Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An overview of the characteristics of the novel avian influenza A H7N9 virus in humans

The novel avian influenza A H7N9 virus which caused the first human infection in Shanghai, China; was reported on the 31st of March 2013 before spreading rapidly to other Chinese provinces and municipal cities. This is the first time the low pathogenic avian influenza A virus has caused human infections and deaths; with cases of severe respiratory disease with pneumonia being reported. There were 440 confirmed cases with 122 fatalities by 16 May 2014; with a fatality risk of ∼28%. The median age of patients was 61 years with a male-to-female ratio of 2.4:1. The main source of infection was identified as exposure to poultry and there is so far no definitive evidence of sustained person-to-person transmission. The neuraminidase inhibitors, namely oseltamivir, zanamivir, and peramivir; have shown good efficacy in the management of the novel H7N9 virus. Treatment is recommended for all hospitalized patients, and for confirmed and probable outpatient cases; and should ideally be initiated within 48 h of the onset of illness for the best outcome. Phylogenetic analysis found that the novel H7N9 virus is avian in origin and evolved from multiple reassortments of at least four origins. Indeed the novel H7N9 virus acquired human adaptation via mutations in its eight RNA gene segments. Enhanced surveillance and effective global control are essential to prevent pandemic outbreaks of the novel H7N9 virus.
Effect of prolonged and exclusive breast feeding on risk of allergy and asthma: cluster randomised trial

Objective To assess whether exclusive and prolonged breast feeding reduces the risk of childhood asthma and allergy by age 6.5 years. Design Cluster randomised trial. Setting 31 Belarussian maternity hospitals and their affiliated polyclinics. Participants A total of 17 046 mother-infant pairs were enrolled, of whom 13 889 (81.5%) were followed up at age 6.5 years. Intervention Breastfeeding promotion intervention modelled on the WHO/UNICEF baby friendly hospital initiative. Main outcome measures International study of asthma and allergies in childhood (ISAAC) questionnaire and skin prick tests of five inhalant antigens. Results The experimental intervention led to a large increase in exclusive breast feeding at 3 months (44.3% v 6.4%; P<0.001) and a significantly higher prevalence of any breast feeding at all ages up to and including 12 months. The experimental group had no reduction in risks of allergic symptoms and diagnoses or positive skin prick tests. In fact, after exclusion of six sites (three experimental and three control) with suspiciously high rates of positive skin prick tests, risks were significantly increased in the experimental group for four of the five antigens. Conclusions These results do not support a protective effect of prolonged and exclusive breast feeding on asthma or allergy. Trial registration Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN37687716.
Type IIB conifold transitions in cosmology

We study four-dimensional low energy effective actions for conifold transitions of Calabi-Yau spaces in the context of IIB supergravity. The actions are constructed by examining the mass of D3-branes wrapped on collapsing/expanding three-cycles. We then study the cosmology of the conifold transition, including consequences for moduli stabilization, taking into account the effect of the additional states which become light at the transition. We find, the degree to which the additional states are excited is essential for whether the transition is dynamically realized.
Content based image retrieval using interest points and texture features

Content based image retrieval is the task of searching images from a database, which are visually similar to a given example image. We present methods for content based image retrieval based on texture similarity using interest points and Gabor features. Interest point detectors are used in computer vision to detect image points with special properties, which can be geometric (corners) or non-geometric (contrast etc.). Gabor functions and Gabor filters are regarded as excellent tools for feature extraction and texture segmentation. The article combines these methods and generates a textural description of images. Special emphasis is devoted to distance measures on texture descriptions. Experimental results of a query system are given.
Strange Beta: Chaotic Variations for Indoor Rock Climbing Route Setting ; CU-CS-1057-09

In this paper we apply chaotic systems to the task of sequence variation for the purpose of aiding humans in setting indoor rock climbing routes. This work expands on prior work where similar variations were used to assist in dance choreography and music composition. We present a formalization for transcription of rock climbing problems and a variation generator which is tuned for our domain and addresses some confounding problems, including a new approach to automatic selection of variation initial conditions. We analyze our system with a pilot study in a small university rock climbing gym as well as a large blinded study in a commercial climbing gym in cooperation with experienced climbers and expert route setters. Our results show that our system is capable of assisting a human setter in producing routes which are at least as good as, and in some cases better than, those produced traditionally.
Subjective and Objective Quality Assessment of Image: A Survey

