Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Heme Oxygenase‐1 Gene Promoter Polymorphisms and Outcomes of Clinical Renal Transplantation

We would like to highlight that the lower 95% confidence limits for the HRs reported in our study (2) are not consistent with the S-allele providing even modest protective effects in renal transplantation. Carriage of an S-allele by the donor gave a HR of 0.89 (95% CI 0.71–1.11) for graft survival and a HR of 0.89 (95%CI 0.67–1.18) for recipient survival indicating that our results are not consistent with a HR for carriage of the S allele of less than 0.67 (or equivalently a HR for noncarriage of greater 1.5). For the recipient genotype the corresponding values were 1.19 (95% CI 0.95–1.48) and 1.22 (95% CI 0.93–1.62) so our results
Context-driven fusion of high spatial and spectral resolution images based on oversampled multiresolution analysis

This paper compares two general and formal solutions to the problem of fusion of multispectral images with high-resolution panchromatic observations. The former exploits the undecimated discrete wavelet transform, which is an octave bandpass representation achieved from a conventional discrete wavelet transform by omitting all decimators and upsampling the wavelet filter bank. The latter relies on the generalized Laplacian pyramid, which is another oversampled structure obtained by recursively subtracting from an image an expanded decimated lowpass version. Both the methods selectively perform spatial-frequencies spectrum substitution from an image to another. In both schemes, context dependency is exploited by thresholding the local correlation coefficient between the images to be merged, to avoid injection of spatial details that are not likely to occur in the target image. Unlike other multiscale fusion schemes, both the present decompositions are not critically subsampled, thus avoiding possible impairments in the fused images, due to missing cancellation of aliasing terms. Results are presented and discussed on SPOT data.
Paraquat Poisoning in Japan : A Hospital-based Survey

Background: Paraquat has been a matter of grave concern around the world, including Japan, in light of high mortality rates and numerous fatalities. Method: We undertook a cross-sectional survey of pesticide poisoning by collecting data for 6 years, from 1998 to 2003, from 102 hospitals affiliated with the Japanese Association of Rural Medicine. From these cases, we analyzed those with exposure to paraquat. Results: There were 79 paraquat poisoning cases, including 71 cases of suicide. Of the suicide cases with 5% paraquat and 7% diquat products, more than 80% resulted in suicide deaths. All people who used 24% paraquat products completed suicide. The outcomes of these cases were related to age and volume of ingestion. The prognosis line proposed by Proudfoot in 1979 continues to explain the final outcome of almost all cases even though more than 25 years have passed since it was first proposed. More than 80% of fatalities died within the first three days of ingestion. Conclusion: Numerous lifesaving methods have been proposed by physicians around the world. However, almost all of these methods treat pulmonary disorders in the sub-acute and subsequent periods and seem unable to effectively decrease mortality rates. It is necessary to take administrative measures to reduce paraquat concentrations in products and, furthermore, to impose strict restrictions on its distribution.
Women's Experiences with HIV/AIDS: An International Perspective.

, by Peter LampteyCounting Women's Experiences, by Lynellyn D. LongLiving With HIV/AIDSNegative in the Beginning, Positive in the End, by Christine Thomas (With Lynellyn D. Long)I Have a Life, I Will Live, by AnonymousWomen Who Sleep With Women, by Joyce Hunter & Priscilla AlexanderHIV/AIDS: A Personal Perspective, by Debbie RunionsEconomic and Sociocultural PerspectivesMaking a Living: Women Who Go Out, by Priscilla AlexanderBargaining for Life: Women and the AIDS Epidemic in Haiti, by Priscilla R. Ulin, Michel Cayemittes, and Robert GringleThe Socioeconomic Impact of AIDS on Women in Tanzania, by Anne OutwaterI'm Not Afraid of Life or Death: Women in Brothels in Northern Thailand, by Katherine C. Bond, David D. Delentiano, and Chayan VaddhanaphutiWomen's Social Representation of Sex, Sexuality, and AIDS in Brazil, by Luiza Klein-AlonsoThe Impact of Structural Adjustment Programs on Women and AIDS, by Mubina Hassanali Kirmani and Dorothy MunyakhoIssues and ConcernsThe Epidemiology of HIV and AIDS in Women, by Jeanine M. Buzy and Helens D. GayleSexually Transmitted Diseases as Catalysts of HIV/AIDS in Women, by Barbara Parker and David W. PattersonHIV and Breast-feeding: Informed Choice in the Face of Medical Ambiguity, by Chloe O'Gara and Anna C. MartinWomen, Children, and HIV/AIDS, by Carrie AuerCare and Support Systems, by E. Maxine Ankrah, Martin Schwartz, and Jaclyn MillerPromising DirectionsDilemmas for Women in the Second Decade, by Elizabeth A. Preble and Galia D. SiegelWomen Educating Women for HIV/AIDS Prevention, by Kathleen CashTalking About Sex: A Prerequisitie for AIDS Prevention, by Geeta Rao Gupta, Ellen Weiss, and Purnima ManeChallenges for the Development of Female-Controlled Vaginal Microbicides, by Christopher J. Elias and Lor L. HeiseThe Ethics of Social and Behavioral Research on Women and AIDS, by Carl KendallWhat Next? A Policy Agenda, by E. Maxine Ankrah and Lynellyn D. Long
Prime-boost vaccination with chimpanzee adenovirus and modified vaccinia Ankara encoding TRAP provides partial protection against Plasmodium falciparum infection in Kenyan adults

