Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Incidence of Hepatocellular Carcinoma in HIV-Infected Patients With Cirrhosis: A Prospective Study

Abstract:This study assesses the incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in a prospective cohort of HIV-infected patients, the majority receiving antiretroviral therapy, with liver cirrhosis from different etiologies, enrolled between 2004 and 2005 with median follow-up of 5 years. We followed 371 patients, 25.6% with decompensated cirrhosis at baseline. The incidence rate of HCC was 6.72 per 1000 person-years [95% confidence interval (CI): 2.6 to 10.9]. There was a trend toward a higher cumulative probability of developing HCC at 6 years of follow-up (considering death and liver transplant as competing risks) in patients with decompensated versus compensated cirrhosis at baseline (6% vs. 2%, P < 0.06).
Hydrolysed proteins in preterm formula: influence on plasma aminoacids, blood fatty acids and insulinaemia

The data from the present investigation differ from those of the previous study. The new version of hydrolysed protein formula did not induce changes in insulinaemia or in the insulinaemia/glycaemia ratio in pre‐ and postprandial samples when compared with the intact protein formula. The investigation also confirmed that branch chain aminoacids regulate insulin secretion and that the length of chain is insulinotropic for fatty acids, while the degree of unsaturation is not able to reduce insulin secretion in the newborn baby. This could be caused by stimulation of insulin output activated by the C20:5 n 3; the effects of fatty acids are probably related more to the variable composition of cell membrane than to the fatty acids circulating levels.
Anatomical Correlates of Neuropsychological Deficits Among Patients With the Cerebellar Stroke

Objective To investigate the anatomical correlates of the neuropsychological deficits in patients with the cerebellar stroke. Methods We screened patients who were admitted to the National Rehabilitation Center with the cerebellar stroke between October 2012 and November 2016. The patients with the cerebellar stroke who underwent neuropsychological testing for which the Seoul Neuropsychological Screening Battery (SNSB) or the SNSB-II were enrolled. The neuropsychological function capacities were compared in accordance with the stroke type (hemorrhagic vs. ischemic) and the location (right/left anterior, right/left posterior intermediate, right/left posterior lateral lobe, and vermis). Mean z-scores were computed to compare the patient performances with the population averages. Results Twenty-six patients (15 with ischemic stroke and 11 with hemorrhagic stroke) with a mean age of 54.8±16.6 years were assessed 8.8±9.2 months after the stroke. Differences in the neuropsychological functioning according to the stroke type were not observed. All of the numerical subtests of the stroke patients showed significantly poorer performances compared with the population averages (mean z-score <0), and some of the subtests revealed abnormal performances in attention-, visuospatial function-, memory-, and frontal/executive function-related tasks (mean z-score <−1). The patients with the presence of a lesion in the right posterior intermediate lobe of the cerebellum showed a poorer performance in the subtests evaluating the executive function including the Korean-version Stroop Test (p=0.04), the Digit Symbol Coding Test (p=0.01), and the Korean-version Trail Making Test (p=0.02) compared with the patients without that lesion. Conclusion The present study confirms that the cerebellar stroke affects the neuropsychological functioning which is associated with the anatomical site of stroke.
Galaxy formation in the Planck cosmology – IV. Mass and environmental quenching, conformity and clustering

We study the quenching of star formation as a function of redshift, environment and stellar mass in the galaxy formation simulations of Henriques et al. (2015), which implement an updated version of the Munich semi-analytic model (L-GALAXIES) on the two Millennium Simulations after scaling to a Planck cosmology. In this model massive galaxies are quenched by AGN feedback depending on both black hole and hot gas mass, and hence indirectly on stellar mass. In addition, satellite galaxies of any mass can be quenched by ram-pressure or tidal stripping of gas and through the suppression of gaseous infall. This combination of processes produces quenching efficiencies which depend on stellar mass, host halo mass, environment density, distance to group centre and group central galaxy properties in ways which agree qualitatively with observation. Some discrepancies remain in dense regions and close to group centres, where quenching still seems too efficient. In addition, although the mean stellar age of massive galaxies agrees with observation, the assumed AGN feedback model allows too much ongoing star formation at late times. The fact that both AGN feedback and environmental effects are stronger in higher density environments leads to a correlation between the quenching of central and satellite galaxies which roughly reproduces observed conformity trends inside haloes.
'Design for X' Based on Foreseeing Emotional Impact of Meetings with Evolving Products

