Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antiretroviral drug resistance and HIV-1 subtypes among treatment-naive prisoners in Kelantan, Malaysia.

INTRODUCTION The widespread use of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) and continuous reports of HIV-1 strains developing resistance to these drugs is rather alarming, as transmission of resistant viruses to newly infected persons is possible. This study aimed to determine HIV-1 subtypes and the prevalence of primary mutations associated with antiretroviral (ARV) resistance among treatment-naive prisoners on the east coast of Malaysia. METHODOLOGY Viral RNA was extracted from plasma samples of 21 treatment-naive prisoners. Protease (PR) and reverse transcriptase (RT) regions were amplified and sequenced. Stanford HIV database algorithms were used for interpretation of resistance, and phylogenetic analysis was performed for subtype assignment. RESULTS In the PR gene, no antiviral resistance-associated mutation was detected. For RT-associated mutations, K103N was the most prevalent in sequenced samples (14.3%). Genetic subtyping on the pol gene revealed that the majority of the prisoners were infected with subtype CRF33_01B (52.4%). CONCLUSION Continuous surveillance of newly infected individuals is required to help strategize the best antiviral treatment for these patients.
Partial Orderings and Aktionsarten in Discourse Representation Theory

This paper presents an approach to deal with the underspecification of Aktionsarten in German sentences. In German the difference between an accomplishment and the associated progressive state is often not marked on the sentence level. This distinction is important for correctly interpreting texts and for translation into languages which provide morphological markings of Aktionsarten. To maintain compositionality we suggest a two-step analysis of a text with respect to the temporal relations and the classification as events or states. This analysis is guided by the Discourse Representation Theory developed by Kamp and makes use of world knowledge and an inference component.The problem of classification can be reformulated as the problem of finding an embedding function f from the representational entities onto the domain of a model. The models we use are structures built from intervals of time, events and individuals. Considering intensional models of this type will allow us to give truth-conditions for progressive states related to corresponding accomplishments. We restrict ourselves to progressive states of intentional actions and use the beliefs of the agent.
HLA-DR, HLA-DQB1 and PTPN22 gene polymorphism: association with age at onset for autoimmune diabetes

Introduction Autoimmune diabetes has different clinical manifestations related to the age at onset. It is divided into several subtypes, including “classical” type 1 diabetes (T1D) and latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA). The LADA is considered a slowly progressing subtype of autoimmune diabetes, although the clinical picture is more similar to type 2 diabetes. Material and methods The aim of this study is to investigate whether genetic predisposition influences age at onset in autoimmune diabetes. We studied rs2476601 PTPN22 gene polymorphism and HLA DR, HLA-DQB1 in 175 patients with classical type 1 diabetes, 80 LADA, and 151 control subjects from north-east Poland. Results The frequencies of the PTPN22 TT genotype were higher in the group of patients with classical type 1 diabetes (6.3%) and LADA (11.3%) than in control subjects (0.7%) (p = 0.02 and p = 0007, respectively). In patients with classical type 1 diabetes we observed an increasing trend in frequencies of genotype TT dependent on age at onset (3.9% (0-5 year olds), 6.0% (6-15 year-olds), 8.2% (16-25 year olds), p = 0.048). The incidence of predisposing human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genotypes HLA DR3/DQB1*02 and DR4/DQB1*0302 was found to decrease in the group with type 1 diabetes in relation to age at onset and LADA (HLA DR3/DQB1*02 – 69.2% (0-5 year olds), 57.0% (6-15 year olds), 51.0% (16-25 year olds), 46.3% (LADA), p = 0.032; HLA DR4/DQB1*0302 – 80.8% (0-5 year olds), 63.0% (6-15 year olds), 51.0% (16-25 year olds), 43.8% (LADA), p = 0.0003), and to increase for the protective allele DQB1*0602 (0.0% (0-5 year olds), 1.0% (6-15 year olds), 2.0% (16-25 year olds), 6.3% (LADA), p = 0.029). Conclusions Thus, age at onset for autoimmune diabetes appears to be related to a combination of predisposing and protective HLA alleles. Against a background of HLA genetic predisposition, other non-HLA loci may influence age at onset for late autoimmune diabetes.
On Decentralized Stabilization and Communication Complexity for Decentralized Computation

