Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The comparative accuracy of 8 commercial rapid immunochromatographic assays for the diagnosis of acute dengue virus infection.

BACKGROUND The serological diagnosis of acute dengue virus infection relies on the detection of dengue-specific immunoglobulin M (IgM) antibodies. Immunochromatographic tests are rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) that can be performed at the bedside, but they have not been fully validated for diagnosis of dengue infection. METHODS More than 20 RDTs for diagnosis of acute dengue infection are commercially available. Of these, 8 were selected for evaluation of performance by use of characterized dengue and nondengue serum specimens, and results were compared with those of a previously published dengue IgM/IgG enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in conjunction with dengue virus serotyping by reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. RESULTS Assay sensitivities were low, ranging from 6.4% (95% confidence interval [CI], 4.0%-9.7%) to 65.3% (95% CI, 59.9%-70.5%), and specificities ranged from 69.1% (95% CI, 61.4%-76.0%) to 100% (95% CI, 97.8%-100%). Of the 8 tests, only 2 had sensitivities of >50%, the level considered to be clinically useful, and, of these, 1 had relatively low specificity (69.1%). Samples collected early in the infection were less likely to test positive than those collected later. A thermal stability study demonstrated a loss in performance of some RDTs when they were stored at a high ambient temperature for 3 months. CONCLUSIONS Users of RDTs for dengue should be aware that many of these tests have a diagnostic accuracy that falls well below the manufacturers' claims. If an acute specimen yields a negative result, a convalescent serum sample should be tested to confirm the result. No RDT adequately differentiated primary and secondary dengue infections, and the tests should not be used for this purpose.
Differentiation of malignant and benign proximal bile duct strictures: the diagnostic dilemma.

AIM To identify the criteria for the differentiation of hilar cholangiocarcinoma (HCCA) from benign strictures. METHODS A total of 68 patients underwent resection of lesions suspicious for HCCA between 1998 and 2006. The results of laboratory investigations, imaging studies and brush cytology were collected. These findings were analyzed to obtain the final diagnosis. RESULTS Histological examination of the resected specimens confirmed HCCA in 58 patients (85%, group I) whereas 10 patients (15%, group II) were diagnosed to have benign strictures. The most common presenting symptom was obstructive jaundice in 77% patients (79% group I vs 60% group II, P = 0.23). Laboratory findings showed greater elevation of transaminase levels in group I compared to group II. The various imaging modalities showed vascular involvement exclusively in the malignant group (36%, P < 0.05). Brush cytology was positive for malignant cells in only 50% patients in group I whereas none in group II showed malignant cells. CONCLUSION Despite improvements in imaging techniques, 10 patients (15%) with a presumptive diagnosis of HCCA were ultimately found to have benign strictures. Except for vascular involvement which was associated significantly with malignancy, there were no conclusive features of malignancy on regular imaging modalities. This uncertainty should be taken into account when patients with a suspicious lesion at the liver hilum are considered for resection.
Racial Composition Over the Life Course: Examining Separate and Unequal Environments and the Risk for Heart Disease for African American Men.

PURPOSE Studies have demonstrated the effects of segregated social and physical environments on the development of chronic diseases for African Americans. Studies have not delineated the effects of segregated environments specifically on the health of African American men over their lifetime. This study examines the relationship between life course measures of racial composition of social environments and diagnosis of hypertension among African American men. DESIGN We analyzed cross-sectional data from a convenience sample of African American men seeking health care services in an outpatient primary care clinic serving a medically underserved patient population (N=118). Multivariable logistic regression analyses were used to examine associations between racial composition of multiple environments across the life course (eg, junior high school, high school, neighborhood growing up, current neighborhood, place of employment, place of worship) and hypertension diagnosis. RESULTS The majority (86%) of participants were not currently in the workforce (retired, unemployed, or disabled) and more than half (54%) reported an annual household income of <$9,999; median age was 53. Results suggest that African American men who grew up in mostly Black neighborhoods (OR=4.3; P=.008), and worked in mostly Black environments (OR=3.1; P=.041) were more likely to be diagnosed with hypertension than those who did not. CONCLUSION We found associations between mostly Black residential and workplace settings and hypertension diagnoses among African American men. Findings suggest exposure to segregated environments during childhood and later adulthood may impact hypertension risk among African American men over the life course.
THE PRACTICE OF CONSANGUINEOUS MARRIAGE IN OMAN: PREVALENCE, TRENDS AND DETERMINANTS

