Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Drug Interaction Between Clopidogrel and Proton Pump Inhibitors

Dual antiplatelet therapy with clopidogrel and aspirin has been shown to reduce recurrent cardiac events in patients with acute coronary syndromes or those who have undergone coronary artery stent placement. Clopidogrel, a thienopyridine, is a prodrug that is transformed in vivo to an active metabolite by the cytochrome P450 enzyme system. Due to the increased risk of bleeding in patients on dual antiplatelet therapy, concomitant gastrointestinal ulcer prophylaxis with a proton pump inhibitor (PPI) is frequently prescribed. Data from recent studies show that PPIs, which are extensively metabolized by the cytochrome system, may decrease the antiplatelet activity of clopidogrel. This article reviews the metabolism of various PPIs and existing data regarding the drug-drug interaction between PPIs and clopidogrel.
Amphetamine withdrawal: affective state, sleep patterns, and MHPG excretion.

The authors found that the clinical depressions which occurred following withdrawal from amphetamines after prolonged abuse were temporally associated with a decrease in the excretion of 3-methoxy-4-hydroxyphenylglycol (MHPG), a metabolite of norepinephrine, and altered EEG sleep patterns including an increased amount of D sleep (REM sleep). As the depressions subsided, MHPG excretion increased and measures of D sleep decreased.
Body dissatisfaction and disordered eating in trans people: A systematic review of the literature

Abstract Body dissatisfaction plays a prominent role in gender dysphoria. In some individuals body dissatisfaction appears to manifest disordered eating in order to suppress bodily features of natal gender and accentuate features of gender identity. To date, there has been no systematic review of the literature pertaining to body dissatisfaction and disordered eating in trans individuals. Such a review may highlight important implications for clinicians working with trans people. Therefore, the aim was to critically and systematically review the available literature examining body dissatisfaction or disordered eating in a trans population, and also the literature pertaining to how body dissatisfaction and disordered eating are related in trans people. This review found three studies that explored disordered eating in trans people, five studies that explored body image and disordered eating in trans people, and 18 studies that explored body image in trans people. The findings from this review suggest that body dissatisfaction is core to the distress trans people experience and that this dissatisfaction may also put some individuals at risk of developing disordered eating. Additionally, the findings appear to suggest that gender dysphoria treatment is successful at increasing body satisfaction and improving body image. The clinical implications are discussed.
Association of the PTEN IVS 4 ( rs 3830675 ) Gene Polymorphism with Reduced Risk of Cancer : Evidence from a Meta-analysis

Cancer is a polygenic disease, which results from complex interactions between environmental and genetic factors (Pharoah et al., 2004). It remains a major global health problem and leads to increase morbidity and mortality worldwide (Jemal et al., 2011). The precise etiology of this fatal disease is still unclear. Its increasing incidence and mortality rate during the last two decades has posed a big challenge to clinicians and scientists. Epidemiological studies continue to indicate the significant contribution of ‘single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)’ to cancer susceptibility through interaction with various environmental factors (Lichtenstein et al., 2000). Thus, it can be anticipated that the discovery of genetic factors of host for cancer risk would assist in the therapeutic applications and overall control of this lethal disease. The PTEN (Phosphatase and tensin homolog, also known as MMAC1, MIM no. 601728) is a well studied tumor suppressor gene mapped on human chromosome 10q23 (Li et al., 1997). It encodes a 403 amino acid
Combining multiple representations and classifiers for pen-based handwritten digit recognition

We investigate techniques to combine multiple representations of a handwritten digit to increase classification accuracy without significantly increasing system complexity or recognition time. We compare multiexpert and multistage combination techniques and discuss in detail in a comparative manner methods for combining multiple learners: voting, mixture of experts, stacking, boosting and cascading. In pen based handwritten character recognition, the input is the dynamic movement of the pentip over the pressure sensitive tablet. There is also the image formed as a result of this movement. On a real world database, we notice that the two multi layer perceptron (MLP) neural network based classifiers using these representations separately make errors on different patterns, implying that a suitable combination of the two would lead to higher accuracy. Thus we implement and compare voting, mixture of experts, stacking and cascading. Combined classifiers have an error percentage less than individual ones. The final combined system of two MLPs has less complexity and memory requirement than a single k nearest neighbor using one of the representations.
Perceptions of Informed Consent in the Care of Elderly People in Five European Countries