In this paper, a communication complexity view on the problem of decentralized controllability is presented, which uses ideas from information theory and distributed computation. To this end, we present a new approach to revisit a result on the characterization of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of decentralized controllers for stability of linear systems under any class of admissible decentralized control policies. It is observed that one could either adopt a decentralized communication point of view to identify controllers to control certain modes, or perform stabilization decentrally by a decentralized computation of control actions. One message is that, decentralized computation is in general more efficient than the designation of a particular controller acting on a mode when the eigenvalues are repeated. When the eigenvalues are not repeated, however, designation of a particular controller is optimal. Furthermore, we show that when the eigenvalues are repeated, cut-set type lower bounds for a given mode might not be tight.
The Chemical Residue of a White Dwarf-dominated Galactic Halo

Halo initial mass functions (IMFs) heavily biased toward white dwarf (WD) precursors (i.e., ~1-8 M☉) have been suggested as a suitable mechanism for explaining microlensing statistics along the line of sight to the Large Magellanic Cloud. Such IMFs can apparently be invoked without violating the observed present-day WD luminosity function. By employing a simple chemical evolution argument, we demonstrate that reconciling the observed halo Population II dwarf abundances (i.e., [C, N/O] ≈ -0.5) with that expected from the postulated “WD-heavy” IMF (i.e., [C, N/O] ≳ +0.5) is difficult.
The Effect of Increased Vascular Pressure on Albumin‐Excluded Volume and Lymph Flow in the Dog Lung

We studied the effects of steady state increases in left atrial pressure on the albumin-excluded volume in the lungs of mongrel dogs. We estimated the tissue blood volume using51Cr-labeled red cells, the extracellular space using99mTc-DTPA (diethylene triamine pentacetic acid), and the albumin space using125I-labeled human serum albumin. An afferent lymphatic to the left tracheobron-chial node was cannulated for measurement of lymph flow, total protein and albumin concentration. Total extravascular water (Qw), extravascular "Tc-DTPA space, extravascular albumin content, and albumin space were calculated in lung tissue samples taken during a baseline period and during steady states, following increases in pulmonary capillary pressure. Lymph flow increased by 0.20-fold, and Qw by 0.05 g/g blood free dry weight for each cm H2O increase in capillary pressure over the range of capillary pressures used in this study. Using an extravascular albumin space based on the concentration of albumin in lymph, an excluded albumin volume of 36% of the extravascular99mTc-DTPA space was calculated for normally hydrated lungs. This excluded volume fraction decreased to approximatley 10% of the extravascular99Tc-DTPA space at capillary pressures above 30 cm H2O. Oncotic buffering increased the plasma to lymph colloid osmotic pressure gradient, and buffered approximately 29% of the increase in pulmonary capillary pressure. Excluded volume had a simple physicochemical relation-ship to tissue hydration. It also served as a "safety factor" against pulmonary edema because there was a greater increase in available volume than total interstitial volume during edema formation. Oncotic buffering then could occur with a smaller increase in interstitial fluid volume than would otherwise be possible. Circ Res 47: 866-875, 1980
gamma-inducible protein-16; IL – interleukin; IL-1R1 – interleukin-1 receptor 1; MyD88 – myeloid differentiation factor 88; NF-B – nuclear factor of kappa light polypeptide gene enhancer in B-cells; NLR – NOD-like leucine-rich repeat-containing receptor; NOD – nucleotide oligomerization domain; PIA 