Summary The practice of consanguineous marriage has been the culturally preferred form of marriage in most Arab and the Middle Eastern countries, including Oman, but due to a paucity of population-based data in the past there is a dearth of information about its form and dynamics in Oman. Recent national-level surveys allow this gap to be filled. This paper examines the prevalence, trends and determinants of consanguineous marriages in Oman using data from the 2000 Oman National Health Survey. The results indicate a very high prevalence of consanguineous marriage in Oman, as more than half (52%) of marriages are consanguineous. First cousin unions are the most common type of consanguineous unions, constituting 39% of all marriages and 75% of all consanguineous marriages. The study observed various patterns of consanguinity, some of them common with other Arab nations, and some unique in nature. Women's age at marriage, employment, place of childhood residence and geographical region appear to be significant determinants of consanguineous marriages. Consanguineous marriage shows a strong association with marital stability, early age at marriage and early-age childbearing. There has been no appreciable change in the prevalence of consanguineous unions in Oman over the last four decades despite massive socioeconomic development and modernization. However, recent marriage cohorts show slight declining trends. The results suggest that consanguinity is likely to remain stable in the future or decline at a slow rate. Specific health education and genetic counselling should be followed in line with WHO recommendations to minimize the negative health consequences of consanguinity for child health.
Assessing the impact of fertilizer subsidy on farming efficiency: A case of Bangladeshi farmers

Abstract The study has been conducted to assess the micro level impact of fertilizer subsidy on farming efficiency given the heterogeneous farm structures and universal subsidy policy in Bangladesh. The research utilizes primary data, which were collected through personal interview of 300 farm households located in three districts from northern part of Bangladesh. Multistage purposive sampling was followed for selecting the sampling units based on concentration of rice farming. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) reveals that the farms are inefficient in combining inputs in a cost minimizing way, although they are technically more efficient. Results from Tobit models for different farm size groups prove that fertilizer subsidy has significant impact on improving farming efficiencies for marginal and small farms in study areas while leaving insignificant impact for medium and large farms. Further increases in fertilizer subsidy will bring significant productivity increases for these smallholder farmers. Therefore, policy interventions should favor these farms for acceleration of agricultural growth.
Hepatic metastases from carcinoma of the uterine cervix.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the patterns of hepatic involvement and the outcome of patients with hepatic metastases from carcinoma of the uterine cervix. METHODS Of 1665 patients with carcinoma of the uterine cervix, 20 patients with hepatic metastases were detected clinically during the course of the disease. Clinical presentation and detailed patterns of hepatic involvement were retrospectively reviewed for these patients. Comparative analysis between patterns of heaptic metastases and survival data was also undertaken. RESULTS Hepatic metastasis from carcinoma of the uterine cervix were nearly always accompanied by uncontrolled locoregional diseases and/or extrahepatic metastases, whereas only 1 patient developed an isolated hepatic metastasis. Ninety percent of the hepatic metastases were metachronously detected. The median time from the appearance of primary carcinoma to detection of hepatic metastases was 39 months, but late metastases after 5 years were not uncommon. Metastatic lesion in 16 patients consisted of multiple tumors distributed in either one or both anatomical lobes, whereas only 4 patients had a solitary lesion confined to a single lobe. Patients with hepatic metastases were unlikely to survive 2 years with a median survival of 10 months. CONCLUSION Favorable patterns of hepatic metastases in patient with carcinoma of the uterine cervix were not major determinants of favorable survival if components of extrahepatic disease were concomitantly present.
Efficiency as a Determinant of Financial Condition: An Assessment of Italian and Spanish Local Governments