The focus of this article is on elderly patients’ and nursing staff perceptions of informed consent in the care of elderly patients/residents in five European countries. The results suggest that patients and nurses differ in their views on how informed consent is implemented. Among elderly patients the highest frequency for securing informed consent was reported in Finland; the lowest was in Germany. In contrast, among nurses, the highest frequency was reported in the UK (Scotland) and the lowest in Finland. In a comparison of patients’ and nurses’ perceptions, nurses had more positive views than patients in all countries except Finland. Patients with less need for nursing interventions in Greece and Spain gave their consent less often. The German and Greek patients were older, and the results also point to an association between this and their lower frequency of giving consent. In Spain, patients who were married or who had a family member or friend to look after their personal affairs were more likely to be included in the group whose consent was sought less often. This is the fourth of a set of five articles published together in this issue of Nursing Ethics in which the results of this comparative research project are presented.
Computerized Working-Memory Training as a Candidate Adjunctive Treatment for Addiction

Alcohol and other drug dependencies are, in part, characterized by deficits in executive functioning, including working memory. Working-memory training is a candidate computerized adjunctive intervention for the treatment of alcoholism and other drug dependencies. This article reviews emerging evidence for computerized working memory training as an efficacious adjunctive treatment for drug dependence and highlights future challenges and opportunities in the field of working-memory training, including duration of training needed, persistence of improvements and utility of booster sessions, and selection of patients based on degree of deficits.
DRI-Grass: A New Experimental Platform for Addressing Grassland Ecosystem Responses to Future Precipitation Scenarios in South-East Australia

Climate models predict shifts in the amount, frequency and seasonality of rainfall. Given close links between grassland productivity and rainfall, such changes are likely to have profound effects on the functioning of grassland ecosystems and modify species interactions. Here, we introduce a unique, new experimental platform – DRI-Grass (Drought and Root Herbivore Interactions in a Grassland) – that exposes a south-eastern Australian grassland to five rainfall regimes [Ambient (AMB), increased amount (IA, +50%), reduced amount (RA, -50%), reduced frequency (RF, single rainfall event every 21 days, with total amount unchanged) and summer drought (SD, 12–14 weeks without water, December–March)], and contrasting levels of root herbivory. Incorporation of a belowground herbivore (root-feeding scarabs) addition treatment allows novel investigation of ecological responses to the twin stresses of altered rainfall and root herbivory. We quantified effects of permanently installed rain shelters on microclimate by comparison with outside plots, identifying small shelter effects on air temperature (-0.19°C day, +0.26°C night), soil water content (SWC; -8%) and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR; -16%). Shelters were associated with modest increases in net primary productivity (NPP), particularly during the cool season. Rainfall treatments generated substantial differences in SWC, with the exception of IA; the latter is likely due to a combination of higher transpiration rates associated with greater plant biomass in IA and the low water-holding capacity of the well-drained, sandy soil. Growing season NPP was strongly reduced by SD, but did not respond to the other rainfall treatments. Addition of root herbivores did not affect plant biomass and there were no interactions between herbivory and rainfall treatments in the 1st year of study. Root herbivory did, however, induce foliar silicon-based defenses in Cynodon dactylon and Eragrostis curvula. Rapid recovery of NPP following resumption of watering in SD plots indicates high functional resilience at the site, and may reflect adaptation of the vegetation to historically high variability in rainfall, both within- and between years. DRI-Grass provides a unique platform for understanding how ecological interactions will be affected by changing rainfall regimes and, specifically, how belowground herbivory modifies grassland resistance and resilience to climate extremes.
The asymptotic properties of polynomial phase estimation by least squares phase unwrapping

Estimating the coefficients of a noisy polynomial phase signal is important in many fields including radar, biology and radio communications. One approach to estimation attempts to perform polynomial regression on the phase of the signal. This is complicated by the fact that the phase is wrapped modulo 2π and therefore must be unwrapped before the regression can be performed. A recent approach suggested by the authors is to perform the unwrapping in a least squares manner. It was shown by Monte Carlo simulation that this produces a remarkably accurate estimator. In this paper we describe the asymptotic properties of this estimator, showing that it is strongly consistent and deriving its central limit theorem. We hypothesise that the estimator produces very near maximum likelihood performance.
A Network Analysis of Countries’ Export Flows: Firm Grounds for the Building Blocks of the Economy

