Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The value of confirmatory testing in early infant HIV diagnosis programmes in South Africa: A cost-effectiveness analysis

Background The specificity of nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) used for early infant diagnosis (EID) of HIV infection is <100%, leading some HIV-uninfected infants to be incorrectly identified as HIV-infected. The World Health Organization recommends that infants undergo a second NAAT to confirm any positive test result, but implementation is limited. Our objective was to determine the impact and cost-effectiveness of confirmatory HIV testing for EID programmes in South Africa. Method and findings Using the Cost-effectiveness of Preventing AIDS Complications (CEPAC)–Pediatric model, we simulated EID testing at age 6 weeks for HIV-exposed infants without and with confirmatory testing. We assumed a NAAT cost of US$25, NAAT specificity of 99.6%, NAAT sensitivity of 100% for infants infected in pregnancy or at least 4 weeks prior to testing, and a mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) rate at 12 months of 4.9%; we simulated guideline-concordant rates of testing uptake, result return, and antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation (100%). After diagnosis, infants were linked to and retained in care for 10 years (false-positive) or lifelong (true-positive). All parameters were varied widely in sensitivity analyses. Outcomes included number of infants with false-positive diagnoses linked to ART per 1,000 ART initiations, life expectancy (LE, in years) and per-person lifetime HIV-related healthcare costs. Both without and with confirmatory testing, LE was 26.2 years for HIV-infected infants and 61.4 years for all HIV-exposed infants; clinical outcomes for truly infected infants did not differ by strategy. Without confirmatory testing, 128/1,000 ART initiations were false-positive diagnoses; with confirmatory testing, 1/1,000 ART initiations were false-positive diagnoses. Because confirmatory testing averted costly HIV care and ART in truly HIV-uninfected infants, it was cost-saving: total cost US$1,790/infant tested, compared to US$1,830/infant tested without confirmatory testing. Confirmatory testing remained cost-saving unless NAAT cost exceeded US$400 or the HIV-uninfected status of infants incorrectly identified as infected was ascertained and ART stopped within 3 months of starting. Limitations include uncertainty in the data used in the model, which we examined with sensitivity and uncertainty analyses. We also excluded clinical harms to HIV-uninfected infants incorrectly treated with ART after false-positive diagnosis (e.g., medication toxicities); including these outcomes would further increase the value of confirmatory testing. Conclusions Without confirmatory testing, in settings with MTCT rates similar to that of South Africa, more than 10% of infants who initiate ART may reflect false-positive diagnoses. Confirmatory testing prevents inappropriate HIV diagnosis, is cost-saving, and should be adopted in all EID programmes.
Repetition Suppression and Memory for Faces is Reduced in Adults with Autism Spectrum Conditions

Abstract Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) are associated with a number of atypicalities in face processing, including difficulties in face memory. However, the neural mechanisms underlying this difficulty are unclear. In neurotypical individuals, repeated presentation of the same face is associated with a reduction in activity, known as repetition suppression (RS), in the fusiform face area (FFA). However, to date, no studies have investigated RS to faces in individuals with ASC, or the relationship between RS and face memory. Here, we measured RS to faces and geometric shapes in individuals with a clinical diagnosis of an ASC and in age and IQ matched controls. Relative to controls, the ASC group showed reduced RS to faces in bilateral FFA and reduced performance on a standardized test of face memory. By contrast, RS to shapes in object‐selective regions and object memory did not differ between groups. Individual variation in face‐memory performance was positively correlated with RS in regions of left parietal and prefrontal cortex. These findings suggest difficulties in face memory in ASC may be a consequence of differences in the way faces are stored and/or maintained across a network of regions involved in both visual perception and short‐term/working memory.
Selection by Pollinators on Floral Traits in Generalized Trollius ranunculoides (Ranunculaceae) along Altitudinal Gradients

Abundance and visitation of pollinator assemblages tend to decrease with altitude, leading to an increase in pollen limitation. Thus increased competition for pollinators may generate stronger selection on attractive traits of flowers at high elevations and cause floral adaptive evolution. Few studies have related geographically variable selection from pollinators and intraspecific floral differentiation. We investigated the variation of Trollius ranunculoides flowers and its pollinators along an altitudinal gradient on the eastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and measured phenotypic selection by pollinators on floral traits across populations. The results showed significant decline of visitation rate of bees along altitudinal gradients, while flies was unchanged. When fitness is estimated by the visitation rate rather than the seed number per plant, phenotypic selection on the sepal length and width shows a significant correlation between the selection strength and the altitude, with stronger selection at higher altitudes. However, significant decreases in the sepal length and width of T. ranunculoides along the altitudinal gradient did not correspond to stronger selection of pollinators. In contrast to the pollinator visitation, mean annual precipitation negatively affected the sepal length and width, and contributed more to geographical variation in measured floral traits than the visitation rate of pollinators. Therefore, the sepal size may have been influenced by conflicting selection pressures from biotic and abiotic selective agents. This study supports the hypothesis that lower pollinator availability at high altitude can intensify selection on flower attractive traits, but abiotic selection is preventing a response to selection from pollinators.
Generating Cancelable Palmprint Templates Using Local Binary Pattern and Random Projection

