Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
HIV persistence in mucosal CD4+ T cells within the lungs of adults receiving long-term suppressive antiretroviral therapy

Background: The lungs were historically identified as one of the major anatomic sites for HIV replication in the pre-antiretroviral therapy (ART) era. However, their contribution to HIV persistence in individuals under suppressive ART remains understudied. Design: We assessed HIV persistence and comprehensively characterized pulmonary mucosal CD4+ T cells in HIV-infected (HIV+) individuals receiving long-term suppressive ART versus uninfected participants. Methods: Bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL), bronchial biopsies, and matched peripheral blood were obtained from n = 24 HIV-infected adults receiving long-term suppressive ART (median: 9 years) and n = 8 healthy volunteers without respiratory symptoms. HIV-DNA and cell-associated HIV-RNA were quantified by ultra-sensitive PCR, and lung mucosal CD4+ T-cell subsets were characterized by multiparameter flow cytometry. Results: The levels of HIV-DNA were 13-fold higher in total BAL cells compared to blood. Importantly, FACS-sorted CD4+ T cells from BAL contained greater levels of HIV-DNA compared to peripheral CD4+ T cells. BAL CD4+ T cells in HIV+ individuals were characterized mostly by an effector memory phenotype, whereas naive and terminally differentiated cells were underrepresented compared to blood. Furthermore, BAL CD4+ T cells expressed higher levels of immune activation (HLA-DR/CD38) and senescence (CD57) markers. Importantly, BAL was enriched in T-cell subsets proposed to be preferential cellular HIV reservoirs, including memory CD4+CCR6+, Th1Th17 (CD4+CCR6+CCR4−CXCR3+), CD4+CCR6+CXCR3−CCR4−, and CD4+CD32a+ T cells. Conclusion: The pulmonary mucosa represents an important immunological effector site highly enriched in activated and preferential CD4+ T-cell subsets for HIV persistence during long-term ART in individuals without respiratory symptoms. Our findings raise new challenges for the design of novel HIV eradication strategies in mucosal tissues.
Corticosteroid dose and the risk of opportunistic infection in a national systemic lupus erythematosus cohort

Objective This study investigated whether the incidence of opportunistic infection differed in systemic lupus erythematosus patients who received different doses of corticosteroids. Methods We included patients with diagnosed systemic lupus erythematosus from 1997 to 2010 using Taiwan national health insurance data. The index day for systemic lupus erythematosus patients was 3 months after the systemic lupus erythematosus diagnosis. A non-steroid cohort was matched 4:1 with the steroid cohort according to age, sex and index day. The end of the follow-up period was the day of opportunistic infection diagnosis, 1 year after the index day, or death. Results The overall cumulative incidence of opportunistic infection was 136-fold higher in the steroid cohort than in the non-steroid cohort. The adjusted hazard ratio for developing mycobacterium infection in the steroid cohort was 11, and the adjusted hazard ratio for developing herpes zoster was 43.6 compared to the non-steroid cohort after adjusting for immunosuppressive agents and comorbidities. The adjusted hazard ratio value for opportunistic infection was 1.40 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.78–2.51) for a daily prednisone-equivalent dose of 7.5–15 mg, 1.72 (95% CI 1.02–2.91) for 15–30 mg, 1.96 (95% CI 1.17–3.28) for 30–60 mg and 2.24 (95% CI 1.26–4.00) for over 60 mg compared with low-dose steroids (<7.5 mg). Conclusion This study confirmed that the risk of opportunistic infection is higher in systemic lupus erythematosus patients treated with steroids in the first 3 months after diagnosis versus those not treated with steroids. Medium and high doses were associated with a higher risk of opportunistic infection compared with low doses. However, there was no controlling for disease activity, making it hard to know if increases in infection were due to disease itself or corticosteroids.
A Triple-Mode Bandpass Filter With Controllable Bandwidth Using QMSIW Cavity