Current Design for Emotion (DfE) approaches tend to focus on meetings between a product and a user during the use phase. The research reported in this paper presents work carried out investigating emotions arising from meetings taking place between a product evolving across different life-phases and different stakeholders involved, particularly during product development. By explicitly focusing on the product evolution taking place across time, this research has established that emotions are also affected by the factory built environment, manufacturing processes employed and the concerns of multiple individuals involved. This paper also provides evidence that these multi-stakeholder emotions have the capacity to influence their performance, which in turn affects product development metrics such as cost, time and quality. This result has been used to develop a novel DfX approach that has been implemented in a prototype computational tool. A novelty of the developed DfX approach is that it considers product development consequences to be composed of two components, direct (D) and emotional (E) consequences. The evaluation results collectively indicate that this research has contributed an improved DfX approach that provides designers with a broader view of the impact of their decisions on a range of stakeholders besides product users.
The Union of Matroids and the Rigidity of Frameworks

From the pattern of its rigidity matrix, we show that a k-frame on a graph (or multigraph) has the matroid structure of the union of k copies of the cycle matroid of the graph. This matrix pattern is applied to three central results about the rigidity of frameworks. An immediate corollary of this matroid union is a characterization of rigid bar and body frameworks in n-space (Tay’s Theorem). This is further specialized to characterize the independence and the rigidity of body and hinge structures in n-space (a new theorem). The two-frame, or union of two copies of the graphic matroid, is truncated to produce plane bar and joint frameworks giving a characterization of minimal infinitesimally rigid bar and joint frameworks in the plane (Laman’s Theorem). Finally, these techniques are used to characterize the graphs of infinitesimally rigid frameworks on other surfaces, such as the flat torus, the cylinder, cones, etc., using matroid unions of cycle and bicycle matroids of the graph.
Central projections and connections of lumbar primary afferent fibers in adult rats: effectively revealed using Texas red-dextran amine tracing

Signals from lumbar primary afferent fibers are important for modulating locomotion of the hind-limbs. However, silver impregnation techniques, autoradiography, wheat germ agglutinin-horseradish peroxidase and cholera toxin B subunit-horseradish peroxidase cannot image the central projections and connections of the dorsal root in detail. Thus, we injected 3-kDa Texas red-dextran amine into the proximal trunks of L4 dorsal roots in adult rats. Confocal microscopy results revealed that numerous labeled arborizations and varicosities extended to the dorsal horn from T12–S4, to Clarke's column from T10–L2, and to the ventral horn from L1–5. The labeled varicosities at the L4 cord level were very dense, particularly in laminae I–III, and the density decreased gradually in more rostral and caudal segments. In addition, they were predominately distributed in laminae I–IV, moderately in laminae V–VII and sparsely in laminae VIII–X. Furthermore, direct contacts of lumbar afferent fibers with propriospinal neurons were widespread in gray matter. In conclusion, the projection and connection patterns of L4 afferents were illustrated in detail by Texas red-dextran amine-dorsal root tracing.
Consumers perceptions and attitudes towards SMS mobile marketing in New Zealand

Mobile marketing is an area of m-commerce expected to experience tremendous growth in the next 5 years. This paper explores consumer's perceptions and attitudes towards mobile marketing via SMS through a sequential, mixed methods investigation. Four factors were identified and proven as all having a significant impact on mobile marketing acceptance - permission, content, wireless service provider (WSP) control and the delivery of the message, which guided the development of a revised and empirically tested model of m-marketing consumer acceptance. The findings also suggest that marketers should be optimistic about choosing to deploy mobile marketing, however exercise caution around the factors that will determine consumer acceptance. The paper concludes with a discussion about directions for future research.
Quality of life as an outcome of fall prevention interventions among the aged: a systematic review.