A compromised biometric is compromised forever and the user is no more secure in other database also. This challenge can be addressed by Cancelable Biometric. A Cancelable Biometric is distorted version of a original biometric, that can be canceled and reissued like a password, and also is unique for every application. Cancelable biometric for original biometric has been seriously understudied problem. This paper presents a novel Cancelable coding scheme based on Local Binary Pattern (LBP) and Random Projection, where the biometric features are distorted in a revocable but irreversible manner by first transforming the raw biometric data into a fixed-length feature vector and then projecting it onto randomly selected subspace using set of random numbers. Three methods has been presented and experimented thoroughly. The Cancelable palmprint with Local Ternary Pattern (LTP) and two random number set outperform the other two methods. The proposed scheme has been verified under the best case and worse case scenarios (normal and stolen token scenario) on the PolyU Database.
Semantic transparency affects morphological priming . . . eventually

Semantic transparency has been in the focus of psycholinguistic research for decades, with the controversy about the time course of the application of morpho-semantic information during the processing of morphologically complex words not yet resolved. This study reports two masked priming studies with English -ness and Russian -ost’ nominalisations, investigating how semantic transparency modulates native speakers’ morphological priming effects at short and long stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). In both languages, we found increased morphological priming for nominalisations at the transparent end of the scale (e.g. paleness – pale) in comparison to items at the opaque end of the scale (e.g. business – busy) but only at longer prime durations. The present findings are in line with models that posit an initial phase of morpho-orthographic (semantically blind) decomposition.
Renoprotective effect of nifuroxazide in diabetes-induced nephropathy: impact on NFκB, oxidative stress, and apoptosis

Abstract The prevalence of diabetes mellitus (DM) is drastically increased worldwide. Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a microvascular complication of DM and a common cause of end stage renal disease (ESRD). DN has been recently reported as the most common cause among ESRD patients. Shortage of a definitive cure for DN and the social and economic burden of this disease provide considerable impetus for development of new therapies. In the present study, we evaluated the effect of nifuroxazide, a potent inhibitor of Janus kinase/signal transducers and activators of transcription (JAK2/STAT3), on nuclear factor kappa B (NFκB), oxidative stress, and apoptosis in diabetic kidney. Following induction of diabetes by single dose of streptozotocin (50 mg/kg), nifuroxazide was administrated to diabetic rats (25 mg/kg/day, orally) for 8 weeks. Our results showed that nifuroxazide treatment, attenuated diabetes-induced damage in renal structure, ameliorated oxidative stress, triggered antioxidant defense, reduced NFκB nuclear translocation and cleaved caspase-3 expression and down regulated the activity of apoptotic enzymes (caspase-3/caspase-8/caspase-9) in diabetic kidney. In conclusion, nifuroxazide exhibited renoprotective effect in diabetic kidney via dampening NFκB activation, oxidative stress, and apoptosis.
Heuristics for computing sparse solutions for ill-posed inverse problems in signal and image recovery

For almost a century the famous theorem of Shannon-Nyquist has been very important in digital signal processing applications as the basis for the number of samples required to efficiently reconstruct any type of signal, such as speech and image data. However, signals and images are mainly stored and processed in huge files, which require more storage space, they take longer to transmit and they demand a large computational cost for processing. For this purpose many compression techniques have been introduced including the emerging field of Compressed Sensing (CS). CS is a novel and fast sampling and recovery process, which has attracted considerable research interest with several new application areas. By exploiting the signal and the measurements structure we are able to recover a signal from what was previously considered as highly under-sampled measurements, according to the ShannonNyquist criterion. This reconstruction is accomplished by finding the sparsest solution for an ill-posed system of linear equations, which is an NP-hard combinatorial optimisation problem. This thesis focuses on the l0-norm based minimisation problem which arises from sparse signal or image recovery, using the CS technique. A new, fast heuristic is proposed to directly minimise a continuous function of the l0 norm. This swarm based stochastic method provides better sparse solutions for highly under-sampled and over-sampled cases even under the presence of noise with small error and less time complexity, compared with several wellknown competing approaches. The evaluation methodology includes different parameters of the l0-heuristic and is based on measuring recovery error and execution time under various sparsity levels, sample sizes, sampling matrices and transform domains. The mathematical background of CS, including the key aspects of sparsity and incoherence in measurements are also provided, together with applications and further open research questions, such as weakly sparse signals in noisy environments. “Amat victoria curam” (Victory loves diligence) Latin proverb
Is gender important? Victimisation and perpetration of intimate partner violence in mainland China

