Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of interferon-alpha-based antiviral therapy on hepatitis C virus-associated glomerulonephritis: a meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is associated with various glomerulopathies, in which HCV is responsible not only for the onset of glomerulopathy but also for its progressive loss of kidney function. The effect of antiviral treatment on the glomerular lesions and subsequent course of kidney disease remains controversial. Therefore, we performed a systematic analysis of the available evidence on the effect of interferon (IFN)-α-based therapy on HCV-associated chronic kidney disease. METHODS A meta-analysis was performed of controlled and uncontrolled clinical studies related to IFNα-based antiviral therapy and its impact on kidney function in HCV-associated glomerulonephritis. Improvement of proteinuria and serum creatinine levels after antiviral therapy was taken as the end points of interest. Data from eligible studies selected according to protocols were analysed using Review Manager 5.0. RESULTS Eleven clinical trials involving 225 patients were included in our meta-analysis. At the end of antiviral therapy, the summary estimate of the mean decrease in proteinuria was 2.71 g/24 h [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.38-4.04, P < 0.0001], P-value for heterogeneity 0.05 (I(2) = 53%). The pooled decrease in mean serum creatinine levels was 0.23 mg/dL (95% CI 0.02-0.44, P = 0.03), P-value for heterogeneity 0.30 (I(2) = 17%). Comparison of non-sustained virological response (SVR) to SVR groups demonstrated a mean difference of proteinuria decrease in the SVR group of 1.04 g/24 h (95% CI 0.20-1.89, P = 0.02), P-value for heterogeneity 0.21 (I(2) = 36%) and of serum creatinine decrease of 0.05 mg/dL (95% CI -0.33 to 0.43, P = 0.80), P-value for heterogeneity 0.70 (I(2) = 0%). CONCLUSION Antiviral therapy based on IFNα can significantly decrease proteinuria and stabilize serum creatitine, and therefore, should be undertaken in patients with HCV-associated glomerulonephritis. The improvement in protein excretion is greater in those who achieve HCV RNA clearance, a finding in line with a causal role for HCV in glomerulonephritis.
Stiffness of the arterial wall, joints and skin in women with a history of pre-eclampsia

Objective The epidemiology of pre-eclampsia suggests a constitutional component for the disorder. We have recently shown an association for blood pressure (BP) with stiffness of joints and skin in adolescents, suggesting that constitutionally determined stiffness of body tissues is associated with blood pressure. Therefore, we compared stiffness of the arterial wall, joints and skin between women with a history of pre-eclampsia and women with an uncomplicated pregnancy. Design Cases were 44 women with a history of early onset pre-eclampsia and controls were 46 women with a history of uncomplicated pregnancy. Arterial stiffness was determined non-invasively with pulse wave velocity measurement. As a measure of capsule and ligament stiffness, the active range of motion of various joints was measured. Skin stiffness was measured using a tissue compliance meter. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) multiple comparison tests were used for comparison of the study groups. Linear regression models were used to determine the associations between stiffness parameters and possible confounders. Results For the cases, body mass index (BMI) was significantly higher and age and parity were significantly lower. BP was significantly higher for the cases. Stiffness of the arterial wall, joints and skin were significantly higher. After adjustment for mean arterial pressure, stiffness of the joints and skin were significantly higher, but no difference remained for arterial stiffness. Conclusions Women with a history of pre-eclampsia had a significantly higher stiffness of the arterial wall, joints and skin compared with controls. This suggests a constitutionally determined stiffness of connective tissues in former pre-eclamptic cases.
Suggested operation of grid-connected lithium-ion battery energy storage system for primary frequency regulation: Lifetime perspective