Prostate cancer is one of the main cancers that affect men, especially older men. Though there has been considerable progress in understanding the progression of prostate cancer, the drivers of its development need to be studied more comprehensively. The emergence of resistant forms has also increased the clinical challenges involved in the treatment of prostate cancer. Recent evidence has suggested that inflammation might play an important role at various stages of cancer development. This review focuses on inflammasome research that is relevant to prostate cancer and indicates future avenues of study into its effective prevention and treatment through inflammasome regulation. With regard to prostate cancer, such research is still in its early stages. Further study is certainly necessary to gain a broader understanding of prostate cancer development and to create successful therapy solutions.
Prevalence and pathogenesis of some filarial nematodes infecting donkeys in Egypt

Aim: The primary objective of the present study is to determine the commonness of filarial parasites in donkeys in Egypt, identification of the filarial species tainting them and the delivered pathogenic impact connected with the infestation. Materials and Methods: A total of 188 donkeys were examined for filarial infection. The blood samples and scraping of the cutaneous bleeding lesions were collected, stained, and inspected for microfilariae all through the period from March 2011 to October 2013. The adult worms were perceived in tissue samples acquired from skin scraping, testes, eyes, tendons, peritoneal and pleural cavities, and the ligamentum nuchae. Results: On the basis of morphological identification, 163 of 188 donkeys (86.70%) were infected with Onchocerca cervicalis (82.98%), Setaria equina (31.11%), Parafilaria multipapillosa (5.32%), and Onchocerca reticulata (4.26%). There was no significant effect of the sex on the incidence of all the encounteredfilarial worms except for S. equina, where the infection rate prevailed in males versus females (40.82% vs. 35.90%). In addition, age group of 5-15 years old exhibited a fundamentally higher predominance (p< 0.05) of the recognized filarial worms versus those of < 5 years old and >15 years old. Conclusion: The preliminary results add to our comprehension of filarial species infecting donkeys in Egypt, their impact on animal execution and production. Accentuation must be taken for avoidance, control of filarial disease, and improvement of the management system of donkeys.
Coexistence of Bipolar and Unipolar Memristor Switching Behavior

The memristor has been theoretically investigated as one of the fundamental electrical elements by Pr. Leon Chua in 1971. Meanwhile, its electrical characteristics are not yet fully understood. The nonlinear characteristics and the ability to examine large-scale amounts of storing data of this device reveal an interesting development in emerging electronic systems. Research on memristor modeling based on SPICE tools has grown rapidly. This leads us to study the behavior of such devices. Our aim is to simulate different types of memristor behavior. The adjustment of the model is based on the implementation of several parameters, which enables the switching of this device. In this chapter, we prove the flexibility and the correlation of memristor model with different memristive characterization data, by applying different voltage bias, sinusoidal and with a repetitive sweeping. Moreover, we demonstrate the memristor behavior as four types of switching. This includes bipolar switching, unipolar switching, bipolar switching with forgetting effect, and a reversible process between bipolar and unipolar switching. In order to validate this study, we compare our simulation results with experimental data and we prove a good agreement. The SPICE model used in our simulations shows a special advantage for its flexibility and simplicity.
Multimodal Affect Recognition using Kinect

Affect (emotion) recognition has gained significant attention from researchers in the past decade. Emotion-aware computer systems and devices have many applications ranging from interactive robots, intelligent online tutor to emotion based navigation assistant. In this research data from multiple modalities such as face, head, hand, body and speech was utilized for affect recognition. The research used color and depth sensing device such as Kinect for facial feature extraction and tracking human body joints. Temporal features across multiple frames were used for affect recognition. Event driven decision level fusion was used to combine the results from each individual modality using majority voting to recognize the emotions. The study also implemented affect recognition by matching the features to the rule based emotion templates per modality. Experiments showed that multimodal affect recognition rates using combination of emotion templates and supervised learning were better compared to recognition rates based on supervised learning alone. Recognition rates obtained using temporal feature were higher compared to recognition rates obtained using position based features only.
Mining knowledge at multiple concept levels

