Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mortality among African American women with sarcoidosis: data from the Black Women's Health Study.

BACKGROUND Sarcoidosis is a chronic systemic granulomatous disease of unknown etiology that disproportionately affects black females. Few studies have specifically addressed causes of death in this population. OBJECTIVES To assess rates and causes of death among women with sarcoidosis in a prospective cohort study of U.S. black women. DESIGN The Black Women's Health Study is a follow-up study of 59,000 U.S. black women aged 21-69 (median age 38) at entry in 1995. Data on demographic and lifestyle factors and medical conditions, including sarcoidosis, were obtained through biennial questionnaires. Deaths and causes of death from 1995 through 2009 among study subjects were identified from National Death Index data. We assessed mortality rates among women with and without a history of sarcoidosis. Poisson regression models were used to estimate age-adjusted mortality rates. Cox proportional-hazards models were used to estimate hazard ratios for mortality and 95% confidence intervals. RESULTS A total of 121 deaths occurred among 1,192 women with a history of sarcoidosis and 2813 deaths among women without sarcoidosis. Mortality was greater at every age among women with sarcoidosis and the overall multivariable-adjusted hazard ratio was 2.44 (95% CI 2.03-2.93, p<0.0001). Of the deaths among women with sarcoidosis, 24.7% were directly attributable to sarcoidosis. CONCLUSIONS In the Black Women's Health Study, women with sarcoidosis were more than twice as likely to die as women without the disease, with many of the deaths directly attributable to sarcoidosis. Sarcoidosis is an important cause of premature death among black women with the disease.
Retinal charge sensitivity and spatial discrimination obtainable by subretinal implants: key lessons learned from isolated chicken retina

In order to obtain functional parameters relevant to the designing of a subretinal implant, we carried out electrical stimulation experiments with isolated chicken retina. The median threshold for network activation with planar disc electrodes (diameter 10 µm) was 0.5 nC (625 µC cm−2) for anodal voltage impulses and 1.6 nC (2 mC cm−2) for cathodal impulses. Above threshold, the number of spikes evoked by a single voltage impulse increased up to saturation within a range of injected charge from 0.1 nC to 1 nC for anodal impulses and from 1 nC to 10 nC for cathodal impulses. Using needle electrodes with a tip diameter of 1 µm, we determined the electrical point spread function (EPSF) for subretinal stimulation. It had a half width in the range of 100 µm, which corresponds to a visual angle of 21′ and to a visual acuity of 20/417 in the human eye. It is reasonable to conclude that with subretinal implants the minimum separable will be of the same dimension.
Mechanical boon : will automation advance Australia ?

Thousands of jobs have been automated over the past few decades thanks the increasing capability of technology, and there is considerable debate on which workers are most at risk of being displaced by automation. In this paper we estimate that 44 per cent of Australian jobs are highly susceptible to automation. We find that automation susceptibility has in fact fallen over time as jobs that are more automatable are replaced by machines. The majority of this change, 81 per cent, was due to individual industries modernising their workforces. We conclude by noting that the same factors that lead to an occupation or industry’s decline present opportunities for other industries, firms and workers to flourish. Structural change in the economy has freed up resources that were previously required to undertake mundane, routine and often manual tasks, and allowed them to be employed in high value, high skilled and high paid roles. JEL Codes: E24, J24, J31, J62, J64, O33
Distributed File Sharing: Barbarians at the Gates?

Will the MP3 format and Napster's distributed file sharing bankrupt music publishers or help them reach even more consumers? Given technology's relentless pace, a Palm X or Nokia 3G phone may become the ultimate MP3 platform of choice. The author is putting his money on a closed, Web-based system, however. Regardless, with AOL/Time Warner - the world's largest media/Internet/cable/browser/e-mail company - in this race, we should be guaranteed an exciting ride.
Fear of going under general anesthesia: A cross-sectional study

Objectives: Fears related to anesthesia have affected a considerable number of patients going for surgery. The purpose of this survey was to identify the most common concerns about general anesthesia during the preoperative anesthetic clinic in different healthcare settings, and whether they are affected by patients′ sex, age, education, or previous experience of anesthesia or not. Materials and Methods: Structured questionnaires with consent forms were distributed to patients in their preanesthesia clinic visit in three tertiary hospitals (King Abdul-Aziz Medical City, King Faisal Specialist Hospital, and King Khalid University Hospital) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Patients′ demographics and questions related to their fears regarding general anesthesia were included in the questionnaires. All categorical and interval variables were compared statically using a Chi-square test for independence and a t-test, respectively. All statistical tests were declared significant at α level of 0.05 or less. Results: Among 450 questionnaires that were disturbed, 400 questionnaires were collected and analyzed. Eighty-eight percent experienced preoperative fear. The top three causes of their fears were fear of postoperative pain (77.3%), fear of intraoperative awareness (73.7%), and fear of being sleepy postoperatively (69.5%). Patients are less fearful of drains and needles in the operative theater (48%), of revealing personal issues under general anesthesia (55.2%), and of not waking up after surgery (56.4%). Age and gender were significant predictors of the overall fear among preanesthetic patients. Females are 5 times more likely to experience fear before surgery (P = 0.0009). Patients aged more than 40 years old are also at 75% higher risk of being afraid (P = 0.008). Conclusion: The majority of the patients going for surgery experienced a fear of anesthesia. Mostly females, especially those over 40, were at a higher risk of being afraid. Fear can bring anxiety which, in turn, might affect the patient′s surgery.
SEXUAL ACTIVITIES, CONCERNS AND INTERESTS OF WOMEN WITH SPINAL CORD INJURY LIVING IN THE COMMUNITY