Vaccination with the recombinant viral vectors chimpanzee adenovirus 63 followed by modified vaccinia Ankara both encoding the malaria sequence ME-TRAP conferred 67% protection against infection with Plasmodium falciparum in Kenyan adults. Setting a TRAP for the malaria parasite Previous studies have shown that T cells induced by vaccines can clear liver-stage malaria parasites, but these vaccines have not been effective in field trials. In a new study, Bejon et al. randomly allocated 121 healthy adult male volunteers to receive either a T cell–inducing vaccine or rabies vaccine as a control. They gave antimalarials to clear malaria parasites from the subjects’ blood and then did frequent blood tests to identify new infections with the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. They found that the volunteers receiving the T cell vaccine had a 67% reduction in the risk of malaria infection during 8 weeks of follow-up. Protective immunity to the liver stage of the malaria parasite can be conferred by vaccine-induced T cells, but no subunit vaccination approach based on cellular immunity has shown efficacy in field studies. We randomly allocated 121 healthy adult male volunteers in Kilifi, Kenya, to vaccination with the recombinant viral vectors chimpanzee adenovirus 63 (ChAd63) and modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA), both encoding the malaria peptide sequence ME-TRAP (the multiple epitope string and thrombospondin-related adhesion protein), or to vaccination with rabies vaccine as a control. We gave antimalarials to clear parasitemia and conducted PCR (polymerase chain reaction) analysis on blood samples three times a week to identify infection with the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. On Cox regression, vaccination reduced the risk of infection by 67% [95% confidence interval (CI), 33 to 83%; P = 0.002] during 8 weeks of monitoring. T cell responses to TRAP peptides 21 to 30 were significantly associated with protection (hazard ratio, 0.24; 95% CI, 0.08 to 0.75; P = 0.016).
Three-dimensional focusing with multipass SAR data

Deals with the use of multipass synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data in order to achieve three-dimensional tomography reconstruction in presence of volumetric scattering. Starting from azimuth- and range-focused SAR data relative to the same area, neglecting any mutual interaction between the targets, and assuming the propagation in homogeneous media, we investigate the possibility to focus the data also in the elevation direction. The problem is formulated in the framework of linear inverse problem and the solution makes use of the singular value decomposition of the relevant operator. This allows us to properly take into account nonuniform orbit separation and to exploit a priori knowledge regarding the size of the volume interested by the scattering mechanism, thus leading to superresolution in the elevation direction. Results obtained on simulated data demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed processing technique.
On the Performance of SSK Modulation over Multiple-Access Rayleigh Fading Channels

Spatial Modulation (SM) is a recently proposed joint coding and modulation scheme for Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) wireless systems, which is receiving a growing interest. SM offers a low-complexity alternative to the design of MIMO wireless systems, which avoids multiple Radio Frequency (RF) chains at the transmitter and high-complexity interference cancelation algorithms at the receiver, but still guarantees a multiplexing gain that only depends on the number of antennas at the transmitter. This makes this technology especially suitable for the downlink with low-complexity mobile units. So far, the feasibility and performance of SM have been assessed and studied only for point-to-point communication systems, i.e., the single-user scenario. However, the performance achievable by the vast majority of wireless communication networks is interference limited, due to the simultaneous transmission of various users over the same physical wireless channel. Therefore, the adoption of SM in the next generation of wireless communication systems requires a deep understanding of its performance over interference channels. Motivated by this consideration, in this paper we study the performance of SM over the reference multiple-access fading channel composed by two transmitters and one receiver. Two detectors at the receiver are studied, i.e., the single- and the multi-user detector. In particular, analysis and Monte Carlo simulations show that the single-user detector does not offer, in general, good error performance for arbitrary channel conditions, while the multi-user detector achieves error performance very close to the single-user lower-bound. These results clearly highlight that SM can be adopted for enabling data transmission over multiple-access fading channels as well.
Dynamic Joint Switching Point Configuration and Resource Allocation in TDD-OFDMA Wireless Networks

