Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Novel influenza A(H1N1) in a pediatric health care facility in New York City during the first wave of the 2009 pandemic.

OBJECTIVE To describe the burden of care experienced by our pediatric health care facility in New York, New York, from May 3, 2009, to July 31, 2009, during the novel influenza A(H1N1) pandemic that began in spring 2009. DESIGN Retrospective case series. SETTING Pediatric emergency departments and inpatient facilities of New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Patients Children presenting to the emergency departments with influenza-like illness (ILI) and children aged 18 years or younger hospitalized with positive laboratory test results for influenza A from May 3, 2009, to July 31, 2009. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Proportion of children with ILI who were hospitalized and proportion of hospitalized children with influenza A with respiratory failure, bacterial superinfection, and mortality. RESULTS When compared with the same period in 2008, the pediatric emergency departments experienced an excess of 3750 visits (19.9% increase). Overall, 27.7% of visits were for ILI; 2.5% of patients with ILI were hospitalized. Of the 115 hospitalized subjects with confirmed influenza A (median age, 4.3 years), 93 (80.9%) had underlying conditions. Four (3.5%) had identified bacterial superinfection, 1 (0.9%) died, and 35 (30.4%) were admitted to a pediatric intensive care unit; of these 35 patients, 11 had pneumonia and required mechanical ventilation, including high-frequency oscillatory ventilation (n = 3). CONCLUSIONS At our center, 2.5% of children with ILI presenting to the emergency departments during the first wave of the 2009 novel influenza A(H1N1) pandemic were hospitalized. Of the 115 hospitalized children with confirmed influenza A, 9.6% had respiratory failure and 0.9% died. These findings can be compared with the disease severity of subsequent waves of the 2009 novel influenza A(H1N1) pandemic.
Root excretion and plant tolerance to cadmium toxicity - a review

Significant quantities of Cd have been added to soils globally due to various anthropogenic activities, posing a serious threat to safe food production and human health. Rhizosphere, as an important interface of soil and plant, plays a significant role in the agro-environmental system. This article presents a review of relationship between root excretion and microorganisms and plant resistance to Cd toxicity and possible mechanisms. Root exudates markedly altered in species and quantity under Cd stress. Root exudates can affect Cd absorption by plants through changing the physical and chemical characteristics of rhizospheres. The influence of root exudates on Cd bioavailability and toxicity may include modifying the rhizosphere pH and Eh, chelating/complexing and depositing with Cd ions, and altering the community construction, the numbers and activities of rhizospheric microbes. In this paper, the methods to reduce the transfer of Cd in soil-plant system by adjusting rhizosphere environment are discussed, and some aspects are also proposed that should be emphasized in the future research work.
Group records corrected for mortality to estimate breeding values for production traits in laying hens.

Records of a White Leghorn Line from three generations were used to evaluate the genetic parameters (heritabilities and breeding values) for production traits in laying hens based on individual and group mean records, taking into account mortality in the data structure. Three different data structures of group mean records, which were Hen Housed Production (HHP), Hen Housed Production corrected for mortality (HHPc) and Survivor Hen Production (SHP) were analysed. The program VCE 5.0 (Kovac et al. 2002) based on the REML method and onetrait sire and two-trait animal-sire models were used to estimate the (co-)variance components of egg productions for individual and group mean records. To account for different relationships in group cages for HHP, HHPc and SHP, a model with heterogeneous residual variances was used. Breeding values of animals from individual records were also estimated using single trait animal models, and breeding values of sires from group mean records were estimated using single trait sire models with heterogeneous residual variances. Spearman rank correlations were used to compare the sire breeding values. As expected the heritabilities for production traits of laying hens estimated based on SHP (0.09-0.37) were higher than those estimated based on HHP (0.040.27) and HHPc (0.08-0.28). The rank correlations between breeding values of all sires estimated based on individual records and those from group cage records estimated with single trait model separately showed lower estimations than those estimated with two-trait animal-sire models simultaneously. Single trait model resulted rank correlations between breeding values for SHP of individual record with HHP, HHPc and SHP of group mean records between 0.21 0.65; 0,37 0,67; 0.30 0.67, respectively. Those for two-trait animal-sire models were 0.89 0.96; 0.96 0.99; 0.93 0.96, respectively. Based on this study, it seems HHPc is a practical approach to optimize the utilization of production traits of laying hens data from group cages for estimating breeding values for egg production.
Absorptive capacity in European manufacturing: a Delphi study

