Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A randomized comparative trial of tenofovir DF or abacavir as replacement for a thymidine analogue in persons with lipoatrophy

Background:Long-term antiretroviral therapy, while dramatically reducing HIV-related morbidity and mortality, is associated with metabolic and morphological changes. Peripheral fat loss, lipoatrophy, appears most associated with prolonged therapy with thymidine nucleoside analogues. Methods:A randomized, open-label, comparative study of switching from a thymidine nucleoside analogue to either tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (DF) or abacavir in 105 individuals on successful antiretroviral therapy with clinically evident moderate to severe lipoatrophy. Results:Individuals were randomized to tenofovir DF (52) or abacavir (53). The switch was well tolerated and the majority of patients completed 48 weeks of study. One individual in the tenofovir DF group and three in the abacavir group discontinued due to drug-related adverse events. Both groups similarly maintained virological control. Limb fat mass increased similarly in both groups: mean increases by week 48 of 329 and 483 g in tenofovir DF and abacavir groups, respectively [mean 95% confidence interval for difference, −154.3 (range −492.8 to 184.3)]. This change from baseline was statistically significant in both groups (tenofovir DF, P = 0.01; abacavir, P = 0.0001). Mean total cholesterol, low density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglycerides improved modestly with switching to tenofovir DF but were unchanged with abacavir. The changes in these parameters were significantly greater in the tenofovir DF arm relative to abacavir. Conclusions:Switching from a thymidine nucleoside analogue to either tenofovir DF or abacavir leads to significant improvement in limb fat mass over 48 weeks. Tenofovir DF may have modest advantages over abacavir for changes in lipids. Peripheral lipoatrophy, when clinically apparent, resolves slowly following treatment switching.
Pax5 and Linker Histone H1 Coordinate DNA Methylation and Histone Modifications in the 3′ Regulatory Region of the Immunoglobulin Heavy Chain Locus

ABSTRACT The 3′ regulatory region (3′ RR) of the murine immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) locus contains multiple DNase I-hypersensitive (hs) sites. Proximal sites hs3A, hs1.2, and hs3B are located in an extensive palindromic region and together with hs4 are associated with enhancers involved in the expression and class switch recombination of IgH genes. Distal hs5, -6, and -7 sites located downstream of hs4 comprise a potential insulator for the IgH locus. In pro-B cells, hs4 to -7 are associated with marks of active chromatin, while hs3A, hs1.2, and hs3B are not. Our analysis of DNA methylation-sensitive restriction sites of the 3′ RR has revealed a similar modular pattern in pro-B cells; hs4 to -7 sites are unmethylated, while the palindromic region is methylated. This modular pattern of DNA methylation and histone modifications appears to be determined by at least two factors: the B-cell-specific transcription factor Pax5 and linker histone H1. In pre-B cells, a region beginning downstream of hs4 and extending into hs5 showed evidence of allele-specific demethylation associated with the expressed heavy chain allele. Palindromic enhancers become demethylated later in B-cell differentiation, in B and plasma cells.
A systematic review on randomized control trials on rennin angiotensin aldosterone system inhibitors role in managing hypertension among hemodialysis patients

Abstract Randomized control trials (RCTs) are considered as most rigors way of determining the cause–effect relationship of a treatment and outcome. Activation of rennin angiotensin aldosterone system (RAAS) is an important contributor to hypertension in hemodialysis patients. The prevalence of hypertension in hemodialysis patients varies from 60% to 80% and hypertension management alone with conventional hemodialysis is insufficient. Hence, the current review was aimed to investigate the effect of RAAS inhibitors in managing hypertension among hemodialysis patients in a randomized control trial. Using PUBMED and EMBASE databases, randomized control trial with primary or secondary outcomes related to the effect of RAAS inhibitors on blood pressure among hemodialysis patients were included for analysis. The current review also assessed the quality of reporting of RCT. A total of eight RCT met inclusion criteria for current review. According to modified jaded scale, one (12.5%) study scored four points for quality reporting, whereas two (25%) studies scored one point that was the least score. The mean score for all included studies was 2.25. Six (75%) of the eight RCT included, involved ARB in hypertension management among hemodialysis patients, whereas two (25%) studies involved angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors. Of the siz RCT involving ARB, two (33.3%) RCT also included ACE inhibitors comparison group. Altogether six (75%) studies report a reduction in blood pressure with the use of RAAS inhibitors compared to control group; however, of the six studies, two (33.3%) reported that the reduction in blood pressure was not significant. Whereas, two (25%) studies reported no reduction in blood pressure compared to the control group. The findings from current review do not indicate a clear pattern for a role of RAAS inhibitors for hypertension control among hemodialysis patients.
Student Satisfaction and Reported Learning in the SUNY Learning Network: Interaction and Beyond - Social Presence in Asynchronous Learning Networks

