Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clearance of fibrinogen and von Willebrand factor in serial double‐filtration plasmapheresis

Double filtration plasmapheresis (DFP) is a widely used and effective way to clear autoantibodies from plasma. It can, however, transiently alter the hemostatic system and cause a bleeding tendency in some patients. There is limited data on the consecutive effect of serial DFP on the hemostatic system, especially on fibrinogen and von Willebrand factor (vWF) levels. This study measured fibrinogen and vWF serially before and after each session of DFP in 8 patients who received one course of DFP treatment for 3 to 5 consecutive sessions on an alternate‐day basis. In each session of DFP, the clearance rate of fibrinogen and vWF exceeded 63 and 45%, respectively. The final levels of fibrinogen and vWF after a full course of DFP were reduced to 14.3 and 51.2% of baseline level, respectively. No bleeding tendency was observed in any of the 34 DFP sessions. In conclusion, although an obvious decrease in fibrinogen level and the modest decrease in vWF were observed after an intensive course of DFP treatment, the low incidence of clinically important bleeding confirms the hemostasis‐related safety of DFP. J. Clin. Apheresis 18:67–70, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Assessing Internet Enabled Business Value : An Exploratory Investigation ♣

While the focus of electronic commerce has often been on “dot coms” or pure Internet based companies, a major transformation is under way in many traditional “bricks-and-mortar” organizations. The latter are investing heavily in Internet based technologies and applications in order to attain new heights of efficiency, productivity and business value. While anecdotes in the business press suggest that some firms have achieved unprecedented performance gains by leveraging the Internet, there is no systematic evidence in the Information Technology (IT) productivity or business value literature regarding the payoffs from Internet enabled business initiatives. We propose an exploratory model of electronic business value involving IT applications, processes, business partner readiness, and operational and financial performance measures. This model is rooted in IT business value and productivity research, and is empirically tested with data from over 1000 firms in manufacturing, retail, distribution and wholesale sectors. We find that electronic business initiatives involving customer-facing technologies lead to operational excellence in customer interactions and improved financial performance. Further, supplier related operational excellence is a key determinant of customer excellence, suggesting the related nature of customer and supplier related performance. Customer and supplier readiness to engage in online business have strong positive impacts on customer and supplier related operational excellence respectively, indicating the need for all entities in a value chain to simultaneously adopt Internet applications and business practices. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to address the business value of Internet initiatives.
Resilience Under Military Operational Stress: Can Leaders Influence Hardiness?

Although many people suffer physical and mental health decrements following exposure to stress, many others show remarkable resilience, remaining healthy despite high stress levels. If the factors that account for resilience can be clearly identified and understood, perhaps resilience can be enhanced even for those most vulnerable to stress. One potential pathway to resilience is personality hardiness, a characteristic sense that life is meaningful, we choose our own futures, and change is interesting and valuable. This article applies this hardiness concept to the context of military operational stress, and argues that highly effective leaders can increase hardy, resilient responses to stressful circumstances within their units. I discuss the nature of stress in modern military operations, and briefly review relevant hardiness theory and research. Three sets of considerations lead to the proposition that hardy leaders can indeed increase hardy cognitions and behaviors in groups. These considerations concern (a) the likely underlying mechanisms of hardiness, which have to do with how experiences get interpreted and made sense of; (b) relevant theoretical positions on leader social influence, including transformational leadership and path–goal leader theory; and (c) several empirical studies that have shown indirect support for a hardy leader influence process. A case vignette is provided to illustrate how leaders might increase hardy cognitions, attitudes, and behaviors within their organizations during highly stressful operations. This potential for leaders to boost hardiness as a pathway to resiliency in groups under stress merits further active investigation.
Best-effort networks: modeling and performance analysis via large networks asymptotics

We introduce a class of Markov models, termed best-effort networks, designed to capture performance indices such as mean transfer times in data networks with best-effort service. We introduce the so-called min bandwidth sharing policy as a conservative approximation to the classical max-min policy. We establish necessary and sufficient ergodicity conditions for best-effort networks under the min policy. We then resort to the mean field technique of statistical physics to analyze network performance deriving fixed point equations for the stationary distribution of large symmetrical best-effort networks. A specific instance of such networks is the star-shaped network which constitutes a plausible model of a network with an overprovisioned backbone. Numerical and analytical study of the equations allows us to state a number of qualitative conclusions on the impact of traffic parameters (link loads) and topology parameters (route lengths) on mean document transfer time.
Incorporation of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Reverse Transcriptase into Virus-Like Particles