Purpose – This paper sets out to discuss the results of a specific part of a Europe‐wide Delphi study that considers issues of absorptive capacity in European manufacturing. Owing to the importance to competitiveness of increasing innovative capabilities in manufacturing it is highly relevant to explore how a wide community of manufacturing experts experience the phenomenon of absorptive capacity and sense future developments.Design/methodology/approach – A two round Delphi method was designed in which more than 3,000 experts from 22 European countries assessed 101 statements. This paper discusses eight statements focused on the issue of absorptive capacity.Findings – The results show a general consensus about the influence of different inter‐firm relationships in acquiring external knowledge and a diversified knowledge structure for assimilating the acquired knowledge. The study also indicates some potential challenges and contradictions in managing inter‐firm relationships and knowledge diversity as wel.
Angiotensin II receptor blockers and cardiovascular outcomes: The evidence now and in the future

The blood-pressure-lowering efficacy of both angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACE-I) and angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) has been clearly demonstrated in recent years, although there is evidence that within the ARB class the individual therapies are not necessarily identical in terms of sustained and consistent antihypertensive efficacy over the entire dosing period. However, the results of the recent HOPE study have demonstrated that ACE-I have a wider role to play in treating cardiovascular disease, and support the idea that ACE inhibition specifically has a vascular protective effect. The most dramatic benefits were seen in patients with systolic blood pressures in the hypertensive range. The ability of the ACE-I to provide protective effects beyond blood pressure control may be due to their ability to attenuate the breakdown of kinins as well as a role in reducing angiotensin II. These data pose the question as to whether the pharmacological properties of the ARBs, in addition to their antihypertensive efficacy, may also play a significant role in influencing cardiovascular outcomes. A number of prospective long-term studies, including VALUE, SCOPE, LIFE, VALIANT, OPTIMAAL, VAL-HEFT and CHARM I-III, are investigating the effects of the ARBs of mortality and morbidity in patients with cardiovascular disease. These studies should answer important questions with respect to the role that ARBs may have in influencing cardiovascular outcomes, although it remains to be seen whether ARBs can match the protective effects of ramipril in high-risk patients. Given the excellent tolerability of the ARBs, it will be of value to examine the influence of ARBs on cardiovascular outcomes in all relevant patient groups.
Trends in Surgical Mesh Use for Pelvic Organ Prolapse From 2000 to 2010

OBJECTIVE: To describe trends in and predictors of surgical mesh use for pelvic organ prolapse (POP) repair and to estimate the influence of safety advisories on mesh use. METHODS: Analysis of women aged 18 years and older recorded in a health care quality and resource utilization database who underwent POP repair from 2000 to 2010, identified by International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification procedure codes, and stratified by mesh use. Odds ratios were calculated with adjustments for patient, physician, and hospital-level characteristics. RESULTS: Among 273,275 women in the cohort, 64,968 (23.8%) underwent a mesh-augmented repair. Concurrent incontinence surgery was a strong predictor of mesh use (odds ratio [OR] 9.95; 95% confidence interval [CI] 9.70–10.21). Mesh use increased from 7.9% in 2000 to a peak of 32.1% in 2006, and declined slightly to 27.5% in 2010. Among women without incontinence, mesh use increased from 3.3% in 2000 to 13.5% in 2006, and remained stable at 12.8% in 2010. Intermediate-volume (OR 1.53; 95% CI 1.44–1.62) and high-volume (OR 2.74; 95% CI 2.58–2.92) surgeons were more likely to use mesh than low-volume surgeons. Compared with women who underwent operation by gynecologists, those treated by urologists were more than three times more likely to undergo mesh-augmented prolapse repair (OR 3.36; 95% CI 3.09–3.66). Black women were 27% less likely to undergo mesh repair (OR 0.73; 95% CI 0.66–0.82). CONCLUSIONS: Mesh-augmented prolapse repairs increased substantially over the past decade, and this increase was most pronounced in the years before the publication of safety advisories. Physician specialty and surgical volume are important factors underlying mesh use. Additional measures must ensure evidence-based use of mesh for pelvic reconstruction. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II
Innate Immune Responses to Human Malaria: Heterogeneous Cytokine Responses to Blood-Stage Plasmodium falciparum Correlate with Parasitological and Clinical Outcomes1