ABSTRACT: Efficiency is considered a strategic tool in local governments (LGs) and several studies have investigated this delicate issue. However, the previous literature has rarely examined if a relationship between efficiency and financial condition does exist. Accordingly, based on a large sample of Italian and Spanish LGs with more than 50,000 inhabitants, the authors aim to investigate the potential impact of the efficiency of LGs on their financial health. Empirical findings, which are obtained from a model based on a stochastic parametric approach to measure efficiency, suggest the existence of such impact, even if it is conditioned by the type of expenditure, the political ideology of the government, and by the national and macroeconomic environments.
Supraglottic carcinoma: does preoperative radiotherapy reduce the incidence of cervical metastasis?

OBJECTIVE To compare surgery (S) alone with combined radiotherapy and surgery (R + S) in the management of patients with supraglottic laryngeal cancer. METHODS Between 1981 and 1994, patients were stratified according to stage and randomised to either surgery (S) or 4000cGy of radiotherapy and surgery. There were 102 patients in the S group and 99 in the R + S group who completed at least 3-year follow-up. RESULTS Using Kaplan-Meier survival method showed no significant difference between the two groups. When the patients were grouped according to tumour stage, a significant reduction in the regional recurrence was noted in the R + S group for stage I-III disease (Cox multivariate analysis, P < 0.02). They had an increased relative risk of 1.8 (95% confidence 1.1-2.9) for neck recurrence. There was no significant difference in neck recurrence rates in the two groups for stage IV disease. When Cox proportional hazard model was used, only TNM stage (P < 0.02) and histological nodal status (positive lymph nodes, P < 0.01) were found to be independent risk factors for regional control. CONCLUSION Preoperative radiotherapy can improve regional cervical control of stage I-III supraglottic cancer as compared with surgery alone.
Agar disk elution method for susceptibility testing of Mycobacterium marinum and Mycobacterium fortuitum complex to sulfonamides and antibiotics

An agar disk elution method using round well plates, supplemented Mueller-Hinton agar, and commercial drug disks is described for susceptibility testing of Mycobacterium marinum and the rapidly growing mycobacteria to antibiotics and sulfonamides. By this method, 14 of 14 strains of M. marinum were susceptible to rifampin, doxycycline, minocycline, and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. Identical results were obtained with Middlebrook 7H10 agar and drugs prepared from standard powders. With 58 isolates of Mycobacterium fortuitum and Mycobacterium chelonei, this method had a 92% correlation with broth minimal inhibitory concentration determinations for cefoxitin and greater than 98% for doxycycline, kanamycin, amikacin, and the sulfonamides. Sixty-nine percent of isolates of M. chelonei susceptible to amikacin on supplemented Mueller-Hinton agar were resistant on 7H10 agar, and 15 of 16 M. chelonei isolates susceptible to erythromycin in broth were resistant by disk elution when an endpoint of no growth was used with either agar. The agar disk elution method offers a practical method for testing of most antibacterial agents against these mycobacterial species.
Continuous-Time Portfolio Optimization under Partial Information and Convex Constraints: Deriving Explicit Results