ABSTRACT We demonstrate that a genetically engineered human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) reverse transcriptase (RT) composed mainly of p66 or p51 subunits can be incorporated into virus-like particles (VLPs) when coexpressed with HIV-1 Pr55gag. VLP-associated RT exhibited a detergent-resistant association with immature cores during sucrose gradient equilibrium centrifugation, suggesting that RT is incorporated into VLPs. However, RT that retains downstream integrase (IN) is severely inhibited in terms of incorporation into VLPs. Results from immunofluorescence tests reveal that RT-IN is primarily localized at the perinuclear area and exhibits poor colocalization with Gag. IN removal leads to a redistribution of RT throughout the cytoplasm and improved RT incorporation into VLPs. Similar results were observed for RT-IN in which alanine was substituted for 186-Lys-Arg-Lys-188 residues of the IN putative nuclear localization signal, suggesting that IN karyophilic properties may partly account for the inhibitory effect of IN on RT incorporation. Although the membrane-binding capacity of RT was markedly reduced compared to that of wild-type Gag or Gag-Pol, the correlation of membrane-binding ability with particle incorporation efficiency was incomplete. Furthermore, we observed that membrane-binding-defective myristylation-minus RT can be packaged into VLPs at the same level as its normal myristylated counterpart. This suggests that the incorporation of RT into VLPs is independent of membrane affinity but very dependent on RT-Gag interaction. Results from a genetic analysis suggest that the Gag-interacting regions of RT mainly reside in the thumb subdomain and that the RT-binding domains of Gag are located in the matrix (MA) and p6 regions.
Self, Social Identity and Physical Health: Interdisciplinary Explorations.

Introduction: Self and social Identity: Key to Understanding Social and Behavioural Aspects of Physical Health and Disease PART I: SELF, SOCIAL IDENTITY, AND SYSTEMS AFFECTING HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE 2. Self, Sickness, and Systems of Care 3. The Politics of Health, Identity, and Culture PART II: SELF AND IDENTITY IN STRESS, COPING, AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 4. Race, Stress, and Physical Health: The Role of Group Identity 5. Revealing, Organizing, and Reorganizing the Self in Response to Stress and Emotion 6. The Relationship Between Personality and Health: What Self and Identity Have To Do With It 7. What's Sex Got To Do With It? The Development of Sexual Identity During the Adolescent Years PART IV: INFLUENCES OF ILLNESS ON SELF AND IDENTITY 8. The Impact of Chronic Illness on the Self System 9 From the "Sick Role" to Stories of Self: Understanding the Self in Illness Conclusion: Self, Social Identity, and the Social and Behavioural Analysis of Physical Health and Disease: Problems and Prospects
Assessment of the base sequence homology between the two subtypes of equine herpesvirus 1

The magnitude of the genetic relatedness of the two antigenic subtypes of equine herpesvirus 1 (EHV-1) was determined by DNA-DNA reassociation kinetics. Denatured, labeled viral DNA from one EHV-1 subtype was allowed to reassociate in the presence or absence of the unlabeled heterologous viral DNA. The initial rate of reassociation of either labeled viral DNA was increased by the presence of the heterologous viral DNA to an extent indicating 10 to 20% homology between the two EHV-1 genomes. Similar estimates of the amount of homology between the genomes of the two EHV-1 subtypes were obtained by determining the maximum fraction of labeled viral DNA that could be made resistant to S1 nuclease by hybridization with a large molar excess of the unlabeled, heterologous viral DNA. Analysis of the thermal stability of the subtype 1-subtype 2 heteroduplex DNA indicated approximately 30% base pair mismatching within the hybrid DNA molecules. Cross-hybridization of 32P-labeled virion DNA to nitrocellulose blots of restriction endonuclease cleavage fragments of each EHV-1 subtype DNA indicated that the observed homology between the two viruses was nonuniformly distributed with the viral genome. No homology could be detected between the DNA of either EHV-1 subtype and that of a strain of equine cytomegalovirus (EHV-2). The data suggest that the two biotypes of EHV-1 have arisen by divergent evolution from a common progenitor herpesvirus.
A scalable low-latency cache invalidation strategy for mobile environments

Caching frequently accessed data items on the client side is an effective technique to improve performance in a mobile environment. Classical cache invalidation strategies are not suitable for mobile environments due to the disconnection and mobility of the mobile clients. One attractive cache invalidation technique is based on invalidation reports (IRs). However, the IR-based cache invalidation solution has two major drawbacks, which have not been addressed is previous research. First, there is a long query latency associated with this solution since a client cannot answer the query until the next IR interval. Second, when the server updates a hot data item, all clients have to query the server and get the data from the server separately, which wastes a large amount of bandwidth. In this paper, we propose an IR-based cache invalidation algorithm which can significantly reduce the query latency and efficiently utilize the broadcast bandwidth. Detailed simulation experiments are carried out to evaluate the proposed methodology. Compared to previous IR-based schemes, our scheme can significantly improve the throughput and reduce the query latency, the number of uplink request, and the broadcast bandwidth requirements.
Increased Serum Interleukin 22 in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis and Correlation with Disease Activity