Most studies on data mining have been focused at mining rules at single concept levels, i.e,, either at the primitive level or at a rather high concept level. However, it is often desirable to discover knowledge at multiple concept levels. Mining knowledge at multiple levels may help database users find some interesting rules which are difficult to be discovered otherwise and view database contents at different abstraction levels and from different angles. Methods for mining knowledge at multiple concept levels can often be developed by extension of existing data mining techniques. Moreover, for eficient processing and interactive mining of multiple-level rules, it is often necessary to adopt techniques such as step-by-step generalization/specialization or progressive deepening of a knowledge mining process. Other issues, such as visual representation of knowledge at multiple levels, and “redundant” rule filtering, should also be studied in depth.
THE BEHAVIOUR AND CRASH INVOLVEMENT RISK OF CHILD PEDESTRIANS AND BICYCLISTS: A TRAFFIC EXPOSURE STUDY

This study of child pedestrians and bicyclists has focussed on traffic behaviours, exposure on roads (and on footpaths in the case of bicyclists) and the nature and extent of the injury problem for these groups. The risk of crash involvement was estimated for both pedestrians and bicyclists by combining exposure data from this study with comparable police reported accident data. Extensive results are reported in each area, viz. behaviour, exposure and risk of crash involvement. The report concludes by making a number of recommendations on research related issues.
Pharmacological Manipulations of ATP-Dependent Potassium Channels and Adenosine A1 Receptors do not Impact Hippocampal Ischemic Preconditioning in Vivo: Evidence in a Highly Quantitative Gerbil Model

Ischemic preconditioning models have been characterized in brain, heart, and other tissues, and previous pharmacologic studies have suggested an involvement of adenosine and ATP dependent potassium (KATP) channels in such tolerance phenomena. This question was reexamined in a reproducible gerbil model in which the duration of ischemic depolarization defined the severity of preconditioning and test insults. Agents studied were glibenclamide, a blocker of KATP channels; 1,3-dipropyl-8-cyclopentylxanthine (DPCPX), an adenosine A1 receptor antagonist; and N6-cyclopentyladenosine (CPA), an A1 agonist. Intraventricular glibenclamide injections aggravated neuron damage after brief priming insults, in parallel with a dose-dependent prolongation of ischemic depolarization. However, the depolarization thresholds for ischemic neuronal injury were identical in vehicle- and glibenclamide-treated animals, and glibenclamide did not affect preconditioning when equivalent insult severity was maintained during priming insults. Neither DPCPX nor CPA had any effect on the onset or duration of depolarization after intraperitoneal injection in this model, and neither drug affected neuron damage. In the case of CPA, it was necessary to maintain temperature for 4 to 6 hours of recirculation to avoid significant confounding hypothermia. These results fail to support a direct involvement of A1 receptors or KATP channels during early stages in the development of ischemic tolerance in vivo, and emphasize the need for robust, well-controlled, and quantitative models in such studies.
Prognosis prediction for Class III malocclusion treatment by feature wrapping method.

OBJECTIVE To use the feature wrapping (FW) method to identify which cephalometric markers show the highest classification accuracy in prognosis prediction for Class III malocclusion and to compare the prediction accuracy between the FW method and conventional statistical methods such as discriminant analysis (DA). MATERIALS AND METHODS The sample set consisted of 38 patients (15 boys and 23 girls, mean age 8.53 +/- 1.36 years) who were diagnosed with Class III malocclusion and received both first-phase (orthopedic) and second-phase (fixed orthodontic) treatments. Lateral cephalograms were taken before (T0) and after first-phase treatment (T1) and after second-phase treatment and retention (T2). Based on the measurements taken at the T2 stage, the patients were allocated into good (n = 20) or poor (n = 18) prognosis groups. Forty-six cephalometric variables on T0 lateral cephalograms were analyzed by the FW method to identify key determinants for discriminating between the two groups. Sequential forward search (SFS) algorism and support vector machine (SVM) were used in conjunction with the FW method to improve classification accuracy. To compare the prediction accuracy of the FW method with conventional statistical methods, DA was performed for the same data set. RESULTS AB to mandibular plane angle ( degrees ) and A to N-perpendicular (mm) were selected as the most accurate cephalometric predictors by both the FW and DA methods. However, classification accuracy was higher with the FW method (97.2%) compared with DA (92.1%), because the FW method with SFS and SVM has a more precise classification algorithm. CONCLUSIONS The FW method, which uses a learning algorithm, might be an effective alternative to DA for prognosis prediction.
MEASURING PERFORMANCE AND THE IMPACT OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN CONSTRUCTION : RESEARCH METHODOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