The development of the Time Division Duplexing (TDD) mode in next generation OFDMA-based wireless standards has brought some major advantages but at the same time raised several critical design requirements. Among others, the introduced flexibility in splitting resources between the uplink and downlink directions makes of the uplink/downlink switching point configuration a major design problem, especially that it is directly connected to other design aspects such as resource allocation and interference mitigation. In this paper, we propose a dynamic joint uplink/downlink resource allocation and switching point configuration algorithm. The proposed algorithm is channel-aware, traffic-aware, and service-aware. The resource allocation problem is formulated as an optimization problem that captures the different network parameters. Resulting instantaneous uplink and downlink rates are utilized in a dynamic estimation of the uplink and downlink time shares. A fast implementation using sequential quadratic programming is presented. Simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach in responding dynamically to varying network conditions and the improved performance when compared to fixed uplink/downlink switching point configurations.
Anatomy of the Lisfranc Ligament

Most authors agree that anatomic reduction is the key to optimal results in treatment of injuries of the Lisfranc joint; a few controversies remain. One controversy is the identification of the strongest ligament of the second metatarsal-medial cuneiform articulation—the critical ligament of the Lisfranc joint. The purpose of this study is to objectively quantify the cross-sectional area of each ligament of this crucial joint. Twenty cadaveric feet were dissected to isolate the second metatarsal-medial cuneiform articulation. The point of maximum thickness, height, and width of the dorsal, plantar, and interosseous ligaments were measured using handheld calipers at the second metatarsal attachment. The distribution failed to pass Mauchly's test of sphericity, so the Greenhouse-Geisser method was used to assess differences in the height and width to a P ≤ . 05 level of significance. There was a significant difference in the height, width, and area between all ligaments (P < .001). The interosseous ligament was the largest, with the greatest height, width, and cross-sectional area (P < .001). The dorsal ligament was the smallest, with the least height, width, and cross-sectional area (P < .001). Within the Lisfranc complex, the dorsal ligament is the smallest. The plantar ligament is twice as large as the dorsal ligament. The interosseous ligament is the largest. It is, on average, 4.5 times larger than the dorsal ligament and twice as large as the plantar ligament.
Dynamic Compact Multicast Routing on Power-Law Graphs

Compact routing schemes address the fundamental tradeoff between the memory space required to store the routing table entries and the length of the routing paths that these schemes produce. This paper introduces the first known nameindependent, leaf-initiated dynamic compact routing scheme that allows the distribution of traffic from any source to any set of leaf nodes along a multicast routing path that defines a distribution tree. By means of the proposed scheme, a multicast distribution tree dynamically evolves according to the arrival of leaf-initiated join/leave requests. To evaluate the performance we consider the following metrics: the stretch of the produced routing paths, the size and the number of routing table entries, and the communication cost. The results obtained by simulation on synthetic power law graphs (modeling the Internet topology) show that our scheme can successfully handle leaf-initiated dynamic setup of multicast distribution trees. Two reference multicast routing schemes (the Shortest Path Tree and the Steiner Tree algorithm) are used to compare the performance of the proposed scheme. While increasing the communication cost compared to the Shortest Path Tree, the proposed scheme achieves considerable reduction of the routing table size compared to both reference schemes. Moreover, the stretch of the resulting multicast routing paths show limited deterioration compared to the minimum value obtained with Steiner Trees.
Ionospheric effects for L-band 2-D interferometric radiometry

Ionospheric effects are a potential error source for the estimation of surface quantities such as sea surface salinity, using L-band radiometry. This study is carried out in the context of the SMOS future space mission, which uses an interferometric radiometer. We first describe the way the Faraday rotation angle due to electron content along the observing path varies across the two-dimensional field of view. Over open ocean surfaces, we show that it is possible to retrieve the total electron content (TEC) at nadir from radiometric data considered over the bulk of the field of view, with an accuracy better than 0.5 TEC units, compatible with requirements for surface salinity observations. Using a full-polarimetric design improves the accuracy on the estimated TEC value. The random uncertainty on retrieved salinity is decreased by about 15% with respect to results obtained when using only data for the first Stokes parameter, which is immune to Faraday rotation. Similarly, TEC values over land surfaces may be retrieved with the accuracy required in the context of soil moisture measurements. Finally, direct TEC estimation provides information which should allow to correct for ionospheric attenuation as well.
Modeling and Performance Analysis of Periodic Broadcast in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

This paper proposes a Markov model for analyzing the performance of periodic broadcast in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Since there is no packet retransmission in broadcast, we only consider a one-dimensional Markov model. In the proposed model, we assume that the traffic condition is unsaturated and introduce a state to represent the situation when there is no packet waiting for transmission in the buffer of a node. Meanwhile, the state of a backoff counter changes only when the channel is sensed idle. When the channel is busy, the state of the backoff counter does not change. Moreover, we use a discrete time D/M/1 queue to model the periodic broadcast of each node. Based on this model, we also show numerical results to analyze the performance of the periodic broadcast in VANETs in terms of packet collision probability and average packet delay.
Generalized refractive mixing dielectric model for moist soils