With the increasing demand for image-based applications, the efficient and reliable evaluation of image quality has increased in importance. Measuring the image quality is of fundamental importance for numerous image processing applications, where the goal of image quality assessment (IQA) methods is to automatically evaluate the quality of images in agreement with human quality judgments. Numerous IQA methods have been proposed over the past years to fulfill this goal. In this paper, a survey of the quality assessment methods for conventional image signals, as well as the newly emerged ones, which includes the high dynamic range (HDR) and 3-D images, is presented. A comprehensive explanation of the subjective and objective IQA and their classification is provided. Six widely used subjective quality datasets, and performance measures are reviewed. Emphasis is given to the full-reference image quality assessment (FR-IQA) methods, and 9 often-used quality measures (including mean squared error (MSE), structural similarity index (SSIM), multi-scale structural similarity index (MS-SSIM), visual information fidelity (VIF), most apparent distortion (MAD), feature similarity measure (FSIM), feature similarity measure for color images (FSIMC), dynamic range independent measure (DRIM), and tone-mapped images quality index (TMQI)) are carefully described, and their performance and computation time on four subjective quality datasets are evaluated. Furthermore, a brief introduction to 3-D IQA is provided and the issues related to this area of research are reviewed.
RAI1 point mutations, CAG repeat variation, and SNP analysis in non‐deletion Smith–Magenis syndrome

Smith–Magenis syndrome (SMS) is a multiple congenital anomalies/mental retardation disorder characterized by distinct craniofacial features and neurobehavioral abnormalities usually associated with an interstitial deletion in 17p11.2. Heterozygous point mutations in the retinoic acid induced 1 gene (RAI1) have been reported in nine SMS patients without a deletion detectable by fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH), implicating RAI1 haploinsufficiency as the cause of the major clinical features in SMS. All of the reported point mutations are unique and de novo. RAI1 contains a polymorphic CAG repeat and encodes a plant homeo domain (PHD) zinc finger‐containing transcriptional regulator. We report a novel RAI1 frameshift mutation, c.3103delC, in a non‐deletion patient with many SMS features. The deletion of a single cytosine occurs in a heptameric C‐tract (CCCCCCC), the longest mononucleotide repeat in the RAI1 coding region. Interestingly, we had previously reported a frameshift mutation, c.3103insC, in the same mononucleotide repeat. Furthermore, all five single base frameshift mutations preferentially occurred in polyC but not polyG tracts. We also investigated the distribution of the polymorphic CAG repeats in both the normal population and the SMS patients as one potential molecular mechanism for variability of clinical expression. In this limited data set, there was no significant association between the length of CAG repeats and the SMS phenotype. However, we identified a 5‐year‐old girl with an apparent SMS phenotype who was a compound heterozygote for an RAI1 missense mutation inherited from her father and a polyglutamine repeat of 18 copies, representing the largest known CAG repeat in this gene, inherited from her mother. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The Decision to Fight or Flee – Insights into Underlying Mechanism in Crickets

Ritualized fighting between conspecifics is an inherently dangerous behavioral strategy, optimized to secure limited resources at minimal cost and risk. To be adaptive, potential rewards, and costs of aggression must be assessed to decide when it would be more opportune to fight or flee. We summarize insights into the proximate mechanisms underlying this decision-making process in field crickets. As in other animals, cricket aggression is enhanced dramatically by motor activity, winning, and the possession of resources. Pharmacological manipulations provide evidence that these cases of experience dependent enhancement of aggression are each mediated by octopamine, the invertebrate counterpart to adrenaline/noradrenaline. The data suggest that both physical exertion and rewarding aspects of experiences can activate the octopaminergic system, which increases the propensity to fight. Octopamine thus represents the motivational component of aggression in insects. For the decision to flee, animals are thought to assess information from agonistic signals exchanged during fighting. Cricket fights conform to the cumulative assessment model, in that they persist in fighting until the sum of their opponent’s actions accumulates to some threshold at which they withdraw. We discuss evidence that serotonin, nitric oxide, and some neuropeptides may promote an insect’s tendency to flee. We propose that the decision to fight or flee in crickets is controlled simply by relative behavioral thresholds. Rewarding experiences increase the propensity to fight to a level determined by the modulatory action of octopamine. The animal will then flee only when the accumulated sum of the opponent’s actions surpasses this level; serotonin and nitric oxide may be involved in this process. This concept is in line with the roles proposed for noradrenaline, serotonin, and nitric oxide in mammals and suggests that basic mechanisms of aggressive modulation may be conserved in phylogeny.
Deglacial and postglacial paleoseismological archives in mass movement deposits of lakes of south-central Québec