This paper will provide an update on student satisfaction in the SUNY Learning Network (SLN). We will look at the issue of student satisfaction from a variety of perspectives focusing on both the learning environment of SLN and on specific constructs and variables that may promote high levels of satisfaction. From a system perspective we will review the results of student surveys on a variety of issues impacting satisfaction. We interpret these results in light of the strategic objectives of the program and keeping in mind socio-cognitive views of instruction and well established principles of good practice in higher education. As with previous studies of student satisfaction in SLN, and in alignment with predictions from this theoretical framework, results indicate the importance of teacher-to-student and student-to-student interaction. More specifically, these results indicate the importance of both the quantity and quality of faculty-student interaction, of communicating clear expectations on how to succeed in courses and of providing timely, high quality feedback. These are the instructional variables that correlate most strongly with both satisfaction and learning. We also look at survey results that show correlations between the nature of SLN's asynchronous, text-based online learning environment and student's reported: depth of thought in discussions, ability to communicate effectively in writing, feelings of isolation, time on task, wasted time, and reported learning. We find good reason to believe that this environment engenders high levels of interaction, participation, satisfaction and learning. In part two of this paper we will examine the nature of online interaction in greater depth by focusing on the impact of two elements of online communication - verbal immediacy and social presence. We present the results of research on social presence in an SLN course and examine a model that argues for the importance of creating opportunities and providing support for the development of online immediacy behaviors to sustain social presence (and by extension learning and satisfaction) among students participating in online courses.
Does an Inclusive Setting Affect Reading Comprehension in Students with Learning Disabilities

In the field of education, there is considerable controversy about the appropriateness of an inclusive setting as a more beneficial environment than a resource room for students with learning disabilities. The purpose of this research is to determine whether students with learning disabilities perform better in an inclusive setting or in a resource room setting. The research consisted of a 12-week study of reading instruction for five students diagnosed with learning disabilities. For the first 6 weeks, the students received reading instruction in a resource room. For the remainder of the time, the students received reading instruction in an inclusive setting. The academic achievements of these students in the two settings were compared. Results show that academically as well as behaviorally, all students performed better in an inclusive setting. (Contains 22 references.) (Author/SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Does an Inclusive Setting Affect Reading Comprehension in Students with Learning Disabilities? Donna Power Rogers, Ed. D. Iris Marie Thiery, B.S. Mid-South Educational Research Association November 6, 2003 PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY Arn_t i4 10-1 ANN tc_VO_W TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 1 BEST COPY AVAILABLE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Off ice of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 13 This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. 1:1 Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy.
Effects of straw carbon input on carbon dynamics in agricultural soils: a meta‐analysis

Straw return has been widely recommended as an environmentally friendly practice to manage carbon (C) sequestration in agricultural ecosystems. However, the overall trend and magnitude of changes in soil C in response to straw return remain uncertain. In this meta‐analysis, we calculated the response ratios of soil organic C (SOC) concentrations, greenhouse gases (GHGs) emission, nutrient contents and other important soil properties to straw addition in 176 published field studies. Our results indicated that straw return significantly increased SOC concentration by 12.8 ± 0.4% on average, with a 27.4 ± 1.4% to 56.6 ± 1.8% increase in soil active C fraction. CO2 emission increased in both upland (27.8 ± 2.0%) and paddy systems (51.0 ± 2.0%), while CH4 emission increased by 110.7 ± 1.2% only in rice paddies. N2O emission has declined by 15.2 ± 1.1% in paddy soils but increased by 8.3 ± 2.5% in upland soils. Responses of macro‐aggregates and crop yield to straw return showed positively linear with increasing SOC concentration. Straw‐C input rate and clay content significantly affected the response of SOC. A significant positive relationship was found between annual SOC sequestered and duration, suggesting that soil C saturation would occur after 12 years under straw return. Overall, straw return was an effective means to improve SOC accumulation, soil quality, and crop yield. Straw return‐induced improvement of soil nutrient availability may favor crop growth, which can in turn increase ecosystem C input. Meanwhile, the analysis on net global warming potential (GWP) balance suggested that straw return increased C sink in upland soils but increased C source in paddy soils due to enhanced CH4 emission. Our meta‐analysis suggested that future agro‐ecosystem models and cropland management should differentiate the effects of straw return on ecosystem C budget in upland and paddy soils.
Investigating the Observability of Complex Contagion in Empirical Social Networks