BACKGROUND Measuring quality of life (QOL) is an important part in assessing the effects of treatments and health services on patients' well-being. This kind of an assessment should be included when assessing the effects of preventive programmes. The aim was to explore whether QOL has been used as an outcome measure in fall prevention trials and to provide a systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that involve fall prevention interventions with an assessment of the effects on QOL among the aged. No previous systematic review about this topic among the aged was found. METHODS A search covering various medical databases was conducted to identify RCTs about the effects of fall prevention programmes on QOL. The 12 included studies were classified according to an appraisal of the population, the method of randomization, the intervention and control programmes, the QOL measures and the results. Methodological quality was assessed in relation to blinding at outcome assessment, length of follow-up and using intention to treat analysis. RESULTS Six studies out of 12 showed a positive effect on some dimensions of QOL (physical function, social function, vitality, mental health, environmental domain). The methods of interventions showing a positive effect varied. CONCLUSION Only a few fall prevention studies reported a positive effect on QOL. Studies with larger sample sizes, longer follow-ups and multiple outcome measures are needed. QOL should be taken into account as an secondary outcome measure.
Endozoochory by beetles: a novel seed dispersal mechanism.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Due in part to biophysical sized-related constraints, insects unlike vertebrates are seldom expected to act as primary seed dispersers via ingestion of fruits and seeds (endozoochory). The Mediterranean parasitic plant Cytinus hypocistis, however, possesses some characteristics that may facilitate endozoochory by beetles. By combining a long-term field study with experimental manipulation, we tested whether C. hypocistis seeds are endozoochorously dispersed by beetles. METHODS Field studies were carried out over 4 years on six populations in southern Spain. We recorded the rate of natural fruit consumption by beetles, the extent of beetle movement, beetle behaviour and the relative importance of C. hypocistis fruits in beetle diet. KEY RESULTS The tenebrionid beetle Pimelia costata was an important disperser of C. hypocistis seeds, consuming up to 17·5 % of fruits per population. Forty-six per cent of beetles captured in the field consumed C. hypocistis fruits, with up to 31 seeds found in individual beetle frass. An assessment of seeds following passage through the gut of beetles indicated that seeds remained intact and viable and that the proportion of viable seeds from beetle frass was not significantly different from that of seeds collected directly from fruits. CONCLUSIONS A novel plant-animal interaction is revealed; endozoochory by beetles may facilitate the dispersal of viable seeds after passage through the gut away from the parent plant to potentially favourable underground sites offering a high probability of germination and establishment success. Such an ecological role has until now been attributed only to vertebrates. Future studies should consider more widely the putative role of fruit and seed ingestion by invertebrates as a dispersal mechanism, particularly for those plant species that possess small seeds.
Determinants of Lending Behaviour Of Commercial Banks: Evidence From Nigeria, A Co-Integration Analysis (1975-2010)

The research study takes a look at determinants of lending behaviour of commercial banks in Nigeria: a Co-integration analysis between 1975 to 2010. However, the study make use of secondary data and series of Econometrics techniques were adopted, to justify the long run relationship between Commercial bank and its lending behaviour over the period of analysis. More over, the study investigates the level of commercial banks loan advances in Nigeria and to also examine those various determinants of commercial banks lending behavior in Nigerian. More so, the model used is estimated using Nigerian commercial bank Loan and advances (LOA) and other determinants such as Volume of deposits (Vd), annual average exchange rate of the naira to dollar (Fx) for the period of thirty-seven (37) years, Investment Portfolio (Ip), Interest rate (lending rate) (Ir), Gross domestic product at current market price (Gdp) and Cash reserve requirement ratio (Rr). However, the model result reveals that there is positive relationship between Loan and advances and Volume of deposits, annual average exchange rate of the naira to dollar, Gross domestic product at current market price and cash reserve requirement ratio except Investment portfolio and Interest rate (lending rate) that have a negative relationship. It was also revealed from the result that there is a long run relationship between Loan and advances and all the explanatory variables in the model and this shows that commercial bank has a lot of impact of their lending behaviour. Finally the study recommend and conclude that commercial bank should endeavour to create more deposit in other to improve their lending behaviour and should enforce the most easily realizable policies and good credit management in every situation.
Incorporating spatial context into fuzzy-possibilistic clustering using Bayesian inference