In this thesis we explicitly solve several portfolio optimization problems in a very realistic setting. The fundamental assumptions on the market setting are motivated by practical experience and the resulting optimal strategies are challenged in numerical simulations. We consider an investor who wants to maximize expected utility of terminal wealth by trading in a high-dimensional financial market with one riskless asset and several stocks. The stock returns are driven by a Brownian motion and their drift is modelled by a Gaussian random variable. We consider a partial information setting, where the drift is unknown to the investor and has to be estimated from the observable stock prices in addition to some analyst’s opinion as proposed in [CLMZ06]. The best estimate given these observations is the well known Kalman-Bucy-Filter. We then consider an innovations process to transform the partial information setting into a market with complete information and an observable Gaussian drift process. The investor is restricted to portfolio strategies satisfying several convex constraints. These constraints can be due to legal restrictions, due to fund design or due to client's specifications. We cover in particular no-short-selling and no-borrowing constraints. One popular approach to constrained portfolio optimization is the convex duality approach of Cvitanic and Karatzas. In [CK92] they introduce auxiliary stock markets with shifted market parameters and obtain a dual problem to the original portfolio optimization problem that can be better solvable than the primal problem. Hence we consider this duality approach and using stochastic control methods we first solve the dual problems in the cases of logarithmic and power utility. Here we apply a reverse separation approach in order to obtain areas where the corresponding Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman differential equation can be solved. It turns out that these areas have a straightforward interpretation in terms of the resulting portfolio strategy. The areas differ between active and passive stocks, where active stocks are invested in, while passive stocks are not. Afterwards we solve the auxiliary market given the optimal dual processes in a more general setting, allowing for various market settings and various dual processes. We obtain explicit analytical formulas for the optimal portfolio policies and provide an algorithm that determines the correct formula for the optimal strategy in any case. We also show optimality of our resulting portfolio strategies in different verification theorems. Subsequently we challenge our theoretical results in a historical and an artificial simulation that are even closer to the real world market than the setting we used to derive our theoretical results. However, we still obtain compelling results indicating that our optimal strategies can outperform any benchmark in a real market in general.
Phosphorylation of Human Fascin Inhibits Its Actin Binding and Bundling Activities (*)

Human fascin is an actin-bundling protein that is thought to be involved in the assembly of actin filament bundles present in microspikes as well as in membrane ruffles and stress fibers. We have found that human fascin is phosphorylated in vivo upon treatment with 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate, a tumor promoter. The in vivo phosphorylation is gradually increased from 0.13 to 0.30 mol/mol during 2 h of treatment, concomitant with the disappearance of human fascin from stress fibers, membrane ruffles, and microspikes. Human fascin can also be phosphorylated in vitro by protein kinase C at the same sites as observed in vivo as judged by phosphopeptide mapping. The extent of phosphorylation depends on pH: the stoichiometries are 0.05, 0.38, and 0.6 mol of phosphate/mol of protein at pH 7.0, 6.0, and 5.0, respectively. Phosphorylation greatly reduces actin binding of human fascin, while lowering the pH to 6.0 alone does not affect fascin-actin binding. With the incorporation of 0.25 mol of phosphate/mol of protein, the actin binding affinity is reduced from 6.7 × 10 to 1.5 × 10M. The actin bundling activity is also decreased. These results suggest that phosphorylation of fascin plays a role in actin reorganization after treatment with 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate.
Establishing the Foundation for a Diagnostic Assessment of Reading in English for Academic Purposes

i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . ii LIST OF FIGURES . ix LIST OF TABLES . x ACRONYMS AND SYMBOLS . xii CHAPTER ONE Introduction . 1 1.1 Diagnostic language assessment . 1 1.1.1 Earlier conceptualisations of diagnostic language assessment . 1 1.1.2 Recent key developments in diagnostic language assessment. 2 1.1.3 A procedural model of diagnostic language programme . 4 1.2 Post-entry language assessments . 6 1.3 The Diagnostic English Language Needs Assessment (DELNA) . 7 1.4 The target issue and research aims . 9 1.5 Thesis structure . 11 CHAPTER TWO Literature Review . 12 2.1 A theoretical framework for designing diagnostic assessments . 13 2.2 Decomposing academic reading . 19 2.1.1 The sub-processes of normal reading comprehension . 19 Lower-level processes . 20 Higher-level processes . 21 2.1.2 Variability of reading in academic situations . 25 The role of reading purpose . 26 Characteristic parameters of reading activities . 28 Type of engagement . 28 Level of engagement . 30 Speed of engagement . 32 Types of academic reading: A synthesis . 34 2.1.3 Academic reading: Empirical needs analyses . 37 2.3 Assessing reading subcomponents . 41 2.2.1 Two different approaches to assessing reading subcomponents . 41 2.2.2 Empirical studies identifying subskills in task-based reading assessments . 43 2.2.3 Nature of subskills commonly identified . 52 2.4 Conclusions and research questions . 60 CHAPTER THREE Research Design: An overview . 63
Information Management & Computer Security The utility of information systems views of CEOs and information system executives