White MJ, Rintala DH, Hart KA, Fuhrer MJ: Sexual activities, concerns and interests of women with spinal cord injury living in the community. Am J Phys Med Rehabil 1993;72:372–378A representative sample of 40 women selected from a community-based sampling frame of 661 men and women with spinal cord injury was studied for sexual activities, concerns and interests. Participants responded to a questionnaire and rating scales and were physically examined to establish their neurologic status. With respect to 11 other areas of life, sex life ranked tenth in importance and tenth in satisfaction. In the sample, 65% reported having had a physical relationship (not necessarily including intercourse) in the past 12 months. Areas of greatest concern were problems associated with urinary and bowel accidents and not satisfying a partner. Regarding topics of interest related to sexual activity, highest priorities were assigned to coping emotionally with changes in sexual functioning and helping a partner cope emotionally with limitations on sexual activity. Compared with a previously studied group of men with spinal cord injury, the women in the sample exhibited distinctive needs that were not being addressed sufficiently by rehabilitation professionals.
Life on the Edge: Morphological and Behavioral Adaptations for Survival on Wave-swept Shores

Wave-swept rocky shores serve as a home to a great diversity of organisms and are some of the most biologically productive habitats on earth. This burgeoning community exists in spite of the fact that the zone between the high and low tide marks can be one of the most physically harsh environments on earth. Large forces imposed by breaking waves and wide swings in temperature require the organisms living on rocky shores to adapt to a constantly changing environment or risk extirpation by physical forces. I have explored a number of hypothesized adaptations for survival on rocky shores and discuss how the results influence the evolutionary and ecological processes shaping shoreline communities. I developed a biophysical model to predict body temperatures for high shore littorine snails in order to address the role of evolved morphological and behavioral traits for controlling body temperature during extreme temperature exposures. The results demonstrate that while the behaviors of these snails allow them to reduce body temperatures by several degrees, the hypothesized roles of shell shape and color contribute relatively little to controlling body temperature. A similar biophysical model for predicting organismal body temperature was combined with a physiological study to examine the role of temperature stress in setting the distributional limits of an important mid-intertidal limpet, Lottia gigantea. With a temperature exposure protocol based on realistic field conditions, I measured sub-lethal and lethal temperature limits for this species, and found that the vertical distribution of L. gigantea may be set directly by high temperatures within certain microhabitats on the shore. The final section describes the role of behavior in barnacles in compensating for limits in the phenotypic plasticity of their feeding appendages. By directly monitoring the feeding activity of barnacles under breaking waves, I show that fast reaction times allow barnacles to avoid damaging water flows while still exploiting much of the available time for feeding. The studies in this thesis provide a number of new insights into the role of the abiotic environment in the evolution and ecology of organisms living on wave-swept rocky shores.
Fusion-Induced Apoptosis Contributes to Thymocyte Depletion by a Pathogenic Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Envelope in the Human Thymus

ABSTRACT The mechanisms of CD4+ T-cell depletion during human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection remain incompletely characterized. Of particular importance is how CD4+ T cells are depleted within the lymphoid organs, including the lymph nodes and thymus. Herein we characterize the pathogenic mechanisms of an envelope from a rapid progressor (R3A Env) in the NL4-3 backbone (NL4-R3A) which is able to efficiently replicate and deplete CD4+ thymocytes in the human fetal-thymus organ culture (HF-TOC). We demonstrate that uninterrupted replication is required for continual thymocyte depletion. During depletion, NL4-R3A induces an increase in thymocytes which uptake 7AAD, a marker of cell death, and which express active caspase-3, a marker of apoptosis. While 7AAD uptake is observed predominantly in uninfected thymocytes (p24−), active caspase-3 is expressed in both infected (p24+) and uninfected thymocytes (p24−). When added to HF-TOC with ongoing infection, the protease inhibitor saquinavir efficiently suppresses NL4-R3A replication. In contrast, the fusion inhibitors T20 and C34 allow for sustained HIV-1 production. Interestingly, T20 and C34 effectively prevent thymocyte depletion in spite of this sustained replication. Apoptosis of both p24− and p24+ thymocytes appears to be envelope fusion dependent, as T20, but not saquinavir, is capable of reducing thymocyte apoptosis. Together, our data support a model whereby pathogenic envelope-dependent fusion contributes to thymocyte depletion in HIV-1-infected thymus, correlated with induction of apoptosis in both p24+ and p24− thymocytes.
Differences in surrogate threshold effect estimates between original and simplified correlation‐based validation approaches