Taking advantage of a sporozoite challenge model established to evaluate the efficacy of new malaria vaccine candidates, we have explored the kinetics of systemic cytokine responses during the prepatent period of Plasmodium falciparum infection in 18 unvaccinated, previously malaria-naive subjects, using a highly sensitive, bead-based multiplex assay, and relate these data to peripheral parasite densities as measured by quantitative real-time PCR. These data are complemented with the analysis of cytokine production measured in vitro from whole blood or PBMC, stimulated with P. falciparum-infected RBC. We found considerable qualitative and quantitative interindividual variability in the innate responses, with subjects falling into three groups according to the strength of their inflammatory response. One group secreted moderate levels of IFN-γ and IL-10, but no detectable IL-12p70. A second group produced detectable levels of circulating IL-12p70 and developed very high levels of IFN-γ and IL-10. The third group failed to up-regulate any significant proinflammatory responses, but showed the highest levels of TGF-β. Proinflammatory responses were associated with more rapid control of parasite growth but only at the cost of developing clinical symptoms, suggesting that the initial innate response may have far-reaching consequences on disease outcome. Furthermore, the in vitro observations on cytokine kinetics presented here, suggest that intact schizont-stage infected RBC can trigger innate responses before rupture of the infected RBC.
Environmental Risk Perception, Activism and World-Mindedness among Samples of British and U.S. College Students

Hypotheses were tested that greater perception of environmental risk and stronger world-minded value orientation are associated with more pro-environmental behavior among samples of British (n = 96) and U.S. (n = 119) college students. Risk perception was assessed in terms of emotional and cognitive aspects. Behavior was assessed in terms of present action and commitment to future action. The hypotheses were generally supported for both samples, with emotionality in risk perception tending to be more strongly related to pro-environmental behavior. Greater perceptions of risk and activism were also related to stronger world-mindedness. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of emotionality in pro-environmental activism and an hypothesis about superordinate goals.
Final Results from the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project to Measure the Hubble Constant

We present here the final results of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Key Project to measure the Hubble constant. We summarize our method, the results, and the uncertainties, tabulate our revised distances, and give the implications of these results for cosmology. Our results are based on a Cepheid calibration of several secondary distance methods applied over the range of about 60-400 Mpc. The analysis presented here benefits from a number of recent improvements and refinements, including (1) a larger LMC Cepheid sample to define the fiducial period-luminosity (PL) relations, (2) a more recent HST Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) photometric calibration, (3) a correction for Cepheid metallicity, and (4) a correction for incompleteness bias in the observed Cepheid PL samples. We adopt a distance modulus to the LMC (relative to which the more distant galaxies are measured) of μ0 = 18.50 ± 0.10 mag, or 50 kpc. New, revised distances are given for the 18 spiral galaxies for which Cepheids have been discovered as part of the Key Project, as well as for 13 additional galaxies with published Cepheid data. The new calibration results in a Cepheid distance to NGC 4258 in better agreement with the maser distance to this galaxy. Based on these revised Cepheid distances, we find values (in km s-1 Mpc-1) of H0 = 71 ± 2 ± 6 (systematic) (Type Ia supernovae), H0 = 71 ± 3 ± 7 (Tully-Fisher relation), H0 = 70 ± 5 ± 6 (surface brightness fluctuations), H0 = 72 ± 9 ± 7 (Type II supernovae), and H0 = 82 ± 6 ± 9 (fundamental plane). We combine these results for the different methods with three different weighting schemes, and find good agreement and consistency with H0 = 72 ± 8 km s-1 Mpc-1. Finally, we compare these results with other, global methods for measuring H0.
Development of Antibody Therapeutics against Flaviviruses