Because of their characteristics, which have been continuously improved during the last years, Lithium ion batteries were proposed as an alternative viable solution to present fast-reacting conventional generating units to deliver the primary frequency regulation service. However, even though there are worldwide demonstration projects where energy storage systems based on Lithium-ion batteries are evaluated for such applications, the field experience is still very limited. In consequence, at present there are no very clear requirements on how the Lithium-ion battery energy storage systems should be operated while providing frequency regulation service and how the system has to re-establish its SOC once the frequency event has passed. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the effect on the lifetime of the Lithium-ion batteries energy storage system of various strategies for re-establishing the batteries' SOC after the primary frequency regulation is successfully delivered.
Smiling in Pain: Explorations of Its Social Motives

Studies of facial responses during experimental and clinical pain have revealed a surprising phenomenon, namely, that a considerable number of individuals respond with a smile. So far, it is not known why smiling occurs during pain. It is possible that the “smile of pain” is socially motivated (e.g., reinforcing social bonds while undergoing an unpleasant experience). The present studies were conducted in an attempt to address the role of social motives in smiling during pain. In two studies, we varied the quantitative (level of sociality) and qualitative (properties of the relationship between interactants) components of the situations in which participants received painful stimulation. Participants' faces were video-recorded and the occurrence of smiling was assessed. The occurrence of smiling differed depending on stimulus intensity and the properties of the relationship between interactants. Smiling occurred more often during the painful compared to nonpainful stimulation. Whereas the presence of a stranger (experimenter) reduced the smiling behavior, the presence of an intimate other increased it. Slight variations in the level of sociality, however, had no effect on the degree of smiling. Social motives possibly aimed at strengthening social bonds and thus ensuring social support appear to underlie smiling during pain.
'Early leavers' from education and training in Ireland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom

L'expression early leaving est utilisee pour caracteriser l'arret precoce des etudes ou l'investissement insuffisant des eleves en terme d'education ou de formation. La non-qualification a longtemps ete acceptee aux Pays-Bas, en Irlande et au Royaume-Uni comme une situation normale. Toutefois, avec l'apparition d'une demande de qualifications grandissantes sur un marche du travail encombre, ces pays doivent mettre en place des politiques sociales et educatives adaptees
An Address-Event Fall Detector for Assisted Living Applications

In this paper, we describe an address-event vision system designed to detect accidental falls in elderly home care applications. The system raises an alarm when a fall hazard is detected. We use an asynchronous temporal contrast vision sensor which features sub-millisecond temporal resolution. The sensor reports a fall at ten times higher temporal resolution than a frame-based camera and shows 84% higher bandwidth efficiency as it transmits fall events. A lightweight algorithm computes an instantaneous motion vector and reports fall events. We are able to distinguish fall events from normal human behavior, such as walking, crouching down, and sitting down. Our system is robust to the monitored person's spatial position in a room and presence of pets.
Production control of a manufacturing system subject to deterioration

In this paper we consider a control problem for a manufacturing system comprising a single machine subject to a deterioration process. The system produces a single part type and the model is fluid. The objective is to minimize a long term average cost index which penalizes both inventory surplus and backlog. The machine deterioration rate depends on the production rate and a maintenance operation is performed when the deterioration reaches a specified alarm level. In this paper it is shown that the optimal control operates the machine alternating the maximum production capacity with idle or conservative periods (policy μ-d-μ) if the machine deterioration rate is a concave function of the production rate while it is a continuous feedback function of the buffer level if the deterioration rate is convex. This confirms the results obtained in the past for Markov failure prone systems.
Multiple Measures Reveal Antiretroviral Adherence Successes and Challenges in HIV-Infected Ugandan Children