Investigation of seismic activity in eastern Canada is important for natural hazard management as two major active seismic zones with many historical records are located in the region: the Western Québec seismic zone (WQSZ) and the Charlevoix–Kamouraska seismic zone (CKSZ), with the latter being the most active in northeastern America. This paper describes and analyses a dataset of high-resolution swath bathymetric imagery, sub-bottom profiles, and sediments cores collected in three lakes (Maskinongé, Aux-Sables, and St-Joseph) located between two active seismic zones. The geomorphology observed on high-resolution swath bathymetric imagery, the acoustic sub-bottom profiles, and the sediment analysis indicate that the lakes were disturbed by three phases of seismically induced mass movements since deglaciation: (i) during the deglacial Champlain Sea transgression and the rapid initial glacio-isostatic rebound between ∼13 and 10.5 ka cal BP; (ii) around 1180 AD; and (iii) the well-documented CKSZ 1663 AD M >7 historical earthquake. The second phase of earthquake events (1180 AD) corresponds chronologically to a previously documented large landslide in western Québec, dated at ∼1020 years BP. This earthquake is responsible for remobilizing the largest volume of sediments in the entire stratigraphic sequence of Lake Maskinongé, the westernmost lake. This earthquake was not recorded in Lake Aux-Sables and St-Joseph, which are located eastward from Maskinongé, but the largest mass movement deposits are associated with the well-known 1663 AD event of eastern Québec. Therefore, both earthquake events are interpreted to have different epicenters and the lakes of southeastern Québec recorded earthquakes from both seismic zones.
Management of Vaginal Atrophy: Implications from the REVIVE Survey

Vulvar and vaginal atrophy (VVA) is a chronic and progressive medical condition common in postmenopausal women. Symptoms of VVA such as dyspareunia, vaginal dryness, irritation, and itching can negatively impact sexual function and quality of life. The REVIVE (REal Women's Views of Treatment Options for Menopausal Vaginal ChangEs) survey assessed knowledge about VVA and recorded attitudes about interactions with healthcare providers (HCPs) and available treatment options for VVA. The REVIVE survey identified unmet needs of women with VVA symptoms such as poor understanding of the condition, poor communication with HCPs despite the presence of vaginal symptoms, and concerns about the safety, convenience, and efficacy of available VVA treatments. HCPs can address these unmet needs by proactively identifying patients with VVA and educating them about the condition as well as discussing treatment preferences and available therapies for VVA.
Recovery after total intravenous general anaesthesia or spinal anaesthesia for total knee arthroplasty: a randomized trial.