Data clustering is the generic process of splitting a set of datums into a number of homogenous sets. Nevertheless, although a clustering process inputs datums as a set of separate mathematical objects, these entities are in fact correlated within a spatial context specific to the problem class in hand. For example, when the data acquisition process yields a 2D matrix of regularly sampled measurements, as it is the case with image sensors which utilize different modalities, adjacent datums are highly correlated. Hence, the clustering process must take into consideration the spatial context of the datums. A review of the literature, however, reveals that a significant majority of the well-established clustering techniques in the literature ignore spatial context. Other approaches, which do consider spatial context, however, either utilize preor post-processing operations or engineer into the cost function one or more regularization terms which reward spatial contiguity. We argue that employing cost functions and constraints based on heuristics and intuition is a hazardous approach from an epistemological perspective. This is in addition to the other shortcomings of those approaches. Instead, in this paper, we apply Bayesian inference on the clustering problem and construct a mathematical model for data clustering which is aware of the spatial context of the datums. This model utilizes a robust loss function and is independent of the notion of homogeneity relevant to any particular problem class. We then provide a solution strategy and assess experimental results generated by the proposed method in comparison with the literature and from the perspective of computational complexity and spatial contiguity.
Blocking o f Transcription Factor E 2 F / D P by Dominant-Negat ive Mutants in a N o r m a l Breast Epithelial Cell Line Efliciendy Inhibits Apoptosis and Induces Tumor Growth in SCID Mice

The transcription factor E2F is regulated during the cell cycle through interactions with the product of the retinoblastoma susceptibility gene and related proteins. It is thought that E2Fmediated gene regulation at the G1/S boundary and during S phase may be one of the ratelimiting steps in cell proliferation. It was reported that in vivo overexpression of E2F-1 in fihroblasts induces S phase entry and leads to apoptosis. This observation suggests that E2F plays a role in both cell cycle regulation and apoptosis. To further understand the role of E2F in cell cycle progression, cell death, and tumor development, we have blocked endogenous E2F activity in HBL-100 cells, derived from nonmalignant human breast epithelium, using dominantnegative mutants under the control of a tetracycline-dependent expression system. We have shown here that induction of dominant-negative mutants led to strong downregulation of transiently transfected E2F-dependent chloramphenicol acetyl transferase reporter constructs and of endogenous c-myc, which has been described as a target gene of the transcription factor E2F/ DP. In addition, we have shown that blocking o f E2F could et~iciendy protect from apoptosis induced by serum starvation within a period of 10 d, whereas control cells started to die after 24 h. Surprisingly, blocking of E2F did not alter the rate of proliferation or of DNA synthesis of these cells; this finding indicates that ceil-cycle progression could be driven in an E2F-independent manner. In addition, we have been able to show that blocking of endogenous E2F in HBL-100 cells led to rapid induction of tumor growth in severe combined immunodeficiency mice. No tumor growth could be observed in mice that received mock-transfected clones or tetracycline to block expression of the E2F mutant constructs in vivo. Thus, it appears that E2F has a potential tumor-suppressive function under ce~ain circumstances. Furthermore, we provide evidence that dysregulation of apoptosis may be an important step in tumorigenesis.
Maxillary lateral incisors of subjects with cleft lip and/or palate: Part 2.

