Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GLOMERULAR DISEASES ASSOCIATED WITH HBV AND HCV INFECTION

Hepatitis B and C viruses are human pathogens of major significance. Their extrahepatic manifestations are global health problem. HBV is a well-known cause of membranous nephropathy, membranoproliferative GN and IgA nephropathy, frequently in Asian populations. Polyarteritis nodosa is a rare, but serious systemic complication of chronic HBV. Immunosuppressive therapy in HBV-related GN is not recommended. Interferon alpha treatment produces sustained remission of porteinuria, often associated with clearance of HBeAg and/or HBsAg, however, it has many side effects. Compared to interferon, nucleos(t)ide analogues offer some advantages. These antiviral agents suppress HBV replication through their inhibitory effect on viral DNA polymerase. They have convenient administration and high tolerability. Lamivudine is well tolerated and safe in long-term studies, but the resistance of HBV is an escalating problem. The resistance to newer polymerase inhibitors Entecavir and Tenofovir is significantly lower. Hepatitis C virus causes cryoglobulinemia-mediated glomerulonephritis and other immune complex forms of GN. The renal manifestations are usually associated with long-lasting HCV infection. HCV glomerular disease is more frequent in adult males, and often leads to chronic renal insufficiency. The first line treatment in patients with mild to moderate clinical and histological kidney damage is the antiviral therapy with pegylated INF alpha and ribavirin. In case of severe HCV-associated cryoglobulinemic GN nephrotic syndrome, nephritic syndrome and/or progressive renal failure, high activity score of glomerulonephritis on light microscopy, the initial treatment might consist of sequential administration of antiviral and immunosuppressive agents (corticosteroids, cyclophosphamide and plasma exchange), or rituximab. The treatment of HCV-related glomerular disease is still under debate and based on scant experimental evidence. Large randomized and controlled clinical trials are needed to establish guidelines for the treatment of HCV-related cryoglobulinemic glomerulonephritis. Acta Medica Medianae
Two independent lipoprotein receptors on hepatic membranes of dog, swine, and man. Apo-B,E and apo-E receptors.

We have reported previously that canine livers possess two distinct lipoprotein receptors, an apoprotein (apo)-B,E receptor capable of binding the apo-B-containing low density lipoproteins (LDL) and the apo-E-containing cholesterol-induced high density lipoproteins (HDLc), and an apo-E receptor capable of binding apo-E HDLc but not LDL. Both the apo-B,E and apo-E receptors were found on the liver membranes obtained from immature growing dogs, but only the apo-E receptors were detected on th hepatic membranes of adult dogs. In this study, the expression of the apo-B,E receptors, as determined by canine LDL binding to the hepatic membranes, was found to be highly dependent on the age of the dog and decreased linearly with increasing age. Approximately 30 ng of LDL protein per milligram of membrane protein were bound via the apo-B,E receptors to the hepatic membranes of 7- to 8-wk-old immature dogs as compared with no detectable LDL binding in the hepatic membranes of adult dogs (greater than 1--1.5 yr of age). Results obtained by in vivo turnover studies of canine 125I-LDL correlated with the in vitro findings. In addition to a decrease in the expression of the hepatic apo-B,E receptors with age, these receptors were regulated, i.e., cholesterol feeding suppressed these receptors in immature dogs and prolonged fasting induced their expression in adult dogs. Previously, it was shown that the apo-B,E receptors were induced in adult livers following treatment with the hypocholesterolemic drug cholestyramine. In striking contrast, the apo-E receptors, as determined by apo-E HDLc binding, remained relatively constant for all ages of dogs studied (10--12 ng/mg). Moreover, the expression of the apo-E receptors was not strictly regulated by the metabolic perturbations that regulated the apo-B,E receptors. Similar results concerning the presence of apo-B,E and apo-E receptors were obtained in swine and in man. The hepatic membranes of adult swine bound only apo-E HDLc (apo-E receptors), whereas the membranes from fetal swine livers bound both LDL and apo-E HDLc (apo B,E and apo-E receptors). Furthermore, the membranes from adult human liver revealed the presence of the apo-E receptors as evidenced by the binding of 12--14 ng of HDLc protein per milligram of membrane protein and less than 1 ng of LDL protein per milligram. The membranes from the human liver also bound human chylomicron remnants and a subfraction of human HDL containing apo-E. These data suggest the importance of the E apoprotein and the apo-E receptors in mediating lipoprotein clearance, including chylomicron remnants, by the liver of adult dogs, swine, and man.
Independence of 'reaction to hypothetical contradiction' from other measures of delusional ideation.