A compact triple-mode bandpass filter using a modified quarter-mode substrate integrated waveguide (QMSIW) cavity is presented. It is realized by exploiting the first three resonant modes of the QMSIW cavity. Specifically, the dominant mode (TE101) is shifted toward the second resonant mode (TE202) through the perturbation induced by the metallized via-holes array. The resonant frequency of the third resonant mode (TE303) is lowered toward the TE202 mode owing to the capacitive loading effect of the loaded circular conductive posts array. In this way, by adjusting the via-holes array and the conductive posts array, the resonant frequencies of the first and third resonant modes can be independently tuned while the second resonant mode remains unchanged. As a result, the bandwidth of the resulting filter can be flexibly controlled at a preassigned center frequency. Moreover, to suppress the spurious frequencies generated by the higher order modes, three cascaded defected ground structures were introduced below the feedline to distinctly widen the stopband and increase the out-of-band rejection.
Composition Theorems for CryptoVerif and Application to TLS 1.3

We present composition theorems for security protocols, to compose a key exchange protocol and a symmetric-key protocol that uses the exchanged key. Our results rely on the computational model of cryptography and are stated in the framework of the tool CryptoVerif. They support key exchange protocols that guarantee injective or non-injective authentication. They also allow random oracles shared between the composed protocols. To our knowledge, they are the first composition theorems for key exchange stated for a computational protocol verification tool, and also the first to allow such flexibility. As a case study, we apply our composition theorems to a proof of TLS 1.3 Draft-18. This work fills a gap in a previous paper that informally claims a compositional proof of TLS 1.3, without formally justifying it.
Gender differences in demographic and clinical characteristics of patients with opioid use disorder entering a comparative effectiveness medication trial

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES We investigated gender differences in individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD) receiving inpatient services and entering a randomized controlled trial comparing extended-release naltrexone to buprenorphine. METHODS Participants (N = 570) provided demographic, substance use, and psychiatric information. RESULTS Women were significantly younger, more likely to identify as bisexual, live with a sexual partner, be financially dependent, and less likely employed. Women reported significantly greater psychiatric comorbidity and risk behaviors, shorter duration but similar age of onset of opioid use. DISCUSSION/CONCLUSIONS Findings underscore economic, psychiatric, and infection vulnerability among women with OUD. SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANCE Interventions targeting these disparities should be explored, as women may face complicated treatment initiation, retention, and recovery. (Am J Addict 2018;27:465-470).
Reliability of Ultra-Thin Embedded Silicon Fan-Out (eSiFO) Package Directly Assembled on PCB for Mobile Applications

In this paper, ultra-thin eSiFO packages with body thickness of 150 µm were presented and the reliability were comprehensively studied, with an emphasis on temperature cycling (TC) and drop test reliability. The test vehicle was designed in two different sizes: a 3×3 mm package with a single 1.4×1.4 mm embedded die and a 9×9 mm package with a single 7×7 mm embedded die. Several electrical measurement structures, such as daisy chains, Kelvin test units and leakage current test units were built in the test vehicles. Manufacturing process of the ultra-thin test vehicles were described at the first, then the package level reliability and board level reliability were also studied. The possible failure modes were determined by electrical test and cross-section observation. Experimental results show that ultra-thin eSiFO packages have a stable manufacturing process, good package level reliability and board level drop reliability acceptable for mobile applications regardless of the package size. Temperature cycling on board experiments show that ultra-thin eSiFO package has a similar solder joint fatigue life to standard WLCSPs and typical eWLBs. The results of this work offer an important reference for reliability of embedded, fan-out packages and other ultra-thin WLCSPs.
In vivo Evaluation of Anti-Hyperglycemic, Anti-hyperlipidemic and Anti-Oxidant Status of Liver and Kidney of Thymol in STZ-Induced Diabetic Rats