In this paper we analyze the bipartite network of countries and products from UN data on country production. We define the country-country and product-product projected networks and introduce a novel method of filtering information based on elements’ similarity. As a result we find that country clustering reveals unexpected socio-geographic links among the most competing countries. On the same footings the products clustering can be efficiently used for a bottom-up classification of produced goods. Furthermore we mathematically reformulate the “reflections method” introduced by Hidalgo and Hausmann as a fixpoint problem; such formulation highlights some conceptual weaknesses of the approach. To overcome such an issue, we introduce an alternative methodology (based on biased Markov chains) that allows to rank countries in a conceptually consistent way. Our analysis uncovers a strong non-linear interaction between the diversification of a country and the ubiquity of its products, thus suggesting the possible need of moving towards more efficient and direct non-linear fixpoint algorithms to rank countries and products in the global market.
Amino acid transport and metabolism in nitrogen-starved cells of Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Nitrogen-starved yeast derepress a general amino acid permease which transports basic and hydrophobic amino acids. Although both groups of amino acids are metabolized, the derivatives of the basic amino acids are retained by the cells, whereas those of the hydrophobic amino acids are released as acidic and neutral deaminated derivatives. The release of the deaminated derivatives of the hydrophobic amino acids only occurs in the presence of glucose, which presumably produces amino acceptors. The accumulation of intracellular amino acids results in trans-inhibition of the uptake of exogenous amino acids whether the intracellular amino acid is a basic amino acid or the product of intracellular transamination from a hydrophobic amino acid. Variation of permease and transaminase activity was measured during growth under repressed (ammonia-grown) and derepressed (proline-grown) conditions. Maximum levels for both activities occurs at the mid-exponential phase.
In-system jitter measurement using FPGA

The paper describes architecture, detailed implementation and measurement results of newly developed jitter measurement device. The device is implemented using a single FPGA. Probably the biggest benefit of the proposed method is that it requires no external components, just the FPGA. As such it can be implemented into an existing receiver with an FPGA without any changes to its hardware. The new jitter measurement block was implementer and tested on a real link. Comparison with jitter measurement using an oscilloscope is given to prove its reasonable performance. Compared to previously published jitter measurement methods the module is able to monitor high frequency jitter. It is also very efficient in terms of required hardware resources.
Mechanisms of Action of Topical Corticosteroids in Psoriasis

Psoriasis is a lifelong, chronic, and immune-mediated systemic disease, which affects approximately 1–3% of the Caucasian population. The different presentations of psoriasis require different approaches to treatment and appropriate prescriptions according to disease severity. The use of topical therapy remains a key component of the management of almost all psoriasis patients, and while mild disease is commonly treated only with topical agents, the use of topical therapy as adjuvant therapy in moderate-to-severe disease may also be helpful. This paper focuses on the cutaneous mechanisms of action of corticosteroids and on the currently available topical treatments, taking into account adverse effects, bioavailability, new combination treatments, and strategies to improve the safety of corticosteroids. It is established that the treatment choice should be tailored to match the individual patient's needs and his/her expectations, prescribing to each patient the most suitable vehicle.
Model-driven mapping of transcriptional networks reveals the circuitry and dynamics of virulence regulation

Key steps in understanding a biological process include identifying genes that are involved and determining how they are regulated. We developed a novel method for identifying transcription factors (TFs) involved in a specific process and used it to map regulation of the key virulence factor of a deadly fungus—its capsule. The map, built from expression profiles of 41 TF mutants, includes 20 TFs not previously known to regulate virulence attributes. It also reveals a hierarchy comprising executive, midlevel, and “foreman” TFs. When grouped by temporal expression pattern, these TFs explain much of the transcriptional dynamics of capsule induction. Phenotypic analysis of TF deletion mutants revealed complex relationships among virulence factors and virulence in mice. These resources and analyses provide the first integrated, systems-level view of capsule regulation and biosynthesis. Our methods dramatically improve the efficiency with which transcriptional networks can be analyzed, making genomic approaches accessible to laboratories focused on specific physiological processes.
Anchoring the Software Process

Software organizations need common milestones to serve as a basis for their software development processes. The author proposes three such milestones, gives an example of their use, and discusses why they are success-critical for software projects. To avoid the problems of the previous model milestones-stakeholder mismatches, gold plating, inflexible point solutions, high risk downstream capabilities, and uncontrolled developments-software projects need a mix of flexibility and discipline. The risk driven content of the LCO, LCA, and IOC milestones let you tailor them to specific software situations and yet they remain general enough to apply to most software projects. And, because they emphasize stakeholder commitment to shared system objectives, they can provide your organization with a collaborative framework for successfully realizing software's most powerful capability: its ability to help people and organizations cope with change.
Analysis and modeling of time-correlated failures in large-scale distributed systems