BACKGROUND Given the increasing pressure on Community Mental Health Teams to provide effective services for people with serious mental health problems and the relative scarcity of clinicians working therapeutically with this group, the ongoing search for reliable prognostic factors has both economic and clinical implications. Although previously somewhat overlooked, 'reaction to hypothetical contradiction' (RTHC) has been described as a potential predictor of amenability to psychological treatment for people holding delusional beliefs. METHOD A one-way between-groups design was used to explore the independence of RTHC (accepting vs. non-accepting) from a range of other clinical variables, using a mixed-diagnosis group of 50 people holding delusional beliefs. RESULTS Associations were found between RTHC and a range of other clinical variables, including the existence of perceptual experiences and the impact and extent of delusional beliefs. These factors can be difficult to measure, and it is argued that RTHC may be easier to assess than these other variables. RTHC was found to be independent from other variables such as insight, degree of conviction, degree of preoccupation, anxiety and depression. IMPLICATIONS Previous research has shown that RTHC is a potential predictor of both spontaneous recovery and response to treatment for people holding delusional beliefs and that assessment of RTHC should be incorporated into initial screening procedures for cognitive-behaviour therapy. The current research found that RTHC was associated with the extent to which delusional beliefs influence thoughts, behaviour and distress levels. One of the major implications of this study is that evaluation of RTHC at initial screening assessments may be important as it provides information not available from mental-state assessments and assessment of insight.
Improving design grammar development and application through network-based analysis of transition graphs

Design grammars enable the formal representation of a vocabulary and rules that describe how designs can be synthesized just as the grammar rules of a spoken language define how to formulate valid, i.e., grammatically correct, sentences. Design grammars have been successfully applied in numerous engineering disciplines and enable the automated synthesis of designs within a defined design language. Design grammar development, however, is challenging and lacks methodological support. In this paper, a novel method is presented that supports the development and application of design grammars using transition graphs. In these, nodes represent generated designs and edges represent grammar rules that transform one design into another. Rather than using a tree structure to represent the possible application of rules, transition graphs are automatically generated and used to help designers better understand the developed grammar. The grammar designer is given feedback on (a) the rules, and (b) rule application sequences. This feedback can be used to (a) improve the grammar, and (b) apply it more efficiently. Two case studies, a gearbox synthesis task and a sliding tile puzzle, demonstrate the method. The results show the feasibility of the method to support design grammar development and application.
Deep Learning for Medical Image Analysis

This report describes my research activities in the Hasso Plattner Institute and summarizes my Ph.D. plan and several novels, end-to-end trainable approaches for analyzing medical images using deep learning algorithm. In this report, as an example, we explore different novel methods based on deep learning for brain abnormality detection, recognition, and segmentation. This report prepared for the doctoral consortium in the AIME-2017 conference.
Workplace aggression in Hong Kong: the effects of individual differences and charismatic leadership

This study examined the effect of individual differences, charismatic leadership and psychological empowerment on workplace aggression in Hong Kong. Participants were 145 full-time Hong Kong Chinese employees from range of organizations and professions. Hierarchical regression analysis results revealed that individual differences predicted 84% and charismatic leadership predicted 1.2% of workplace aggression. Results indicated trait anger and attitude toward revenge were positively related to workplace aggression, and charismatic leadership was positively related psychological empowerment. Preacher & Hayes’ (2008) bootstrap resampling approach in SPSS confirmed mediating effect of psychological empowerment in explaining the relationship between charismatic leadership and workplace aggression.
A comparative study of the behavioral deficits following lesions of various parts of the zebra finch song system: implications for vocal learning

Song production in song birds is controlled by an efferent pathway. Appended to this pathway is a “recursive loop” that is necessary for song acquisition but not for the production of learned song. Since zebra finches learn their song by imitating external models, we speculated that the importance of the recursive loop for learning might derive from its processing of auditory feedback during song acquisition. This hypothesis was tested by comparing the effects on song in birds deafened early in life and birds with early lesions in either of two nuclei--Area X and the lateral magnocellular nucleus of the anterior neostriatum (LMAN). These nuclei are part of the recursive loop. The three treatments affected song development differently, as reflected by various parameters of the adult song of these birds. Whereas LMAN lesions resulted in songs with monotonous repetitions of a single note complex, songs of Area X-lesioned birds consisted of rambling series of unusually long and variable notes. Furthermore, whereas song of LMAN lesioned birds stabilized early, song stability as seen in intact birds was never achieved in Area X-lesioned birds. Early deafness also resulted in poorly structured and unstable song. We conclude that Area X and LMAN contribute differently to song acquisition: the song variability that is typical of vocal development persists following early deafness or lesions of Area X but ends abruptly following removal of LMAN. Apparently, LMAN plays a crucial role in fostering the kinds of circuit plasticity necessary for learning.
A Functional Analysis of the 2008 Vice Presidential Debate: Biden Versus Palin