Social contagion is the mechanism by which ideas and behaviors spread across human social networks. Simple contagion models approximate the likelihood of adoption as constant with each exposure to an "infected" network neighbor. However, social theory postulates that when adopting an idea or behavior carries personal or social risk, an individual's adoption likelihood also depends on the number of distinct neighbors who have adopted. Such complex contagions are thought to govern the spread of social movements and other important social phenomena. Online sites, such as Twitter, expose social interactions at a large scale and provide an opportunity to observe the spread of social contagions "in the wild. " Much of the effort in searching for complex phenomena in real world contagions focuses on measuring user adoption thresholds. In this work, we show an alternative method for fitting probabilistic complex contagion models to empirical data that avoids measuring thresholds directly, and our results indicate bias in observed thresholds under both complex and simple models. We also show 1) that probabilistic models of simple and complex contagion are distinguishable when applied to an empirical social network with random user activity; and 2) the predictive power of these probabilistic adoption models against observed adoptions of actual hashtags used on Twitter. We use a set of tweets collected from Nigeria in 2014, focusing on 20 popular hashtags, using the follow graphs of the users adopting the tags during their initial peaks of activity.
Vehicle routing with fuzzy time windows using a genetic algorithm

This paper presents our work-in-progress on the study of a practical variant of the vehicle routing problem in which customers are to be serviced within given service time windows. In comparison with time windows models traditionally studied in the VRP literature in which hard time windows are to be respected when servicing a customer, our problem allows the violation of such time windows by considering fuzzy time windows. A hybrid genetic algorithm with fuzzy membership functions is proposed to solve the multi-objective problem of minimizing total travel distance of vehicles and maximizing customer service level. Preliminary results on a set of experiments carried out using well-known instances from literature are also presented.
Isolated Star Formation: A Compact H II Region in the Virgo Cluster

We report on the discovery of an isolated compact H II region in the Virgo cluster. The object is located in the diffuse outer halo of NGC 4388 or possibly could be in intracluster space. Star formation can thus take place far outside the main star-forming regions of galaxies. This object is powered by a small starburst with an estimated mass of ~400 M☉ and age of ~3 Myr. From a total sample of 17 H II region candidates, the present rate of isolated star formation estimated in our Virgo field is small, ~10-6 M☉ arcmin-2 yr-1. However, this mode of star formation might have been more important at higher redshifts and might be responsible for a fraction of the observed intracluster stars and total cluster metal production. This object is relevant also for distance determinations with the planetary nebula luminosity function from emission-line surveys, for high-velocity clouds and the in situ origin of B stars in the Galactic halo, and for local enrichment of the intracluster gas by Type II supernovae.
Colistin alone or combined with sulbactam or carbapenem against A. baumannii in ventilator-associated pneumonia.

INTRODUCTION Colistin use has increased over the last ten years because of multidrug-resistant microorganisms. The aim of this study was to compare the clinical and microbiological efficacy of colistin alone or in combination with sulbactam or carbapenem in the treatment of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) due to multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extremely drug-resistant (XDR) A. baumannii. METHODOLOGY Cases treated for VAP because of MDR and XDR A. baumannii between January 2011 and January 2013 were included in the study. The primary and secondary outcome for colistin alone, colistin with sulbactam, and colistin with carbapenems were evaluated. The primary outcomes were clinical efficacy and microbiological efficacy; the secondary outcomes were nephrotoxicity, length of hospitalization, and mortality. RESULTS A total of 70 VAP patients were evaluated. A total of 17 patients (24.3%) were administered colistin alone, 20 patients (28.6%) were administered colistin and sulbactam, and 33 patients (47.1%) were administered colistin and carbapenem. Clinical and microbiological response rates were higher in the carbapenem combination group (63.6% and 63.6% in both) than in the sulbactam combination group, which registered 55.0% and 60.0%, respectively. However, this did not represent a significant difference statistically (p > 0.05). There was also no significant difference between colistin alone and the combination groups regarding clinical and microbiological efficacy and mortality. CONCLUSIONS Neither the administration of colistin alone nor colistin combined with either sulbactam or carbapenem had any noticeable advantage in the treatment of VAP in terms of clinical response, microbiological response, nephrotoxicity, length of hospitalization, and mortality.
Toward improving graftability on automated program repair