Background Adherence to HIV antiretroviral therapy (ART) among children in developing settings is poorly understood. Methodology/Principal Findings To understand the level, distribution, and correlates of ART adherence behavior, we prospectively determined monthly ART adherence through multiple measures and six-monthly HIV RNA levels among 121 Ugandan children aged 2–10 years for one year. Median adherence levels were 100% by three-day recall, 97.4% by 30-day visual analog scale, 97.3% by unannounced pill count/liquid formulation weights, and 96.3% by medication event monitors (MEMS). Interruptions in MEMS adherence of ≥48 hours were seen in 57.0% of children; 36.3% had detectable HIV RNA at one year. Only MEMS correlated significantly with HIV RNA levels (r = −0.25, p = 0.04). Multivariable regression found the following to be associated with <90% MEMS adherence: hospitalization of child (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] 3.0, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.6–5.5; p = 0.001), liquid formulation use (AOR 1.4, 95%CI 1.0–2.0; p = 0.04), and caregiver’s alcohol use (AOR 3.1, 95%CI 1.8–5.2; p<0.0001). Child’s use of co-trimoxazole (AOR 0.5, 95%CI 0.4–0.9; p = 0.009), caregiver’s use of ART (AOR 0.6, 95%CI 0.4–0.9; p = 0.03), possible caregiver depression (AOR 0.6, 95%CI 0.4–0.8; p = 0.001), and caregiver feeling ashamed of child’s HIV status (AOR 0.5, 95%CI 0.3–0.6; p<0.0001) were protective against <90% MEMS adherence. Change in drug manufacturer (AOR 4.1, 95%CI 1.5–11.5; p = 0.009) and caregiver’s alcohol use (AOR 5.5, 95%CI 2.8–10.7; p<0.0001) were associated with ≥48-hour interruptions by MEMS, while second-line ART (AOR 0.3, 95%CI 0.1–0.99; p = 0.049) and increasing assets (AOR 0.7, 95%CI 0.6–0.9; p = 0.0007) were protective against these interruptions. Conclusions/Significance Adherence success depends on a well-established medication taking routine, including caregiver support and adequate education on medication changes. Caregiver-reported depression and shame may reflect fear of poor outcomes, functioning as motivation for the child to adhere. Further research is needed to better understand and build on these key influential factors for adherence intervention development.
Visfatin, low‐grade inflammation and body mass index (BMI)

Objective Visfatin is an adipokine with revealing roles in inflammatory mechanisms but its implication in inflammation related to excessive adiposity/obesity is not studied yet. Our aim was to investigate the relations of visfatin with inflammation markers and body mass index (BMI) in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), a type of cells closely related to inflammatory mechanisms.
Association for Information Systems AIS Electronic Library ( AISeL ) All Sprouts Content Sprouts 11-20-2008 A Teleological Process Theory of Software Development

This paper presents a teleological process theory of software design in organizations. The proposed theory is compared to the Function-Behavior-Structure (FBS) Framework â a leading process theory of engineering design proposed by John Gero. A positivist, multiple case study methodology to empirically compare the veracity and predictive power of the two theories described. Results from a pilot case suggest that the observed behaviors of the development team are better described by the proposed theory than by the FBS Framework.
An Investigation of Emotional Speech in Depression Classification

Assessing depression via speech characteristics is a growing area of interest in quantitative mental health research with a view to a clinical mental health assessment tool. As a mood disorder, depression induces changes in response to emotional stimuli, which motivates this investigation into the relationship between emotion and depression affected speech. This paper investigates how emotional information expressed in speech (i.e. arousal, valence, dominance) contributes to the classification of minimally depressed and moderately-severely depressed individuals. Experiments based on a subset of the AVEC 2014 database show that manual emotion ratings alone are discriminative of depression and combining rating-based emotion features with acoustic features improves classification between mild and severe depression. Emotion-based data selection is also shown to provide improvements in depression classification and a range of threshold methods are explored. Finally, the experiments presented demonstrate that automatically predicted emotion ratings can be incorporated into a fully automatic depression classification to produce a 5% accuracy improvement over an acoustic-only baseline system.
A Systematic Review of Paraprofessional-Delivered Educational Practices to Improve Outcomes for Students with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