Senator John McCain's selection of Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008 came as a surprise to many. Senators Joe Biden, John McCain, and Barack Obama had been in the public eye since before 2007 as they campaigned for the presidency—and Biden and McCain had been in the spotlight in earlier presidential campaigns. Thus, of the four running mates for the two major political parties, Palin was the least well-known. The selection of Palin generated tremendous interest in the vice presidential debate. For the first time in history more voters watched the vice presidential debate than the presidential events. This paper reports a functional analysis (Benoit, 2007) of the 2008 vice presidential debate.
Landmark-constrained 3-D Histological Imaging: A Morphology-preserving Approach

The inspection of histological image sequences to gain knowledge about the original three-dimensional (3-D) morphological structure is a standard method in medical research. Its main advantage is that light microscopes feature high resolution enhanced visibility due to staining. In many cases this imaging technology could immensely profit from 3-D reconstructions of the slice images. For volumetric stacking, however, the tissue deformations due to slice preparation require an unwarping strategy to restore the original morphology. The challenge is to reverse the artificial deformations while preserving the natural morphological changes. In particular, unintentional straightening of curved structures across multiple slices has to be avoided. In this article, we propose a novel way to incorporate landmarks representing the morphological progression. They are used as additional regularization for intensity based non-rigid registration which is capable to exactly match the landmarks. Our approach is tested on synthetical and histological data sets. We show that it delivers smooth contours while preserving the morphological structure, and is a promising addition to existing methods.
Lymphocytic infiltration and destruction of parathyroid adenomas: a possible tumour‐specific autoimmune reaction in two cases of primary hyperparathyroidism

Two cases of primary hyperparathyroidism with underlying parathyroid adenomas were found to be associated with lymphocytic infiltration and destruction of the neoplastic tissue. There was no inflammatory infiltrate in the adjacent rim of the remnant of parathyroid gland or in the other tumour‐free glands. The lymphoid cell population within the tumours was composed of both infiltrating T‐cells and compact nodule‐forming B‐cells. In one of the tumours there was considerable fibrosis and atrophy of the adenomatous tissue. The histological picture was consistent with an autoimmune process directed against the adenomas, indicating that this reaction had, in part, been successful in reducing the abnormal cell population.
Latest technology and communication consistency in hospitality: a comparison between two Mediterranean countries

Abstract The goal of this research is to examine customers′ perceptions of the latest technology solutions and marketing communications within the hotel context in two Mediterranean countries – Croatia and Italy. In particular, hotel guests of four- and five-star hotels located in these countries participated in the research. Firstly, guest perceptions of advanced Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and communication consistency are analysed and compared in Croatian and Italian hotels. Secondly, the impact of ICT on communication consistency is tested in both studies. The findings show that the level of customer perceptions of communication consistency is relatively high in both countries, while the perception of technology is moderate. The influence of ICT on communication consistency is also corroborated. The findings of this study have important implications for marketing managers who deal with increasingly demanding consumers in the current digital environment.
Use of statistical methods to reduce delays for media playback buffering

Receiver playback buffers are required to smooth network delay variations. A playback buffer operates by introducing additional delay, acting as a holding area for packets whose scheduled playback time is in the future. Packets which arrive after their scheduled playback time are considered late and are discarded. The algorithms commonly used in the Internet are reactive, in that they measure immediate network delay variations and then adjust the buffer size to avoid lateness, resulting in potentially large end to end delays and frequent buffer changes. The paper works with an alternative predictive approach, which records historical information and uses it to make short term predictions about network delay, with the aim of not reacting too quickly to short lived variations. This allows an application controlled trade-off of packet lateness against buffering delay, suitable for applications which demand low delay but can tolerate or conceal a small amount of late packets. The paper builds on previous work by proposing aging techniques to improve delay predictions, evaluating performance using trace driven simulation.
Relative necessity

This paper was suggested by some work of Alan Ross Anderson on deontic logic. Anderson proposed in [1] that the various deontic modalities (‘it is obligatory that’, ‘it is forbidden that’, ‘it is permitted that’, etc.) should be defined in terms of the ordinary alethic modalities (‘it is necessary that’, ‘it is possible that’, etc.). The definition I shall consider is not in fact Anderson's own, though it is closely related to it. His definition, as set out in [1], involves the idea of an (unspecified) penalty or sanction. A forbidden action is defined as one whose commission entails the application of the sanction; an obligatory action is one whose omission entails the application of the sanction.
Story Cloze Task: UW NLP System

This paper describes University of Washington NLP’s submission for the Linking Models of Lexical, Sentential and Discourse-level Semantics (LSDSem 2017) shared task—the Story Cloze Task. Our system is a linear classifier with a variety of features, including both the scores of a neural language model and style features. We report 75.2% accuracy on the task. A further discussion of our results can be found in Schwartz et al. (2017).
Hematopoietic progenitors and aging: alterations in granulocytic precursors and responsiveness to recombinant human G-CSF, GM-CSF, and IL-3.