This paper introduces a new soil dielectric model in the microwave band offering variation over a wide range of soil moisture, texture, mineral content, and wave frequency. The soil dielectric models commonly used in microwave remote sensing algorithms rarely apply intrinsic bound soil water (BSW) dielectric properties. However, models incorporating these properties could offer additional applicability and accuracy. This paper describes a technique developed for estimating the complex dielectric constant (CDC) for both the BSW and the free soil water (FSW) as separate water constituents present in moist soil. For this purpose, it has been shown that there exist two specific soil moisture regions where alteration in soil dielectric property is generated, exclusively, by either BSW or FSW increments, with their CDCs being constant values. The CDCs of the BSW and FSW are derived through straight line fitting with the help of a measured soil complex refractive index (CRI) as a function of moisture. The term CRI is understood here as a square root of the CDC. In order to distinguish between the two moisture regions, the maximum bound water fraction (MBWF) parameter was introduced, which also can be obtained through straight line fitting, using measured CRIs as a function of moisture over both specific moisture regions. Thus, obtained fittings are known in the literature as the refractive mixing dielectric model (RMDM). Finally, a method for deducing the Debye relaxation parameters for both types of soil water was proposed, with their CDCs being input parameters. It was shown that the soil water CDCs measured only at two frequencies are sufficient for deriving the Debye relaxation parameters. A set of equations representing the RMDM, the Debye formula, and the formulas proposed for deriving the Debye relaxation parameters is designated as the generalized refractive mixing dielectric model (GRMDM). In contrast to all previously known soil dielectric models, the GRMDM allows for CDC prediction beyond the frequency range where the initial soil CDC data are acquired.
Immune-mediated pathology in Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Immunopathology contributes to the destruction and fibrosis of muscle in Duchenne muscular dystrophy, reducing the efficacy of dystrophin-replacement therapies. None Immunological and inflammatory processes downstream of dystrophin deficiency as well as metabolic abnormalities, defective autophagy, and loss of regenerative capacity all contribute to muscle pathology in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). These downstream cascades offer potential avenues for pharmacological intervention. Modulating the inflammatory response and inducing immunological tolerance to de novo dystrophin expression will be critical to the success of dystrophin-replacement therapies. This Review focuses on the role of the inflammatory response in DMD pathogenesis and opportunities for clinical intervention.
Functional inflammatory profiles distinguish myelin-reactive T cells from patients with multiple sclerosis

CCR6+ myelin-reactive T cells from patients with multiple sclerosis secrete inflammatory cytokines compared to T cells from healthy subjects, showing a distinct pathogenic gene expression profile and sharing a transcriptome homology with encephalitogenic CD4+ T cells isolated from mice with experimental autoimmune encephalitis. Rethinking myelin-reactive T cells in multiple sclerosis In patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), the ability of nerves to carry messages is disrupted because of damage to their insulating cover—the myelin sheath. This damage is thought to be caused by the body’s own immune cells; however, immune cells restricted to myelin itself are found in comparable numbers in MS patients and healthy controls. Now, Cao et al. report that myelin-reactive T cells from MS patients are functionally different than those from healthy controls; cells from MS patients are more proinflammatory, whereas cells from controls secrete more of the immunoregulatory cytokine interleukin-10. These data suggest that functional differences in these cells may contribute to the development of disease. Myelin-reactive T cells have been identified in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and healthy subjects with comparable frequencies, but the contribution of these autoreactive T cells to disease pathology remains unknown. A total of 13,324 T cell libraries generated from blood of 23 patients and 22 healthy controls were interrogated for reactivity to myelin antigens. Libraries derived from CCR6+ myelin-reactive T cells from patients with MS exhibited significantly enhanced production of interferon-γ (IFN-γ), interleukin-17 (IL-17), and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) compared to healthy controls. Single-cell clones isolated by major histocompatibility complex/peptide tetramers from CCR6+ T cell libraries also secreted more proinflammatory cytokines, whereas clones isolated from controls secreted more IL-10. The transcriptomes of myelin-specific CCR6+ T cells from patients with MS were distinct from those derived from healthy controls and, notably, were enriched in T helper cell 17 (TH17)–induced experimental autoimmune encephalitis gene signatures, and gene signatures derived from TH17 cells isolated other human autoimmune diseases. These data, although not causal, imply that functional differences between antigen-specific T cells from MS and healthy controls are fundamental to disease development and support the notion that IL-10 production from myelin-reactive T cells may act to limit disease progression or even pathogenesis.