The involvement ofparaprofessionals in the education of students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) has been both complex and controversial. Many scholars and advocates have raised concerns about the roles these staff members play in schools and the degree to which there is empirical support for their direct work with students. We conducted a systematic review of the literature to address two primary questions: To what extent have paraprofessional-implemented educational practices been shown to improve outcomes for elementary and secondary students with IDD, and what professional development strategies enable paraprofessionals to implement these strategies with fidelity? These studies indicate paraprofessionals, when given adequate training, are capable of effectively implementing a number of educational practices that result in improved academic and social outcomes, specifically, teaching communication skills, reducing problem behaviors, and increasing independence for students with IDD. Follow-up training and support, modeling, and performance feedback were prominent training components across most studies in this review and are validated in the broader research literature. However, limitations leave many questions unanswered about how to best train and support paraprofessionals. We discuss recommendations for preparing paraprofessionals who work with students with IDD, as well as future directions for research.
Possible Pathway(s) of Metyrapone Egress from the Active Site of Cytochrome P450 3A4: A Molecular Dynamics Simulation

To identify a possible pathway(s) for metyrapone egress from the active site of P450 3A4, a 5-ns conventional molecular dynamics simulation followed by steered molecular dynamics simulations was performed on the complex with metyrapone. The steered molecular dynamics simulations showed that metyrapone egress via channel 1, threading through the B-C loop, only required a relatively small rupture force and small displacement of residues, whereas egress via the third channel, between helix I and helices F′ and G′, required a relatively large force and perturbation of helices I, B′, and C. The conventional dynamics simulation indicated that channel 2, located between the β1 sheet, B-B′ loop, and F′-G′ region, is closed because of the movement of residues in the mouth of this channel. The findings suggest that channel 1 can be used for metyrapone egress, whereas both channel 2 and channel 3 have a low probability of serving as an exit channel for metyrapone. In addition, residues F108 and I120 appear to act as two gatekeepers to prevent the inhibitor from leaving the active site. These results are in agreement with previous site-directed mutagenesis experiments.
Human Parvovirus B 19 Infection and Hydrops Fetalis in Rio de Janeiro , Brazil

Departamento de Virologia, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Av. Brasil 4365, 21045-900 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil *Serviço de Anatomia Patológica, Instituto Fernandes Figueira, Av. Rui Barbosa 716, 22250-020 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil **Departamento de Microbiologia e Parasitologia, CCM/UFF, Rua Prof. Ernani Melo 101, 24210130 Niterói, RJ, Brasil ***Setor de Microscopia Eletrônica, Instituto de Microbiologia, UFRJ, Ilha do Fundão, 21944-790 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil ****Virus Reference Division, Central Public Health Laboratory, 61 Colindale Av. , NW9 5HT, London, UK
The effect of apparent amylose content and dietary fibre on the glycemic response of different varieties of cooked milled and brown rice

Brown rice is a good source of dietary fibre (DF) and contains higher vitamins/minerals than milled rice. The study determined the effect of amylose content (AC) and DF on glucose response (GR) from different varieties of milled and brown rice. Milled and brown rice were used as test foods. They were fed to 9–10 human volunteers containing 50 g available carbohydrate after an overnight fast. GR and the glycemic index (GI) were determined. Results found that Sinandomeng with the lowest AC had a high GI = 75, while PSBRc10 with the highest AC had a low GI = 50. Sinandomeng with a low DF had GI = 75, while its brown rice had GI = 55. Brown rice (IR64) with 23% AC and DF of 2.5 g/100 g had low GI = 51. In conclusion, the GR and GI of the different varieties of cooked milled and brown rice varied depending on its AC and DF contents.
Gestational weight gain, prepregnancy body mass index related to pregnancy outcomes in KAZERUN, FARS, IRAN.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to evaluate associations between pregnancy outcomes and prepregnancy body mass index and gestational weight gain among pregnant women who regularly attended health centers of Kazerun, Fars, Iran. METHODS In this descriptive study records from 5172 pregnant women were considered in this study, based on the methodology criteria. Women were distributed across 4 prepregnancy categories according to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) (1990) classification of body mass index, and to 4 end-of-pregnancy categories according to median weekly gestational weight gain. RESULTS The risks for gestational diabetes, gestational hypertension, pre-eclampsia, and preterm premature rupture of membranes were higher for those who were overweight or obese before becoming pregnant (P < 0.05). Moreover, a gestational weight gain of 0.50 kg per week or greater was associated with a higher risk for gestational hypertension, preterm premature rupture of membranes, and fetal macrosomia (P < 0.05). Women in the highest quartile for weight gain (≥ 0.59 kg per week) were at higher risk for pre-eclampsia (P < 0.05). DISCUSSION The results seems to indicate that excessive gestational weight gain and high prepregnancy body mass index were associated with increased risks for adverse pregnancy outcomes.
ASPECT: an economical bug-detector