Establishing the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) has been recommended by International Conventions and Declarations for some time beginning with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Articles 12 and 19) in 1979. One important recommendation of such international protocols is the implementation of national population prevalence surveys to establishing IPV as a serious social issue globally, which is intended to provide data for planning effective responses within signatory countries. However, not all countries have undertaken national prevalence surveys meaning that there are gaps in our understanding of who are the perpetrators and victims of IPV in different cultural contexts. This article presents the results of a scoping review of literature examining gender differences in prevalence rates of victimisation and perpetration of IPV in mainland China (hereon China). There has been little written about the prevalence of IPV in China generally, and this scoping process located only nine peer-reviewed articles written in both English- and Chinese-language journals focusing on both gender and IPV published between 1997 and 2016. Results of this scoping review demonstrate that while both women and men perpetrate IPV in China, the prevalence rates of different types of IPV reflect gender differences in both perpetration and victimisation, suggesting that IPV is not a unitary phenomenon. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the findings including the importance of increasing awareness of IPV in China more generally and developing gender-specific interventions to directly address different types of IPV. Directions for future research are also canvassed.
Potential health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption: current perspectives in research

The benefits of moderate amounts of alcohol for a better health and longer life expectancy compared with abstinence have been suggested by the findings of numerous studies. However, controversies have emerged regarding the influence of confounding factors and the systematic errors that might have been inadvertently disregarded in the early studies. This review includes a description of the findings of those research studies published in the last 5 years on the effects of moderate alcohol consumption on all-cause mortality, CVD and inflammation, the immune system, insulin sensitivity, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and cancer. Promising evidences exist from both animal studies and human clinical trials regarding intermediate end-points of CHD and insulin sensitivity, such as HDL, adiponectin or fibrinogen. However, controversies and inconsistent findings exist regarding many of these diseases and related functions and biomarkers. Further research and human randomised-controlled trials with adequate standardisation of the study conditions are necessary in order to draw a comparison between studies, establish the causal effect of moderate alcohol intake on disease protection and reach consensus on the circumstances that allow the recommendation of moderate alcohol habitual intakes as a strategy for health maintenance.
Diabetes mellitus and schizophrenia: Historical perspective

Background Although recent research has focused on the possible role of antipsychotic medications in the development of diabetes mellitus, studies conducted in the pre-neurolepticera suggest that schizophrenia itself might predispose individuals to diabetes. Aims To test the hypothesis that diabetes mellitus is an integral part of schizophrenia. Method Historical literature review. Results Many people with severe mental illnesses, including dementia praecox, showed abnormal responses to insulin and diabetes-like glucose tolerance curves long before the advent of phenothiazines. Early studies with chlorpromazine suggested that a latent tendency towards diabetes in patients with schizophrenia could be unmasked by this treatment. Conclusions Diabetes and disturbed carbohydrate metabolism maybe an integral part of schizophrenia. Further research is required to explain how metabolic factors, medications and lifestyle factors might precipitate diabetes in patients with this mental disorder.
Towards Memory-Friendly Deterministic Incremental Gradient Method

Incremental Gradient (IG) methods are classical strategies in solving finite sum minimization problems. Deterministic IG methods are particularly favorable in handling massive scale problem due to its memoryfriendly data access pattern. In this paper, we propose a new deterministic variant of the IG method SVRG that blends a periodically updated full gradient with a component function gradient selected in a cyclic order. Our method uses only O(1) extra gradient storage without compromising the linear convergence. Empirical results demonstrate that the proposed method is advantageous over existing incremental gradient algorithms, especially on problems that does not fit into physical memory.
Prenatal cocaine exposure disrupts the dopaminergic system and its postnatal responses to cocaine