The utility of information systems views of CEOs and information system executives Mahmoud M. Yasin John V. Quigley Article information: To cite this document: Mahmoud M. Yasin John V. Quigley, (1995),"The utility of information systems views of CEOs and information system executives", Information Management & Computer Security, Vol. 3 Iss 2 pp. 34 38 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi. org/10.1108/09685229510793004
The burden of lower urinary tract symptoms: evaluating the effect of LUTS on health‐related quality of life, anxiety and depression: EpiLUTS

To evaluate the impact of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) on urinary‐specific health‐related quality of life (HRQL), generic health indices, depression and anxiety in a population‐representative sample of men and women, as research has linked LUTS with reduced HRQL and depression, but little is known about the effects of individual LUTS on HRQL, depression and anxiety.
Costs attributable to AIDS at household level in Chad

This paper assesses the economic costs of AIDS at the household level in Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world. One hundred and ninety-three AIDS patients living in four different regions were found by case identification at hospital level and through community based organizations providing psycho-social relief. They were matched by age, sex, professional category and zone of residence with controls. Costs were evaluated through a standard questionnaire. Costs at household level attributable to AIDS up to death were US$836 per case. Costs related to productivity losses made up 28% of total costs. More than half of total costs (56%) were health care related expenditures, and funeral costs contributed 16%. AIDS cases relied more often on borrowing and the selling of household assets than controls for treatment. Household expenditures of AIDS cases were much higher than control households mainly due to health related expenditure. The response of concerned families to HIV/AIDS implies high costs and for most households, especially in low-income settings, the consequences of AIDS are devastating. Innovative strategies on how best to assist households are thus requested and may include the strengthening of care and treatment services being offered to AIDS cases.
CD49d expression is an independent predictor of overall survival in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia: a prognostic parameter with therapeutic potential

In vitro studies have demonstrated that surface expression of CD49d on chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) B cells facilitates leukaemic cell–stromal interactions by binding to fibronectin. This interaction reduces both spontaneous and drug‐induced apoptosis. The present study measured CD49d expression by flow cytometry in a cohort of untreated CLL patients previously accrued to a prospective observational study and evaluated the relationship with overall survival (OS). Among the 158 CLL patients tested, the percentage of leukaemic B cells expressing CD49d ranged from 0 to 100%. When all risk factors were treated as continuous variables, CD49d expression showed moderate correlation with expression of ZAP‐70 (r = 0·54; P < 0·0001) and CD38 (r = 0·58; P < 0·0001) but not %IGHV mutation. As a continuous variable, CD49d expression strongly correlated with OS (P < 0·0001). Recursive partitioning analysis suggested the 45% threshold of CD49d expression best predicted OS. Multivariate analysis, controlling for disease stage, ZAP‐70, IGHV status and fluorescent in situ hybridization defects identified CD49d as an independent predictor of OS and was a better predictor of clinical outcome than ZAP‐70, IGHV, or cytogenetics. This observational cohort study suggests that CLL B‐cell expression of CD49d is an easily measurable and independent predictor of OS and CD49d expression in CLL. Importantly, anti‐CD49d antibodies are already approved for treatment of other human diseases. Clinical testing of anti‐CD49d therapy in CLL appears warranted.