Abstract Aim The evaluation of the positive and protective effects thymol as a natural compound on the STZ -induced diabetic rats. Materials and methods In this study, seven groups of the streptozotocin induced diabetic and normal rats (overall 42 males) were tested through various biochemical and histopathological factors such as: serum glucose, insulin, creatinine, lipids, lipoproteins, liver function-related enzymes, and antioxidant status in liver and kidney. Results The obtained results in this work indicated that thymol had a significant anti-hypoglycemic, anti-hypolipidemic activities on the STZ-induced diabetic rats. Further, the assessment different biochemical parameters revealed that the levels of creatinine, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, very low density lipoprotein cholesterol, and liver function-related enzymes such as aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase were decreased in the treated diabetes rats under 20 and 40 mg/kg thymol compared to the control diabetes group. Considerably, the anti-oxidant enzymes status that were achieved from the liver and kidney organs were modulated after treatment with thymol in the diabetic rats. Conclusion The results of this research has brough a new aspect concerning the proteevtive and positive effects of thymol on the diabetic complications in the animal model.
Development and Applications of Magnet Module for SYCOMORE CEA System Code

In the framework of prospective activities for a demonstration power plant, DEMO will be the next step for fusion energy following ITER tokamak. Some of the key design top-level questions can be addressed using macroscopic system-level codes. Those system codes aim to model the whole fusion plant with all its subsystems and identify the impact of their interactions on the design choices. The code SYstem COde for MOdelling REactors (SYCOMORE) is a modular system code developed to address key questions relevant to the tokamak fusion reactor design by giving a global view of technology and physic domains. Among all components, SYCOMORE provides a representation of the magnet system, which is of importance regarding some factor of merits, e.g., fusion power or cost. SYCOMORE is ultimately coupled with an optimizer, scanning a high number of operation configurations and ranking them along selected merits. This scanning requires fast computation for each scanned point, so the magnets modeling must meet a tradeoff between simplicity and accuracy. In this paper, we describe that the way toroidal field (TF), central solenoid (CS), and poloidal field (PF) systems modeling in SYCOMORE was chosen taking into consideration the driving design criteria used in usual magnet design method (temperature margin, copper maximum temperature during quench, mechanical resilience in stainless steel structural parts, etc). The specificities of the reduced magnet representation chosen approach will be exposed, and the benchmarking of the simplified model of the two main systems (TF and CS) applied on DEMO reactor configuration will be compared with the output of a more sophisticated design method using an elaborated tool (CEA design tool) that is used to establish the CEA design of DEMO magnets. Together with this benchmark, a discussion on the limits of this approach will be conducted. PF system implementation being in an early stage, the winding pack design module will be exposed (with its associated benchmarking part with CEA design tool), but not the part of PF current reconstruction with respect to system features. Parametric explorations of DEMO configurations will be reported along different conceptual choices related to the magnets (e.g., superconductor material and performances, and structure resilience limits), and the impact on the magnet system main design features will be exposed. Main lines of the future development work will also be presented.
Deciphering the super relaxed state of human β-cardiac myosin and the mode of action of mavacamten from myosin molecules to muscle fibers

