopeful than Helpful?

A major limitation to the translation of tolerogenic therapies to clinical transplantation is a lack of biomarkers that can be used as surrogate measures for predicting the successful induction of immune tolerance which would allow for the safe withdrawal of immunosuppression. We have used three different mouse models of donor specific tolerance to skin grafts together with quantitative RT-PCR to search for potential biomarkers of tolerance using criteria based on the presence or activity of regulatory T cells and antigen presenting cells (APCs) within grafts or lymphoid organs. We find that significant differences in gene expression between tolerated and rejecting grafts are observed primarily within the grafted skin and not systemically or in the draining lymph node. The pattern of gene expression within long-term surviving tolerated grafts appear very similar to syngeneic grafts, with both having low levels of T cell and APC infiltration and a bias toward relative over-expression of “regulatory-associated” genes, while allografts destined for rejection show an overall increase in both “regulatory” and “effector” cell associated transcripts. We also, however, find an increase in a large number of regulatory genes, of both innate and T cell origin, even after grafting syngeneic skin. Taken together, these findings suggest that there may be no tissue biomarkers uniquely able to predict donor antigen specific tolerance per se, but that patterns of gene expression within tolerated grafts may be similar to those found in self tissues recovering from an inflammatory insult.
Symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and early cannabis use

In this study, the relation between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and early cannabis use was examined. A database, with information from a questionnaire about multiple lifestyle aspects such as (psychosocial) health and behaviour, completed by 2 nd and 3 rd graders in secondary school (N=3166) was used. It was expected that adolescents with a high score on ADHD symptoms, measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, use more cannabis than their controls. Furthermore, ADHD symptoms were divided in hyperactivity/impulsivity (HI) and inattention (IN) symptoms, whereby the HI-group was expected to use more cannabis than controls, but the IN-group would not differ from the controls. Taking gender, symptoms of CD and the interaction between the latter two into account, a positive relation between ADHD symptoms and HI symptoms in adolescents and recent cannabis use was found. However, the effects found are small and decreased to insignificance when controlling for current smoking behaviour. Surprisingly, a negative effect for IN symptoms on recent cannabis use was found.
Epstein-Barr Virus Lytic Infection Is Required for Efficient Production of the Angiogenesis Factor Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor in Lymphoblastoid Cell Lines

ABSTRACT Although Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-associated malignancies are primarily composed of cells with one of the latent forms of EBV infection, a small subset of tumor cells containing the lytic form of infection is often observed. Whether the rare lytically infected tumor cells contribute to the growth of the latently infected tumor cells is unclear. Here we have investigated whether the lytically infected subset of early-passage lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) could potentially contribute to tumor growth through the production of angiogenesis factors. We demonstrate that supernatants from early-passage LCLs infected with BZLF1-deleted virus (Z-KO LCLs) are highly impaired in promoting endothelial cell tube formation in vitro compared to wild-type (WT) LCL supernatants. Furthermore, expression of the BZLF1 gene product in trans in Z-KO LCLs restored angiogenic capacity. The supernatants of Z-KO LCLs, as well as supernatants from LCLs derived with a BRLF1-deleted virus (R-KO LCLs), contained much less vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in comparison to WT LCLs. BZLF1 gene expression in Z-KO LCLs restored the VEGF level in the supernatant. However, the cellular level of VEGF mRNA was similar in Z-KO, R-KO, and WT LCLs, suggesting that lytic infection may enhance VEGF translation or secretion. Interestingly, a portion of the vasculature in LCL tumors in SCID mice was derived from the human LCLs. These results suggest that lytically infected cells may contribute to the growth of EBV-associated malignancies by enhancing angiogenesis. In addition, as VEGF is a pleiotropic factor with effects other than angiogenesis, lytically induced VEGF secretion may potentially contribute to viral pathogenesis.
Megatrials for Clinical Decision Making

TO THE EDITOR: In their article on meta-analyses, Borzak and Ridker [1] comment on a perplexing issue. Why did a reasonably large trial (LIMIT-2 [Second Leicester Intravenous Magnesium Intervention Trial]) [2] show a therapeutic benefit for magnesium in patients who had had acute myocardial infarction when a megatrial (ISIS-4 [Fourth International Study of Infarct Survival]) [3] did not? If the difference is the timing with which the drug was given, another trial can be done. If the results of LIMIT-2 were wrong, however, and magnesium has no benefit in the treatment of acute myocardial infarction under any circumstances, some serious questions must be asked about the sample sizes needed to correctly determine therapeutic efficacy. All of the trials discussed by Borzak and Ridker are in the field of cardiology, where trials enrolling tens of thousands of patients are becoming increasingly common. LIMIT-2 was a randomized, double-blind trial of 2316 patients. In any other specialty, this trial would be considered very large. If this sample size is inadequate, how are we to conduct trials to evaluate diseases less common than acute myocardial infarction? In many cases, it would be impossible to enroll 10 000 patients in a reasonable time frame. Should multiple trials be done for all therapies? If 10 000 patients are required to show a treatment effect, is this effect clinically relevant? If megatrials are required for every therapy or alteration in therapy, evidence-based medicine may be facing serious difficulties.