Surrogate endpoint validation has been well established by the meta‐analytical correlation‐based approach as outlined in the seminal work of Buyse et al. (Biostatistics, 2000). Surrogacy can be assumed if strong associations on individual and study levels can be demonstrated. Alternatively, if an effect on a true endpoint is to be predicted from a surrogate endpoint in a new study, the surrogate threshold effect (STE, Burzykowski and Buyse, Pharmaceutical Statistics, 2006) can be used. In practice, as individual patient data (IPD) are hard to obtain, some authors use only aggregate data and perform simplified regression analyses. We are interested in to what extent such simplified analyses are biased compared with the ones from a full model with IPD. To this end, we conduct a simulation study with IPD and compute STEs from full and simplified analyses for varying data situations in terms of number of studies, correlations, variances and so on. In the scenarios considered, we show that, for normally distributed patient data, STEs derived from ordinary (weighted) linear regression generally underestimate STEs derived from the original model, whereas meta‐regression often results in overestimation. Therefore, if individual data cannot be obtained, STEs from meta‐regression may be used as conservative alternatives, but ordinary (weighted) linear regression should not be used for surrogate endpoint validation. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Asymptotic growth rate of stochastic max-plus systems that with a positive probability have a sunflower-like support

In this paper the asymptotic growth rate of stochastic max-plus linear systems is studied. Special attention is paid to systems whose system matrix with a positive probability is supported by a basic sunflower graph, i.e., a graph that contains precisely one circuit, which has length one (a self-loop), and in which each node has precisely one predecessor. It is shown that for such systems all state components have the same asymptotic growth rate. The result is illustrated by means of an example. Also two generalizations will be briefly presented
I do not smoke — I exercise: A pilot study of a new educational resource for secondary education students

Aims: The aim of this study was to examine the applicability of a smoking prevention educational resource for secondary education students named `I do not smoke, I exercise'. The main focus of this program was the promotion of exercise as an alternative behaviour to smoking. Methods: The applicability of the intervention was assessed through questionnaires regarding: (a) attitudes towards smoking, (b) interest in information about smoking, and (c) knowledge about health consequences of smoking. Moreover, interviews were taken from the educators and the school principals. The questionnaires were completed from 210 students (101 boys and 109 girls) before the beginning, at the end of the program, and 12 months after the completion of the programme. One-way repeated measure ANOVA was performed to examine the differences between the pre-, post-, and the follow-up measures. Results: Results showed that the program succeeded in changing the students' attitudes, but the follow-up measures, 12 months later, showed that attitudes towards smoking and interest in information were relapsed to the pre-intervention levels. The only effect that was sustained was that for knowledge. The interviews also revealed positive comments about the program implementation and pointed some shortcomings. Conclusions: The program needs some modifications in order to overcome its weaknesses, have more lasting effects and to improve its applicability.
Acute pancreatitis possibly associated with combined salicylate and atorvastatin therapy.

Described herein is the case of a 60 year old patient who presented with acute onset pancreatitis which may be related to the combination of salicylate plus atorvastatin therapy. Among the causes of pancreatitis, druginduced acute pancreatitis is rather rare and difficult to prove. However, a number of drugs have been implicated as possible causes, including azathioprine, tetracyclines, estrogen, sulfonamides and thiazides [1]. Two previously published studies have shown an association between salicylate or atorvastatin therapy with acute pancreatitis [2, 3]. A 60 year old male patient with a history of familial hypercholesterolaemia and ischaemic heart disease was admitted to our clinic because of epigastric abdominal pain. Serum and urine amylase were elevated in excess of ten times the normal upper limits and ultrasonography showed pancreatic edema without gallstones. Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography excluded occult biliary disease (small stones-microlithiasis) and congenital variation of the pancreatic duct system and the ampullary region. Possible common causes of acute pancreatitis, such as heavy alcohol intake, hypercalcemia, hypertriglyceridemia, neoplasia, viral infections, and abdominal trauma, were also excluded. The patient had been receiving acetylsalicylic acid (100 mg/day) and diltiazem (180 mg/day) for the previous ten years and atorvastatin (40 mg/day) for the last five years. Two previously published studies have shown an association between salicylate or atorvastatin therapy with acute pancreatitis [2, 3]. In both studies, the time to onset was shortly after drug ingestion. Thus, despite the prolonged administration of these drugs in this patient, it is tempting to assume a possible association between the use of one or, more likely, their combination and the development of acute pancreatitis, since other common causes of acute pancreatitis were excluded. We suggest that patients with ischaemic heart disease receiving the above drugs should have their serum amylase levels tested during routine blood tests and we invite concern on this possible association and reports of other new cases.
Efficacy and feasibility of helixcision for debulking neointimal hyperplasia for in‐stent restenosis