Objective. To analyze the role of interleukin 22 (IL-22) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Methods. IL-22 serum levels were measured in 83 patients with established RA under treatment with disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs and in 30 healthy controls matched for age and sex. Patients were assessed for clinical and laboratory variables. Correlations of IL-22 serum levels with disease activity measures [Clinical Disease Activity Index (CDAI) and Disease Activity Score for 28 joints (DAS28)], serological markers, bone erosions, and demographic factors were assessed. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from 30 patients with RA and 14 controls were purified and stimulated in vitro with phorbol myristate acetate (PMA)/ionomycin. IL-22 production by PBMC and in serum was investigated by ELISA. Results. IL-22 levels were increased in patients with RA compared with controls (mean 432.37 pg/ml and 67.45 pg/ml, respectively; p < 0.001). Levels of IL-22 correlated with DAS28 and CDAI measures. Rheumatoid factor (RF) positivity was correlated with higher levels of IL-22 in patients with RA (mean 575.08 pg/ml; p = 0.001). The presence of bone erosions was associated with high IL-22 levels (p = 0.0001). PBMC stimulated with PMA/ionomycin expressed higher levels of IL-22 in patients with RA than controls but this was not significant (mean 584.75 pg/ml and 295.57 pg/ml; p = 0.553). Conclusion. IL-22 is elevated in the serum of patients with established RA. Elevated serum IL-22 allows discrimination between patients with different clinical and laboratory measures and indicates the potential of IL-22 as an additional tool for assessment of activity in RA, particularly in patients with RF antibodies and longterm disease. IL-22 is associated with bone-destructive disease.
The delicacy of the gift: Passing donations and leaving change

Based on the analysis of video recordings, this article analyses encounters where people give money to a Big Issue vendor (The Big Issue is a UK magazine sold on the street by people who are homeless). The article describes practical ways people delineate and move between gift and market economies in the way they approached the vendor, produced verbal accounts, recovered objects from their person, shaped to pass money and so on. Delicate interactional practices are described through which charitable gifts, which potentially subordinate the recipient, are presented and received within a bustling urban landscape.
‘Word-learning wizardry’ at 1;6

This article explores whether infants are able to learn words as rapidly as has been reported for preschoolers. Sixty-four infants aged 1;6 were taught labels for either two moving images or two still images. Each image–label pair was presented three times, after which comprehension was assessed using an adaptation of the intermodal preferential looking paradigm. Three repetitions of each label were found to be sufficient for learning to occur, fewer than has previously been reported for infants under two years. Moreover, contrary to a previous finding, learning was equally rapid for infants who were taught labels for moving versus still images. The findings indicate that infants in the early stages of acquiring a vocabulary learn new word-referent associations with ease, and that the learning conditions that allow such learning are less restricted that was previously believed.
Parallel Algorithms and Subcube Embedding on a Hypercube

It is well known that the connection in a hypercube multiprocessor is rich enough to allow the embedding of a variety of topologies within it. For a given problem, the best choice of topology is naturally the one that incurs the least amount of communication and allows parallel execution of as many tasks as possible. In a previous paper we proposed efficient parallel algorithms for performing QR factorization on a hypercube multiprocessor, where the hypercube network is configured as a two-dimensional subcube-grid with an aspect ratio optimally chosen for each problem. In view of the very substantial net saving in execution time and storage usage obtained in performing QR factorization on an optimally configured subcube-grid, similar strategies are developed in this work to provide highly efficient implementations for three fundamental numerical algorithms: Gaussian elimination with partial pivoting, QR factorization with column pivoting, and multiple least squares updating. Timing results on Intel iPSC/2.
A Practical Study of Control in Objected-Oriented-Functional-Logic Programming with Paisley

Paisley is an extensible lightweight embedded domain-specific language for nondeterministic pattern matching in Java. Using simple APIs and programming idioms, it brings the power of functional-logic processing of arbitrary data objects to the Java platform, without constraining the underlying object-oriented semantics. Here we present an extension to the Paisley framework that adds pattern-based control flow. It exploits recent additions to the Java language, namely functional interfaces and lambda expressions, for an explicit and transparent continuation-passing style approach to control. We evaluate the practical impact of the novel features on a real-world case study that reengineers a third-party open-source project to use Paisley in place of conventional object-oriented data query idioms. We find the approach viable for incremental refactoring of legacy code, with significant qualitative improvements regarding separation of concerns, clarity and intentionality, thus making for easier code understanding, testing and debugging.
Symmetrical Versus Asymmetrical PresbyLASIK: Results After 18 Months and Patient Satisfaction