The analysis and modeling of the failures bound to occur in today's large-scale production systems is invaluable in providing the understanding needed to make these systems fault-tolerant yet efficient. Many previous studies have modeled failures without taking into account the time-varying behavior of failures, under the assumption that failures are identically, but independently distributed. However, the presence of time correlations between failures (such as peak periods with increased failure rate) refutes this assumption and can have a significant impact on the effectiveness of fault-tolerance mechanisms. For example, the performance of a proactive fault-tolerance mechanism is more effective if the failures are periodic or predictable; similarly, the performance of checkpointing, redundancy, and scheduling solutions depends on the frequency of failures. In this study we analyze and model the time-varying behavior of failures in large-scale distributed systems. Our study is based on nineteen failure traces obtained from (mostly) production large-scale distributed systems, including grids, P2P systems, DNS servers, web servers, and desktop grids. We first investigate the time correlation of failures, and find that many of the studied traces exhibit strong daily patterns and high autocorrelation. Then, we derive a model that focuses on the peak failure periods occurring in real large-scale distributed systems. Our model characterizes the duration of peaks, the peak inter-arrival time, the inter-arrival time of failures during the peaks, and the duration of failures during peaks; we determine for each the best-fitting probability distribution from a set of several candidate distributions, and present the parameters of the (best) fit. Last, we validate our model against the nineteen real failure traces, and find that the failures it characterizes are responsible on average for over 50% and up to 95% of the downtime of these systems.
Comparison of Opportunistic Spectrum Multichannel Medium Access Control Protocols

This work comprehensively compares four possible multichannel medium access control (MAC) approaches for opportunistic spectrum access (OSA). One of important conclusions to be drawn from the analysis is that multichannel OSA MACs that spread both control and data between all available channels, e.g., hopping MACs, perform best among possible OSA MAC implementations when the PU traffic has long ON/OFF periods compared to the time-scale of the SU channel access.
EXPANDING ACADEMIC VOCABULARY WITH AN INTERACTIVE ON-LINE DATABASE

University students used a set of existing and purpose-built on-line tools for vocabulary learning in an experimental ESL course. The resources included concordance, dictionary, cloze-builder, hypertext, and a database with interactive self-quizzing feature (all freely available at www.lextutor.ca). The vocabulary targeted for learning consisted of (a) Coxhead's (2000) Academic Word List, a list of items that occur frequently in university textbooks, and (b) unfamiliar words students had met in academic texts and selected for entry into the class database. The suite of tools were designed to foster retention by engaging learners in deep processing, an aspect that is often described as missing in computer exercises for vocabulary learning. Database entries were examined to determine whether context sentences supported word meanings adequately and whether entered words reflected the unavailability of cognates in the various first languages of the participants. Pre- and post-treatment performance on tests of knowledge of words targeted for learning in the course were compared to establish learning gains. Regression analyses investigated connections between use of specific computer tools and gains.
VLOCI2: improving 2D location coordinates using distance measurements in GPS-equipped VANETs

The problem of further improving the accuracy of GPS-provided coordinates of vehicles within the same VANET (Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network) is addressed. VANETs can be used to increase the accuracy of each vehicle's computed location by allowing vehicles to share information wth each other. This paper looks at improving the coordinates provided by the GPS devices, given that erroneous measurements are present in the system. The algorithm VLOCI2 is an extension of the VLOCI algorithm by providing location improvement on multi-laned roads. VLOCI2 is shown to perform efficiently when erroneous distance measurements are present in the environment/computations.
Economic analysis of firewood marketing in Uyo capital city, Akwa, Ibom state, Nigeria

This study ascertained the profitability and determining factors influencing firewood marketing in Uyo Capital City. The study used structured questionnaires and interview schedules to collect its data. The questionnaires were randomly administered to 75 firewood traders in the markets (Itam market, Akpan Andem market and Afaha market) being 67% of the population frame. Data obtained were analyzed using descriptive statistics, budgetary technique, profitability analysis and regression analysis. The result showed that majority of the respondents were female (92%), were above 30 years of age (83%), were literate (93%), married (73%) and had a household size of 1-5 persons (53%). Also, majority of the traders (72%) had been in the trade for more than 10 years, were engaged at full-time (76%) basis, 63% belonged to an association, started the trade with their personal funds (88%). The trade was profitable with a mean income of ₦34105.20 monthly. The regression coefficient (R 2 ) indicated that the income determinants accounted for 56.50% of the variations in the receipts from firewood sales. Mode of engagement and scale of operation had significant and positive effect on revenue (p<0.05), while household size was negative and significant (p<0.10), Educational status, age of trader and cost incurred was positive and significant (p<0.01) respectively. Majority of the firewood (84%) traded in the study area was bought from Ibiono and the most species commonly traded was from the family Fab aceae , while the species Dactyladenia barteri (Hook.f. ex Oliv.) was the most traded as firewood in the study area. The study recommends evaluation of the production and regeneration of the firewood species especially Dactyladenia barteri (Hook.f. ex Oliv.) under different management regimes across the state and in particular Ibiono, which serve as the major source of firewood for Uyo Capital City.