Research and innovation in construction industry have a significant role to play in performance improvement while providing benefits to the industry as well as to its stakeholders. However, it has been identified that the nature of Research and Development (R&D) work has become complex. Due to the rising cost, time and other resource constraints, much attention is paid on the successfulness of R&D and the managers are under pressure to monitor and improve the performance. In this context, the use of performance measurement (PM) systems benefits R&D organisations by evaluating the successfulness of related activities. Accordingly, this paper highlights the aspects which will be covered when designing a feasible research methodology for the study under consideration. The paper illustrates how the philosophical issues directed the use of case studies as the suitable research approach. The importance of case study design in gaining the maximum outcome from the research is also discussed. KeywordsCase study, Research and development, Research methodology
AdChatRep: a reputation system for MANET chatting

A Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) is becoming a practical platform for pervasive social networking. People chat with each other via MANET for instant social activities. How to help mobile users to build up trust in MANET chatting is becoming an interesting issue. We design AdChatRep, a reputation system for MANET chatting based on the result of a need assessment survey. We implement it by applying Nokia N900 smart phones as MANET nodes. We further conduct a two-session controlled user experiment to investigate the impacts of AdChatRep on mobile users. Results show the effectiveness of AdChatRep with regard to its usefulness and user acceptance.
From D-bar D Pairs to Branes in Motion

We investigate various supersymmetric brane intersections. Motivated by the recent results on supertubes, we investigate general constraints in which parallel brane-antibrane configurations are supersymmetric. Dual descriptions of these configurations involve systems of intersecting branes in relative motion. In particular, we find new supersymmetric configurations which are not related to a static brane intersection by a boost. In these new configurations, the intersection point moves at the speed of light. These systems provide interesting time-dependent backgrounds for open strings.
Comparing Recommendations Made by Online Systems and Friends

The quality of recommendations and usability of six online recommender systems (RS) was examined. Three book RS (Amazon.com, RatingZone & Sleeper) and three movie RS (Amazon.com, MovieCritic, Reel.com) were evaluated. Quality of recommendations was explored by comparing recommendations made by RS to recommendations made by the user’s friends. Results showed that the user’s friends consistently provided better recommendations than RS. However, users did find items recommended by online RS useful: recommended items were often “new” and “unexpected”, while the items recommended by friends mostly served as reminders of previously identified interests. Usability evaluation of the RS showed that users did not mind providing more input to the system in order to get better recommendations. Also users trusted a system more if it recommended items that they had previously liked. A common way for people to decide what books to read is to ask friends and acquaintances for recommendations. The logic behind this time-tested method is that one shares tastes in books, movies, music etc., with one’s friends. As such, items that appeal to them (friends) might appeal to me. Online Recommender Systems (RS) attempt to create a technological proxy for this social filtering process. The assumption behind many RS is that a good way to personalize recommendations for a user is to identify people with similar interests and recommend items that have interested these like-minded people (Resnick & Varian (1997), Goldberg, Nichols, Oki & Terry (1992)). This premise forms the statistical basis of most collaborative filtering algorithms. Since the goal of most RS is to replace (or at least augment) what is essentially a social process, we decided to directly compare the two ways of receiving recommendations (friends & online RS). Do users like receiving recommendations from an online system? How do the recommendations provided by online systems differ from those provided by the users’ friends? Our hypothesis was that friends would make superior recommendations since they know the user well, and have intimate knowledge of his / her tastes in a number of domains. In contrast, RS only have limited, domain-specific knowledge about the users. Also, information retrieval systems do not yet match the sophistication of human judgment processes.