The Helixcision system is a novel 6 Fr–compatible catheter designed to debulk tissue for in‐stent restenosis lesions. The purpose of this study was to determine the efficacy and feasibility of this new system for removing neointimal hyperplasia. A total of 32 in‐stent restenosis lesions in 32 patients were treated with helixcision followed by balloon angioplasty. Debulking efficacy was assessed with serial baseline intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) in a subset of 18 lesions. To investigate longitudinal efficacy, 3D analysis was also performed in 12 lesions with automated pullback to calculate average cross‐sectional areas across the stent. Prior to procedure, the angiographic reference diameter was 2.60 ± 0.46 mm. Immediately after procedure, minimum lumen diameter improved from 0.84 ± 0.33 to 2.19 ± 0.41 mm (P < 0.0001). IVUS showed a significant reduction of intimal area (IA) after helixcision (from 4.95 ± 2.04 to 2.88 ± 1.48 mm2; P < 0.001). Adjunctive balloon angioplasty further improved lumen area (LA) mainly by stent expansion rather than IA reduction at the site of minimum lumen area. The degrees of IA reduction and LA improvement were closely similar in volumetric analysis. Thirty‐day and 6‐month clinical follow‐up were available in 97% (n = 31) and 72% (n = 23) of the enrolled patients, respectively. At 30‐day follow‐up, no major adverse cardiac event was reported except for periprocedural CK elevation in two patients (6%). Target legion revascularization within 6 months was performed in six patients (26%). Preliminary results of helixcision indicate that this system is safe and feasible for the treatment of in‐stent restenosis. The concordant results between 2D and 3D IVUS analyses suggest that this unique technology can achieve uniform longitudinal debulking throughout the stent. The long‐term outcomes appeared to be favorable, considering the relatively diffuse lesion morphology. Cathet Cardiovasc Intervent 2002;57:460–466. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Genetic Diversity in Cultivated Common Bean: II. Marker‐Based Analysis of Morphological and Agronomic Traits

Knowledge of patterns of genetic diversity enhances the efficiency of germplasm conservation and improvement. This study examined the organization of diversity for morphological and agronomic characteristics in 306 landraces of cultivated common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) from Latin America and its relationship with phaseolin seed protein and allozyme diversity of the landraces. Data on pigmentation, growth habit, and leaflet, pod, seed, and phenology traits, as well as reaction to four important diseases and an insect pest, obtained from field evaluations at three locations in Colombia during the 1987-1988 cropping season, were analyzed by multivariate statistical analyses
Relational and overt forms of peer victimization: a multiinformant approach.

This research addressed 2 limitations of past research on peer victimization: the tendency to study boys only and the tendency to focus on forms of peer maltreatment that are common in boys' peer groups (victimization through overt aggression) but occur much less frequently in girls' peer groups. Peer- and self-report instruments were used to assess a relational form of victimization in addition to the overt form that has been the focus of past research. Results showed that girls were more relationally victimized, whereas boys were more overtly victimized. Both forms of victimization were shown to predict concurrent sociopsychological adjustment problems significantly (e.g., peer rejection, loneliness) beyond aggression. Victims identified through a combination of self- and peer-reports were particularly maladjusted.
Associations of MAOA-VNTR or 5HTT-LPR alleles with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms are moderated by platelet monoamine oxidase B activity

The monoamine systems have been suggested to play a role in the biological basis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms. Thus, polymorphisms, for example, in the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) and the serotonin transporter (5HTT) genes have been associated with ADHD-like phenotypes. Furthermore, platelet monoamine oxidase B (MAOB) activity has frequently been linked to impulsiveness-related traits. In this study, we have studied ADHD symptoms with regard to the combination of platelet MAOB activity and MAOA-variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR) or 5HTT-LPR genotype. The study group consisted of 156 adolescent twin pairs, that is, 312 individuals, who participated in a previous study. ADHD symptoms were scored with a structured clinical interview of both the twins and a parent using Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children-Present and Lifetime Version. The presence of a short 5HTT-LPR or short MAOA-VNTR allele, in combination with high levels of platelet MAOB enzyme activity was associated with higher scores of ADHD-like problems (P<0.001 and 0.01, respectively). This re-examination of ADHD scores in a nonclinical sample suggests that effects of MAOA-VNTR and 5HTT-LPR are moderated by platelet MAOB activity.