BACKGROUND Changes either in the number or in the responsiveness of hematopoietic progenitors may be a major factor accounting for age-related changes in stimulus driven hematopoiesis. METHODS To test these hypotheses, we compared the relative proportions and the responsiveness of CD34+ bone marrow cells from healthy young (20-30 yrs) and healthy elderly (70-80 yrs) volunteers to G-CSF, GM-CSF, and IL-3 in an in vitro marrow culture system. RESULTS There was no age-related difference either in the proportion of CD34+ marrow cells or in the proportion of a more mature CD34+ subset, defined as CD34+, CD33+ cells. Maximal colony formation by CD34+ cells stimulated with a combination of G-CSF, GM-CSF, and IL-3 was similar in the two groups, but the dose-response studies with individual growth factors revealed a 2-fold decrease in sensitivity of the elderly subjects' cells to G-CSF (p < .01). CONCLUSIONS Aging has little impact on the marrow content of early precursors of the neutrophil lineage. There is, however, a significant difference in the in vitro proliferative response of these cells to the lineage specific growth factor G-CSF. This alteration may account for the greater propensity in elderly populations for the development of neutropenia with severe infections and chemotherapy.
After Proper Optimization of Carvedilol dose, do Different Child Classes of Liver Disease Differ in Terms of dose Tolerance and Response on a Chronic Basis?

Background/Aims: Literature regarding safe doses of carvedilol is limited, and safe doses across different Child classes of chronic liver disease are not clear. Patients and Methods: A total of 102 consecutive cirrhotic patients with significant portal hypertension were included in this study. Hepatic venous pressure gradient was measured at baseline and 3 months after dose optimization. Results: A total of 102 patients (63 males, 39 females) with a mean age of 58.3 ± 6.6 years were included. Among these patients, 42.2% had Child Class A, 31.9% had Class B, and 26.6% had Child Class C liver disease. The mean baseline hepatic venous pressure gradient was 16.75 ± 2.12 mmHg, and after dose optimization and reassessment of hepatic venous pressure gradient at 3 months, the mean reduction in the hepatic venous pressure gradient was 5.5 ± 1.7 mmHg and 2.8 ± 1.6 mmHg among responders and nonresponders respectively. The mean dose of carvedilol was higher in nonresponders (19.2 ± 5.7 mg) than responders (18.75 ± 5.1 mg). However, this difference was not statistically significant (P > 0.05). The univariate analysis determined that the absence of adverse events, the absence of ascites, and low baseline cardiac output were significantly associated with chronic response, whereas, the etiology, Child class, variceal size (large vs small), and gender were not. On multivariate analysis, the absence of any adverse event was determined to be an independent predictor of chronic response (OR 11.3, 95% CI; 1.9–67.8). Conclusion: The proper optimization of the dose of carvedilol, when administered chronically, may enable carvedilol treatment to achieve a greater response with minimum side effects among different Child classes of liver disease.
Induction in Fluid Intelligence: Knowledge, novelty, learning and proactive interference

The main aim of this thesis was to examine whether learning processes occur in fluid intelligence (Gf) tasks, whether it is essential for them to occur for induction to take place and whether they contribute to individual differences in performance. In mainstream differential research, Gf is conceptualised as a factor important in induction tasks that are considered novel and context-free (Cattell, 1963, 1987). Thus, performance has typically been assumed to be uninfluenced by previous acquisitions of knowledge structures. Sources of individual differences in Gf task performance have been attributed to working memory capacity (WMC), particularly individual differences in the ability to combat proactive interference. In contrast, the cognitive reasoning literature associates induction with the use of prior conceptual knowledge. A middle-ground position is that Gf tasks may require learning to occur across the task, which would draw upon WMC. That is, individual differences in Gf task performance may be due to knowledge learnt across the task, rather than knowledge brought to the task. Gf items have traditionally been presented in easy-tohard order but easier items may unintentionally provide learning opportunity for harder items. This would contradict both classic and modern test theories which make the assumption that items within a task are independent of each other. The learning hypothesis was explored in the current work along with the issue of whether it is possible to reliably solve complex Gf items without some relevant, prior knowledge. Also, the distinction between within-item induction and across-item learning was investigated, along with the relationship between across-item learning and proactive interference. An experimental-differential approach was used to manipulate learning opportunity within Gf tasks in four experiments. The first experiment examined whether learning takes place in Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices (Raven, 1962) and if so, to what extent this learning is a source of individual differences. Specifically, whether rule learning within the task is necessary for abstraction to take place and whether those of higher Gf ability learn faster than those of lower Gf ability. The next three experiments examined the distinction between knowledge that may be brought to the task, learning that occurs across multiple items in the task and induction within a single item that may be independent of any prior knowledge including knowledge learnt across the