Significance Cardiac muscle contraction is powered by ATP hydrolysis during cycles of interaction between myosin-containing thick filaments and actin-containing thin filaments. This generates force in the cardiac muscle necessary for pumping blood through the body. Mutations in myosin alter this force generation leading to hypercontractility and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). An energy-conserving, super relaxed state (SRX) of myosin, which has a very low ATPase activity, has previously been described in muscle fibers. Destabilization of the SRX has been proposed to be a chief cause of HCM. This work sheds light on the biochemical and molecular nature of SRX and demonstrates the mechanism of action of mavacamten, a cardiac inhibitor in phase 2 clinical trials. Mavacamten exerts its effects primarily by stabilizing the SRX of β-cardiac myosin. Mutations in β-cardiac myosin, the predominant motor protein for human heart contraction, can alter power output and cause cardiomyopathy. However, measurements of the intrinsic force, velocity, and ATPase activity of myosin have not provided a consistent mechanism to link mutations to muscle pathology. An alternative model posits that mutations in myosin affect the stability of a sequestered, super relaxed state (SRX) of the protein with very slow ATP hydrolysis and thereby change the number of myosin heads accessible to actin. Here we show that purified human β-cardiac myosin exists partly in an SRX and may in part correspond to a folded-back conformation of myosin heads observed in muscle fibers around the thick filament backbone. Mutations that cause hypertrophic cardiomyopathy destabilize this state, while the small molecule mavacamten promotes it. These findings provide a biochemical and structural link between the genetics and physiology of cardiomyopathy with implications for therapeutic strategies.
Strong ties promote the epidemic prevalence in susceptible-infected-susceptible spreading dynamics

We propose a weighted susceptible–infected–susceptible model on complex networks, where the weight of an edge is defined by the topological proximity of the two associated nodes. Each infected individual is allowed to select a limited number of neighbors to contact, and a tunable parameter is introduced to control the preference to contact through high-weight or low-weight edges. Simulation results on six real networks show that the epidemic prevalence can be largely promoted when strong ties are favored. By comparing with two statistical null models, we show that the distribution pattern of weights, rather than the topological structure, mainly contributes to the observations. Further analysis suggests that the weight–weight correlation strongly affects the results: high-weight edges are more significant in keeping high epidemic prevalence when the weight–weight correlation is positive.
Trunk muscle endurance in Chinese adults.

BACKGROUND Previous studies in non-Chinese populations have found a relationship between performance on isometric trunk muscle endurance tests and low back pain (LBP). However, the relationship between trunk muscle endurance and LBP in Chinese populations has received little attention and age-referenced data have not been reported. OBJECTIVE Evaluate the relationship between age-referenced isometric trunk muscle endurance values and LBP in a Chinese cohort. METHODS One hundred and eighty-eight participants (20-59-years) performed four timed-endurance tests (Biering-Sørensen, plank, left/right side bridge) in random order. Participants with a history of LBP completed an Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) and pain scale. Holding-times for the four tests were summed and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was performed to differentiate participants with and without LBP. RESULTS Data were grouped by age. Analysis revealed similar endurance values to those reported in non-Chinese populations, except longer holding times were recorded in the 50-59 yr Chinese cohort. Pain scores were positively correlated with ODI scores. ROC curve analysis showed that the area under the curve was 0.723 and optimal cut-off was 288 sec (sensitivity and specificity both 0.75). CONCLUSIONS This study is the first to describe trunk muscle endurance reference data in Chinese people. Individuals with a summed endurance time of < 288 seconds appear more likely to suffer LBP.
LemmaTag: Jointly Tagging and Lemmatizing for Morphologically Rich Languages with BRNNs

We present LemmaTag, a featureless neural network architecture that jointly generates part-of-speech tags and lemmas for sentences by using bidirectional RNNs with character-level and word-level embeddings. We demonstrate that both tasks benefit from sharing the encoding part of the network, predicting tag subcategories, and using the tagger output as an input to the lemmatizer. We evaluate our model across several languages with complex morphology, which surpasses state-of-the-art accuracy in both part-of-speech tagging and lemmatization in Czech, German, and Arabic.
Large-Scale Study of Curiosity-Driven Learning

Reinforcement learning algorithms rely on carefully engineering environment rewards that are extrinsic to the agent. However, annotating each environment with hand-designed, dense rewards is not scalable, motivating the need for developing reward functions that are intrinsic to the agent. Curiosity is a type of intrinsic reward function which uses prediction error as reward signal. In this paper: (a) We perform the first large-scale study of purely curiosity-driven learning, i.e. without any extrinsic rewards, across 54 standard benchmark environments, including the Atari game suite. Our results show surprisingly good performance, and a high degree of alignment between the intrinsic curiosity objective and the hand-designed extrinsic rewards of many game environments. (b) We investigate the effect of using different feature spaces for computing prediction error and show that random features are sufficient for many popular RL game benchmarks, but learned features appear to generalize better (e.g. to novel game levels in Super Mario Bros.). (c) We demonstrate limitations of the prediction-based rewards in stochastic setups. Game-play videos and code are at this https URL
Choreographies, Computationally