Maxillary lateral incisors on the alveolar cleft were investigated in 431 cleft children registered in the Department of Orthodontics, Kyushu University Dental Hospital. The majority of primary maxillary lateral incisors were located on the distal side of the alveolar cleft in both unilateral cleft lip and alveolus (UCLA) and unilateral cleft lip and palate (UCLP) subjects. Permanent teeth in UCLA tend to be located distally, but in UCLP they tend to be congenitally absent (p less than .01). The majority of primary teeth had normal shapes; the majority of permanent teeth were of intermediate type or were missing congenitally. One third of the UCLA and one half of the UCLP subjects who had primary maxillary lateral incisors were not followed by permanent replacements. The location of the majority of permanent maxillary lateral incisors tallied with that of the primary ones except in four UCLA, ten UCLP, and two bilateral cleft lip and palate (BCLP) subjects. Four UCLA and ten UCLP subjects who had primary lateral incisors on the distal side were followed by their permanent successors on the mesial side. Three UCLP and one BCLP subjects had permanent maxillary lateral incisors even though they had no temporary predecessors.
ALV: A New Data Redistribution Approach to RAID-5 Scaling

When a RAID-5 volume is scaled up with added disks, data have to be redistributed from original disks to all disks including the original and the new. Existing online scaling techniques suffer from long redistribution times as well as negative impacts on application performance. By leveraging our insight into a reordering window, this paper presents ALV, a new data redistribution approach to RAID-5 scaling. The reordering window is a result of the natural space hole as data being redistributed, and it grows in size. The data inside the reordering window can migrate in any order without overwriting other in-use data chunks. The ALV approach exploits three novel techniques. First, ALV changes the movement order of data chunks to access multiple successive chunks via a single I/O. Second, ALV updates mapping metadata lazily to minimize the number of metadata writes while ensuring data consistency. Third, ALV uses an on/off logical valve to adaptively adjust the redistribution rate depending on application workload. We implemented ALV in Linux Kernel 2.6. 18 and evaluated its performance by replaying three real-system traces: TPC-C, Cello-99, and SPC-Web. The results demonstrated that ALV outperformed the conventional approach consistently by 53.31-73.91 percent in user response time and by 24.07-29.27 percent in redistribution time.
Drug Resistance Trends and Patterns of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Isolates from Pulmonary Tuberculosis Patients at a Tertiary Care Hospital in Turkey

Background: We aim to determine the proportions and patterns of resistance to first-line drugs: isoniazid (H), rifampicin (R), ethambutol (E) and streptomycin (S) among pulmonary tuberculosis patients. Methods: Strains were obtained from 1584 culture positive pulmonary tuberculosis patients. All specimens were inoculated into Löwenstein-Jensen media (LJ) and TK selective; drug susceptibility tests (DST) were performed for first-line drugs. Results: Multidrug resistant (MDR) were detected in 146 (9.2%) isolates. Three hundred (18.9%) isolates were resistant to H; 220 (13.9%) to R; 168 (10.6%) to S; 137 (8.6%) to E. Any drug resistance was detected in 442 (27.9%) isolates. MDR rate was higher in male patients than females (P = 0.006). MDR rates were different according to the age groups (P = 0.02). The highest rate was in 35 - 44 years and the lowest rate was in 15 - 24 years. Conclusions: We found an association between middle age and male gender and MDR tuberculosis.
Tendency and consequences of superparasitism for the parasitoid Ooencyrtus pityocampae (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae) in parasitizing a new laboratory host, Philosamia ricini (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae)

The tendency for self-superparasitism and it's effects on the quality of the parasitoid Ooencyrtus pityocampae (Mercet) (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae) in parasitizing a new laboratory host, Philosamia ricini (Danovan) (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae), were investigated. In this study, female parasitoids of various ages (1-, 3- and 5-day-old) were tested individually. Parasitoids were provided with 1-day-old P. ricini eggs at ratios of 5, 10, 20, 30 and 40 host eggs per wasp. The tendency to superparasitize was dependent on the female's age and host density. Five-day-old females showed a strong tendency to superparasitize at low host densities. The development time of wasps in superparasitized eggs was longer than that of wasps in singly parasitized eggs. The size and longevity of adult parasitoids decreased significantly with superparasitism. This work contributes to the development of an efficient mass rearing and laboratory rearing of the parasitoid O. pityocampae using a new host.