BACKGROUND This study was undertaken to compare the effects of general anaesthesia (GA) and spinal anaesthesia (SA) on the need for postoperative hospitalization and early postoperative comfort in patients undergoing fast-track total knee arthroplasty (TKA). METHODS One hundred and twenty subjects were randomly allocated to receive either intrathecal bupivacaine (SA group) or GA with target controlled infusion of propofol and remifentanil (GA group). Primary outcome was length of hospital stay (LOS) defined as time from end of surgery until the subject met the hospital discharge criteria. Secondary outcome parameters included actual time of discharge, postoperative pain, intraoperative blood loss, length of stay in the Post Anaesthesia Care Unit, dizziness, postoperative nausea and vomiting, need for urinary catheterization and subject satisfaction. RESULTS GA resulted in shorter LOS (46 vs 52 h, P<0.001), and less nausea and vomiting (4 vs 15, P<0.05) and dizziness (VAS 0 mm vs 20 mm, P<0.05) compared with SA. During the first 2 postoperative hours, GA patients had higher pain scores (P<0.001), but after 6 h the SA group had significantly higher pain scores (P<0.001). Subjects in the GA group used fewer patient-controlled analgesia doses and less morphine (P<0.01), and were able to walk earlier compared with the SA group (P<0.001). Subjects receiving SA would request a change in the method of anaesthesia in the event of a subsequent operation more often than the GA subjects (P<0.05). CONCLUSION GA had more favourable recovery effects after TKA compared with SA.
Modeling Sediment Transport in Ice‐Walled Subglacial Channels and Its Implications for Esker Formation and Proglacial Sediment Yields

Sediment yields from glacierized basins are used to quantify erosion rates on seasonal to decadal timescales as well as conditions at the glacier bed, and eskers hold valuable information about past subglacial hydraulic conditions in their spatial organization, geometry, and sedimentary structures. Ultimately, eskers are a record of past glacio‐fluvial sediment transport, but there is currently no physical model for this process. We develop a 1‐D model of morphodynamics in semicircular bedrock‐floored subglacial channels. We adapt a sediment conservation law developed for mixed alluvial‐bedrock conditions to subglacial channels. Channel evolution is a function of melt opening by viscous heat dissipation from flowing water and creep closure of the overlying ice, to which we add the closure or enlargement due to sediment deposition or removal, respectively. We apply the model to an idealized land‐terminating glacier and find that temporary sediment accumulation in the vicinity of the terminus, or the formation of an incipient esker, is inherent to the dynamics of the channelized water flow. The alluviation of the bed combined with the pressurized channel flow produces unexpected patterns of sediment evacuation: We show that the direction of hysteresis between sediment and water discharge is not necessarily linked to a supply‐ or transport‐limited system, as has been hypothesized for proglacial sediment yields. We also find that the deposition of an incipient esker is a function of a compromise between water discharge and sediment supply, but perhaps more importantly, ice‐surface slope and the temporal pattern of water delivery to the bed.
Sexual differentiation and the germ cell in sex reversed gonads after aromatase inhibition in the chicken embryo *

Summary. Chicken embryos were treated on day three of incubation with a steroidal or a nonsteroidal aromatase inhibitor (1‐methyl‐andro‐stendion, CGS 16949 A). Complete sex reversal of ovaries into testes or intermediate stages of sex reversal resulted from the inhibitory effect on oestradiol formation during gonadal development before and during sexual differentiation. Germ cell differentiation shifted from the female to the male pattern depending on the local advance of sex reversal.
Thioguanine in inflammatory bowel disease: Long-term efficacy and safety

Background Thioguanine (TG) is efficacious in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), but its toxicity, particularly nodular regenerative hyperplasia (NRH) of the liver, has limited its use. We assessed the long-term clinical outcomes and safety of TG in patients whom were intolerant or refractory to conventional immunomodulators. Methods This is a retrospective, single-centre study of IBD patients treated with TG from 2001–2013. Response was defined as clinical remission (Harvey–Bradshaw Index < 5 for Crohn’s disease (CD), Simple Clinical Colitis Activity Index < 4 for ulcerative colitis (UC)) without corticosteroids or, if receiving anti-tumour-necrosis-factor (anti-TNF) therapy, absence of dose escalation. We recorded TG failure, withdrawal and adverse events. Patients were monitored with biochemistry, liver biopsy and/or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Results 54 patients (47 CD and 7 UC) whom received TG (mean dose: 27 mg/d (range: 20–40 mg/d)) as monotherapy (n = 36) or concomitantly with anti-TNF (n = 18) for a median inter-quartile range of 16 (5–37) months (126 patient-years of follow-up). 32 (59%) patients responded to TG at 6 months and 23 (43%) at 12 months. Pancreatitis did not recur amongst the 19 patients with prior thiopurine-induced pancreatitis. 16 (30%) patients ceased TG due to intolerance or toxicity (four serious); NRH was not observed. 6-thioguanine nucleotide concentrations did not correlate with efficacy nor with toxicity. Conclusions TG was efficacious and well tolerated in one out of two patients who had previously failed conventional immunomodulators. NRH did not occur.
Linear combination of one-step predictive information with an external reward in an episodic policy gradient setting: a critical analysis