A technique-ASPECT-for catching code-level bugs is presented. ASPECT is intended to be economical for everyday software development. It comprises a formal specification language and a code-checking method. Programmers write simple assertions about the information required to compute a result; an efficient mechanical checker can then find bugs in the annotated code. Careless slips that escape type-checking and standard compiler anomaly tests can be detected, without the cost of formal verification or the uncertainty of testing. The essence of ASPECT is reasoning about dependencies between the aspects of abstract objects. <<ETX>>
An Integrated Proteomic and Metabolomic Study on the Chronic Effects of Mercury in Suaeda salsa under an Environmentally Relevant Salinity

As an environmental contaminant, mercury is of great concern due to its high risk to environmental and human health. The halophyte Suaeda salsa is the dominant plant in the intertidal zones of the Yellow River Delta (YRD) where has been contaminated by mercury in some places. This study aimed at evaluating the chronic effects of mercury (Hg2+, 20 µg L−1) and the influence of an environmentally relevant salinity (NaCl, 500 mM) on mercury-induced effects in S. salsa. A total of 43 protein spots with significant changes were identified in response to Hg2+, salinity and combined Hg2+ and salinity. These proteins can be categorized into diverse functional classes, related to metabolic processes, photosynthesis, stress response, protein fate, energy metabolism, signaling pathways and immunosuppression. Metabolic responses demonstrated that Hg2+ could disturb protein and energy metabolisms in S. salsa co-exposed with or without salinity. In addition, both antagonistic and synergistic effects between Hg2+ and salinity were confirmed by differential levels of proteins (magnesium-chelatase and ribulose-l,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase) and metabolites (valine, malonate, asparagine, glycine, fructose and glucose) in S. salsa. These findings suggest that a combination of proteomics and metabolomics can provide insightful information of environmental contaminant-induced effects in plants at molecular levels.
Nitrate improves growth in salt-stressed citrus seedlings through effects on photosynthetic activity and chloride accumulation.

We analyzed the effects of nitrate availability on growth of Navelina (Citrus sinensis (L.) Osbeck) scions grafted on three citrus rootstocks differing in salt tolerance: Carrizo citrange (Citrus sinensis (L.) Osbeck x Poncirus trifoliata (L.) Raf. ), Citrus macrophylla Wester and Cleopatra mandarin (Citrus reshni Hort. ex Tanaka). Salt stress reduced total plant biomass by 27-38%, whereas potassium nitrate supplementation partially counteracted this effect by increasing dry matter and new leaf area. Salinized Carrizo citrange had the greatest response to nitrate supplementation, whereas the effects on salinized Cleopatra mandarin and C. macrophylla were less apparent. Nitrogen and chlorophyll contents and photosynthetic activity also increased in leaves of the nitrate-supplemented salinized plants. In salinized plants, nitrate supplementation reduced leaf abscission, stimulated photosynthetic activity and increased growth of new leaves. The nitrate treatment did not modify chloride concentration in leaves, but it reduced chloride concentrations in Carrizo and Macrophylla roots. Therefore, in both rootstocks, chloride content was similar in mature leaves, higher in immature leaves and lower in roots of the nitrate-supplemented salinized plants compared with salinized plants unsupplemented with nitrate. We suggest that the nitrate-induced stimulation of growth reduced chloride concentration in roots through the reallocation of chloride to new leaves.