We investigate the foundations of Choreographic Programming, a paradigm for writing concurrent programs that are deadlock free by construction, guided by the notion of computation. We start by introducing Minimal Choreographies (MC), a language that includes only the essential primitives of the paradigm. MC is minimal wrt Turing completeness: it implements all computable functions, and restricting its syntax breaks this property. Our methodology yields a natural notion of computation for choreographies, which can be used to generate concurrent implementations of independent computations automatically. Finally, we show that a Turing complete fragment of MC can be correctly projected to a process calculus (synthesis), which is thus both deadlock free and Turing complete.
On-Device Federated Learning via Blockchain and its Latency Analysis

In this letter, we propose a block-chained federated learning (BlockFL) architecture, where mobile devices' local learning model updates are exchanged and verified by leveraging blockchain. This enables on-device machine learning without any central coordination, even when each device lacks its own training data samples. We investigate the end-to-end learning completion latency of BlockFL, thereby yielding the optimal block generation rate as well as important insights in terms of network scalability and robustness.
Substrate Integrated Waveguide Dual-Band and Wide-Stopband Bandpass Filters

In this letter, a new coupling structure implemented on a single-layer substrate and its application to design substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) dual-band and wide-stopband bandpass filters are presented. The TE101 and the TE102 modes of SIW cavity are used to design the proposed filters. By adjusting the dimensions of the coupling structure, the coupling coefficients of TE101 and TE102 modes can be controlled that can be used to design wide-stopband and dual-band bandpass filters. In the dual-band filter design, a slotline perturbation is used to lower the resonant frequency of TE102 mode while it has little effect on TE101 mode. To validate the proposed design approach, two SIW bandpass filters (wide-stopband and dual-band) are designed, fabricated, and measured.
Computational simulation of aqueous humour dynamics in the presence of a posterior-chamber versus iris-fixed phakic intraocular lens

Purpose To compare aqueous humour (AH) dynamics in the presence of a precrystalline (Implantable Collamer Lens®; ICL) or iris-fixed (Artiflex®) phakic intraocular lens (PIOL). Methods By computational fluid dynamics simulation, AH flow was modelled through a peripheral iridotomy (PI) or central lens hole (both 360 μm) in the presence of an Artiflex or ICL lens, respectively. The impacts of AH flow were then determined in terms of wall shear stress (WSS) produced on the endothelium or crystalline lens. Effects were also modelled for different scenarios of pupil diameter (PD 3.5 or 5.5 mm), ICL vault (100, 350, 800 μm) and number of Artiflex iridotomies (1 or 2) and location (12 or 6 o’clock). Results For a PD of 3.5 mm, AH volumes flowing from the posterior to the anterior chamber were 37.6% of total flow through the lens hole (ICL) and 84.2% through PI (Artiflex). For an enlarged PD (5.5 mm), corresponding values were 10.3% and 81.9% respectively, so PI constitutes a very efficient way of evacuating AH. Central endothelial WSS in Pa was lower for the large vault ICL and the Artiflex (1−03 and 1.1−03 respectively) compared to the PIOL-free eye (1.6−03). Crystalline lens WSS was highest for the lowest vault ICL (1−04). Conclusions AH flow varied according to the presence of a precrystalline or iris-fixed intraocular lens. Endothelial WSS was lower for an implanted ICL with large vault and Artiflex than in the PIOL-free eye, while highest crystalline WSS was recorded for the lowest vault ICL.