One of the main challenges in the field of embodied artificial intelligence is the open-ended autonomous learning of complex behaviors. Our approach is to use task-independent, information-driven intrinsic motivation(s) to support task-dependent learning. The work presented here is a preliminary step in which we investigate the predictive information (the mutual information of the past and future of the sensor stream) as an intrinsic drive, ideally supporting any kind of task acquisition. Previous experiments have shown that the predictive information (PI) is a good candidate to support autonomous, open-ended learning of complex behaviors, because a maximization of the PI corresponds to an exploration of morphology- and environment-dependent behavioral regularities. The idea is that these regularities can then be exploited in order to solve any given task. Three different experiments are presented and their results lead to the conclusion that the linear combination of the one-step PI with an external reward function is not generally recommended in an episodic policy gradient setting. Only for hard tasks a great speed-up can be achieved at the cost of an asymptotic performance lost.
Engaging African-American Veterans in Mental Health Care: Patients’ Perspectives

Abstract Despite growing interest in patient engagement, the concept remains poorly defined. Moreover, patients’ perspectives on engagement are lacking, particularly those of minority patients. A better understanding of patients’ views and what influences their engagement in health services will facilitate better patient education and implementation practices to enhance patient participation in health care. This article addresses patients’ perspectives of facilitators and barriers to engagement in outpatient mental health services. Forty-nine African-American veterans with mental illness receiving routine medication management visits were interviewed. Qualitative data analysis was guided by a constructivist grounded theory approach. Participants identified several barriers and facilitators to engagement in mental health services, including patient as well as provider-related factors. Results emphasize the role of providers in facilitating sustained involvement of patients in their own care. Based on the findings, the authors offer a preliminary framework for patient engagement that encompasses patient and provider factors.
The Ability of CD40L, but Not Lipopolysaccharide, To Initiate Immunoglobulin Switching to Immunoglobulin G1 Is Explained by Differential Induction of NF-κB/Rel Proteins

ABSTRACT Antibodies of the immunoglobulin G1 class are induced in mice by T-cell-dependent antigens but not by lipopolysaccharide (LPS). CD40 engagement contributes to this preferential isotype production by activating NF-κB/Rel to induce germ line γ1 transcripts, which are essential for class switch recombination. Although LPS also activates NF-κB, it poorly induces germ line γ1 transcripts. Western blot analyses show that CD40 ligand (CD40L) induces all NF-κB/Rel proteins, whereas LPS activates predominantly p50 and c-Rel. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays show that in CD40L-treated cells, p50-RelA and p50-RelB dimers are the major NF-κB complexes binding to the germ line γ1 promoter, whereas in LPS-treated cells, p50–c-Rel and p50-p50 dimers are the major binding complexes. Transfection of expression plasmids for NF-κB/Rel fusion proteins (forced dimers) indicates that p50-RelA and p50-RelB dimers activate the germ line γ1 promoter and that p50–c-Rel and p50-p50 dimers inhibit this activation by competitively binding to the promoter without activating the promoter. Therefore, germ line γ1 transcription depends on the composition of NF-κB/Rel proteins.
Multiresolution Deep Belief Networks

Motivated by the observation that coarse and ne resolutions of an image reveal dierent structures in the underlying visual phenomenon, we present a model based on the Deep Belief Network (DBN) which learns features from the multiscale representation of images. A Laplacian Pyramid is rst constructed for each image. DBNs are then trained separately at each level of the pyramid. Finally, a top level RBM combines these DBNs into a single network we call the Multiresolution Deep Belief Network (MrDBN). Experiments show that MrDBNs generalize better than standard DBNs on NORB classication and TIMIT phone recognition. In the domain of generative learning, we demonstrate the superiority of MrDBNs at modeling face images.