Impaired attention is the hallmark consequence of prenatal cocaine exposure (PCE), affecting brain development, learning, memory and social adaptation starting at an early age. To date, little is known about the brain structures and neurochemical processes involved in this effect. Through focusing on the visual system and employing zebrafish as a model, we show that PCE reduces expression of dopamine receptor Drd1, with levels reduced in the optic tectum and other brain regions, but not the telencephalon. Organism‐wide, PCE results in a 1.7‐fold reduction in the expression of the dopamine transporter (dat), at baseline. Acute cocaine administration leads to a 2‐fold reduction in dat in drug‐naive larvae but not PCE fish. PCE sensitizes animals to an anxiogenic‐like behavioral effect of acute cocaine, bottom‐dwelling, while loss of DAT due to genetic knockout (DATKO) leads to bottom‐dwelling behavior at baseline. Neuronal calcium responses to visual stimuli in both PCE and DATKO fish show tolerance to acute cocaine in the principal regions of visual attention, the telencephalon and optic tectum. The zebrafish model can provide a sensitive assay by which to elucidate the molecular mechanisms and brain region‐specific consequences of PCE, and facilitate the search for effective therapeutic solutions.
Early and late nutritional windows for diabetes susceptibility

Our epidemiological studies have led us to propose that events in early (fetal and infant) life are major factors determining susceptibility to non-insulin-dependent diabetes (NIDDM) in adult life (Brown et al. 1991; Hales et al. 1991; Robinson et al. 1992; Barker et al. 1993; Phillips et al. 1994; Law et al. 1995; Yajnik et al. 1995). It has been suggested that fetal growth restriction due to poor nutrition (either maternal or fetal or both) is environmentally determined and has at least two major consequences: (1) selective growth of major organs such as the brain at the expense of others such as the liver and kidney, (2) a permanent change in the endocrine and/or metabolic setting of the offspring in a direction likely to aid survival in a nutrient-deficient environment. The conflict between this setting and exposure to good or supra-normal nutrition was envisaged as a major route leading to NIDDM (Hales & Barker, 1992). It has been objected that whilst it is conceivable that nutritional deprivation might have an impact in populations with clear problems of obtaining adequate nutrition, such as the underdeveloped countries (and which also have severe problems with NIDDM emerging in ‘epidemic’ proportions; Zimmet & McCarty, 1995), such a mechanism is very unlikely to be of any importance in the developed Western world. It has also been thought highly improbable that processes occurring so early in life could determine aspects of health 50-70 years later. Therefore, in addressing the issue of what life-time ‘windows’ are important in producing NIDDM we shall first consider whether nutrition during pregnancy could be an issue in the Western world and whether processes at this early stage could be of long-term importance.
μ-Opioid Receptors: Ligand-Dependent Activation of Potassium Conductance, Desensitization, and Internalization

μ-Opioid receptor (MOR) desensitization and endocytosis have been implicated in tolerance and dependence to opioids. The efficiency of each process is known to be agonist dependent; however, it is not known what determines the relative efficiency of various agonists at either process. In the present study, homologous MOR desensitization in locus ceruleus (LC) neurons and MOR internalization in HEK293 cells were examined using a series of agonists. The results show that the rank order of this series of agonists was different when comparing the magnitude of hyperpolarization and the ability to cause desensitization in LC neurons. Endocytosis of MOR was also examined in HEK293 cells using the same agonists. The relative ability to cause endocytosis in HEK293 cells correlated with the degree of desensitization in LC cells. This strong correlation suggests that the two processes are closely linked. The results also suggest that agonist efficacy is not necessarily a predictor of the ability to cause MOR desensitization or endocytosis. Identification and characterization of the biophysical properties of agonists that favor desensitization and internalization of receptors will lead to a better understanding of opioid signaling.
Keeping (Future) Rivals Down: Temporal Social Comparison Predicts Coworker Social Undermining via Future Status Threat and Envy

The extant social undermining literature suggests that employees envy and, consequently, undermine coworkers when they feel that these coworkers are better off and thus pose a threat to their own current status. With the present research, we draw on the sociofunctional approach to emotions to propose that an anticipated future status threat can similarly incline employees to feel envy toward, and subsequently undermine, their coworkers. We argue that employees pay special attention to coworkers’ past development in relation to their own, because faster-rising coworkers may pose a future status threat even if they are still performing worse in absolute terms in the present. With a set of two behavioral experiments (N = 90 and N = 168), we establish that participants react to faster-rising coworkers with social undermining behavior when the climate is competitive (vs. less competitive). We extended these results with a scenario experiment (N = 376) showing that, in these situations, participants extrapolate lower future status than said coworker and thus respond with envy and undermining behavior. A two-wave field study (N = 252) replicated the complete moderated serial mediation model. Our findings help to explain why employees sometimes undermine others who present no immediate threat to their status. As such, we extend theorizing on social undermining and social comparison.