In software evolution, many bugs occur and developers spend a long time to fix them. Program debugging is a costly and difficult task. Automated program repair is a promising way to reduce costs on program debugging dramatically. Several repair techniques reusing existing code lines have been proposed in the past. They reuse code lines already existing in the source code to generate variant source code of a given source code (if an inserted code line to fix a given bug is identical to any of the code lines in existing source code, we call the code line graftable). However, there are many bugs that such techniques cannot automatically repair. One of the reasons is that many bugs require code lines not existing in the source code of the software. In order to mitigate this issue, we are conducting our research with two ideas. The first idea is using a large dataset of source code to reuse code lines. The second idea is reusing only structures of code lines. Vocabularies are obtained from faulty code regions. In this paper, we report the feasibilities of the two ideas. More concretely, we found that the first and second ideas improved graftability of code lines to 43-59% and 56-64% from 34-54%, respectively. If we combine both the ideas, graftability was improved to 64-69%. In cases where we used the second idea, 24-49% variables used in reused code lines were able to be retrieved from the surrounding code of given faulty code regions.
Relating genes in the biosynthesis of the polyphenol composition of Andean colored potato collection

The objective of this study was to evaluate total antioxidant capacity (TAC), total phenolic content (TPH), and the identification of anthocyanidin and polyphenolic compounds in 13 colored potatoes collected from the Andean region of Bolivia, and understand how the chemical composition correlated with the botanical classification and molecular characterization of genes, ans (anthocyanidin synthase) and stan1 (Solanum tuberosum anthocyanidin synthase), associated with the synthesis of anthocyanidins. The results show the existence of a limited correlation between botanical classification, based on morphological identification and polyphenol composition. No association between genetic grouping of the ans and stan genes and botanical classification was found. However, it was possible to identify a correlation between the ans gene clades and the levels of anthocyanidins as well as of other polyphenols. Thus, this result confirms the concept that potato color can be used in the search for high polyphenol potato cultivars.
Student Attitude, Student Understanding and Mathematics Anxiety.

This paper reports on two of ten themes that emerged from a study of the impacts of a fraction teaching intervention on the mathematics anxiety and fraction competence of eight Year 8 students. The themes arose from multiple data sources and relate to Student Attitude and Student Understanding. The students identified practical, hands-on activities and group work as impacting positively on their understanding and their confidence in relation to fractions. The influence of improved understanding and confidence was also recorded as positively affecting student attitudes to fractions in particular and mathematics in general. The study highlights the connections between mathematics anxiety among middle school students and their existing understandings of and attitudes towards mathematics.
Compact kernel models for acoustic modeling via random feature selection

A simple but effective method is proposed for learning compact random feature models that approximate non-linear kernel methods, in the context of acoustic modeling. The method is able to explore a large number of non-linear features while maintaining a compact model via feature selection more efficiently than existing approaches. For certain kernels, this random feature selection may be regarded as a means of non-linear feature selection at the level of the raw input features, which motivates additional methods for computational improvements. An empirical evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed method relative to the natural baseline method for kernel approximation.
A 10-YEAR COMPARISON OF ENDOGENOUS ENDOPHTHALMITIS OUTCOMES: AN EAST ASIAN EXPERIENCE WITH KLEBSIELLA PNEUMONIAE INFECTION

Purpose: To evaluate the infection sources and causative organisms in cases of endogenous endophthalmitis and review the outcomes for patients with Klebsiella pneumoniae infection during a 10-year period. Methods: All cases of endogenous endophthalmitis treated at one Taiwanese hospital from July 1992 to June 2002 were retrospectively reviewed (n = 74; 86 eyes). The study was divided into two 5-year periods, with patients stratified into Group F or Group L according to onset date within the first or last of these periods, respectively. The outcomes of cases of K. pneumoniae infection in Group L (21 eyes) and Group F (32 eyes) were compared. Results: The major source of infection (liver abscess) and the causative organism (K. pneumoniae) did not change throughout the 10-year review period; however, outcomes for Group L appeared superior. The interval from onset of ocular symptoms to ophthalmic consultation was shorter for Group L; however, a statistically significant difference was not demonstrated by between-group comparison. Patients with good final vision typically had good initial vision in cases of K. pneumoniae infection. Conclusion: The authors’ experience with endogenous endophthalmitis has confirmed the findings of analogous East Asian studies, with liver abscess as the major source of infection and K. pneumoniae as the causative organism. Superior outcome may be achieved with more comprehensive and collaborative management, ideally through the combined efforts of multiple medical subspecialties.