Purpose: The aim of this study was to report visual, topographic, and satisfaction comparative results between symmetrical and asymmetrical presbyLASIK after 18 months. Methods: Longitudinal, comparative case series of hyperopic presbyopes who underwent presbyLASIK, in a private clinical setting. Monovision symmetrical (plano target both eyes) versus asymmetrical [dominant eye (DE) = plano target; nondominant eye (NDE) = −0.50 diopter (D) target]. Pre- and postoperative variables included monocular and binocular, distance and near, uncorrected visual acuity (VA), best corrected visual acuity, spherical equivalent, addition (Add), topography SimK (Km), and topographic astigmatism. Topographic central corneal power increase was measured 3 and 18 months postoperatively. Data were reported as mean, range, and standard deviation and analyzed with Student t-test (P < 0.05 for statistical significance) and Pearson correlation coefficients. Results: The symmetrical group consisted of 16 patients and the asymmetrical group of 14 patients, with a mean age of 53.5 ± 2.3 and 51.9 ± 2.5 years. Postoperative results, after 18 months, for symmetrical versus asymmetrical presbyLASIK were as follows: distance UCVA 0.8 ±0.20; 0.9 ± 0.2 (P < 0.01); near UCVA 0.9 ± 0.2; 0.8 ± 0.2 (P < 0.01); SE −0.20 ± 0.50; −0.3 ± 0.3D (P < 0.01); Add 0.5 ± 0.5; 0.9 ± 0.9 (P < 0.01); mean Km 44.8 ± 1 D; 43.9 ± 1.1 D (P < 0.01); mean central corneal power differential 1.4 ± 0.8 D; 1.7 ± 1.1 D (P < 0.01), respectively. Stability: −0.16 D, DE −0.13 D and NDE −0.16 D, and SE predictability −0.40; DE −0.28 D and NDE −0.53 D. Safety index 1.0; 1.0, efficacy distance VA 0.8; 0.9, and near VA 0.90; 0.8. More than 90% were within ±0.50 D of the intended target. Twenty eyes required enhancement, and results were not significantly different. Mean satisfaction (0–10 points) for symmetrical patients was 7.0 ± 2.6 and 7.3 ± 2.8 points for asymmetrical patients. Conclusions: Symmetrical and asymmetrical presbyLASIK significantly improved distance UCVA, near UCVA, after 18 months.
Accuracy, Target Reentry and Fitts' Law Performance of Preschool Children Using Mice

Several experiments by psychologists and human factors researchers have shown that when young children execute pointing tasks, they perform at levels below older children and adults. However, these experiments were not conducted with the purpose of providing guidelines for the design of graphical user interfaces. To address this need, we conducted a study to gain a better understanding of 4 and 5 year-old children’s use of mice. We compared the performance of thirteen 4 year-olds, thirteen 5 year-olds and thirteen young adults in point-and-click tasks. As expected, we found age had a significant effect on accuracy, target reentry and Fitts’ law’s index of performance. We also found that target size had a significant effect on accuracy and target reentry. Measuring movement time at four different times (first entering target, last entering target, pressing button, releasing button) yielded the result that Fitts’ law models children well only for the first time they enter the target. Another interesting result was that using the adjusted index of difficulty (IDe) in Fitts’ law calculations yielded lower linear regression correlation coefficients than using the unadjusted index of difficulty (ID). These results provide valuable guidelines for the design of graphical user interfaces for young children, in particular when it comes to sizing visual targets. They also suggest designers should adopt strategies to accommodate users with varying levels of skill.
Is It Considered Violence? The Acceptability of Physical Punishment of Children in Europe

This study analyzes correlates of the acceptability of physical punishment of children in Europe. The design was a three-level ordinal logistic regression of 10,812 people nested within 208 localities (cities), nested within 14 countries of the European Union. Results showed that higher levels of acceptability were reported by men, the older, the less educated, and those who perceived that violence against children was less frequent in their own country. At the country level, the existence of laws prohibiting physical punishment of children as well as a lower number of child maltreatment deaths were significantly associated with lower levels of acceptability of physical punishment of children. Findings suggest that education efforts at the individual and population level are needed.
Coclustering CD45 with CD4 or CD8 alters the phosphorylation and kinase activity of p56lck

Antibody-mediated CD4 crosslinking results in increased tyrosine phosphorylation and tyrosine kinase activity of the associated p56lck. Treatment with anti-CD4 and anti-Ig also induced the phosphorylation of p56lck in a CD45- mutant cell line, indicating that the increase in phosphotyrosine content of p56lck is not the result of being sequestered from CD45 protein tyrosine phosphatase (PTPase). Antibody- mediated coclustering of CD45 with CD4 inhibited the anti-CD4-induced phosphorylation of p56lck on tyrosine and the concomitant increase in in vitro kinase activity. Similar results were obtained when CD45 was coclustered with CD8 on cytotoxic T cell lines. These observations provide strong evidence that p56lck is a substrate for CD45 in vivo and provide an assay to study the regulation and specificity of CD45 PTPase activity.