Recent outbreaks of Zika virus (ZIKV) highlight the urgent need to develop efficacious interventions against flaviviruses, many of which cause devastating epidemics around the world. Monoclonal antibodies (mAb) have been at the forefront of treatment for cancer and a wide array of other diseases due to their specificity and potency. While mammalian cell-produced mAbs have shown promise as therapeutic candidates against several flaviviruses, their eventual approval for human application still faces several challenges including their potential risk of predisposing treated patients to more severe secondary infection by a heterologous flavivirus through antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). The high cost associated with mAb production in mammalian cell cultures also poses a challenge for the feasible application of these drugs to the developing world where the majority of flavivirus infection occurs. Here, we review the current therapeutic mAb candidates against various flaviviruses including West Nile (WNV), Dengue virus (DENV), and ZIKV. The progress of using plants for developing safer and more economical mAb therapeutics against flaviviruses is discussed within the context of their expression, characterization, downstream processing, neutralization, and in vivo efficacy. The progress of using plant glycoengineering to address ADE, the major impediment of flavivirus therapeutic development, is highlighted. These advancements suggest that plant-based systems are excellent alternatives for addressing the remaining challenges of mAb therapeutic development against flavivirus and may facilitate the eventual commercialization of these drug candidates.
Automatic Privacy Prediction to Accelerate Social Image Sharing

The manual process for privacy setting could be very time-consuming and challenging for common users. By assuming that there are hidden correlations between the visual properties of images (i.e., visual features) or object classes and the privacy settings for image sharing, an effective algorithm is developed in this paper to achieve automatic prediction of image privacy, so that the best-matching privacy setting can be recommended automatically for each single image being shared. Our algorithm for automatic image privacy prediction contains two approaches: (a) feature-based approach by learning more representative deep features and discriminative classifier for assigning each single image being shared into one of two categories: private vs. public, (b) object-based approach by detecting large numbers of privacy-sensitive object classes and events automatically and leveraging them to achieve more discriminative characterization of image privacy, so that we can support more explainable solution for automatic image privacy prediction. We have also conducted extensive experimental studies on large-scale social images, which have demonstrated both efficiency and effectiveness of our proposed algorithm.
Timed overnight sodium and potassium excretion and blood pressure in steel workers in North China.

Three timed overnight urinary sodium (Na), potassium (K) and creatinine measurements, standardized to 8 h, as well as three blood pressures on corresponding consecutive days were obtained on a sample of 90 steel workers (40 men, 50 women) aged 34-56 years in Beijing, North China. For three indices of electrolyte excretion - absolute Na and K output/8 h, Na:K ratio and 8 h creatinine output - the ratios of intra- to inter-individual variations were less than 1.0 for men, but higher for women in contrast to findings for U.S. population groups of similar age. This fact, probably reflecting greater stability of day to day electrolyte intake by Chinese than Americans, enables reasonably precise characterization of dietary electrolyte intakes of individual Chinese, particularly men, with only a few timed overnight urine specimens. With 3-day mean values for each person, nominally significant (i.e. not adjusted for multiple testing) positive simple correlations were found for urinary Na, Na:K and Na:creatinine with blood pressure [both systolic (SBP) and diastolic (DBP)] for men; and women for Na:K with SBP and DBP, but Na:creatinine with SBP only. With control for age, body mass index and pulse in multivariate analyses, only the relationship of Na:K and Na:creatinine to SBP and DBP remained significant for men; a similar, though less strong and consistent, trend was found for women, and K was inversely related to SBP for women. These data are consistent with an association between habitual intake of sodium and risk of hypertension, and also suggest that habitual potassium intake may have a countervailing influence in this regard.
Hemorheology, sickle cell trait, and α-thalassemia in athletes : Effects of exercise

MONCHANIN, G. , P. CONNES, D. WOUASSI, A. FRANCINA, B. DJODA, P. E. BANGA, F. X. OWONA, P. THIRIET, R. MASSARELLI, and C. MARTIN. Hemorheology, Sickle Cell Trait, and -Thalassemia in Athletes: Effects of Exercise. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc. , Vol. 37, No. 7, pp. 1086–1092, 2005. Purpose: This study investigated hemorheological parameters in response to exercise in sickle cell trait (SCT) athletes with or without -thalassemia Methods: Six athletes with SCT (HbAS), 7 athletes with SCT and -thalassemia (HbASAT), and 10 control athletes (HbAA) performed a progressive and maximal exercise test on cycloergometer. Blood viscosity (b), plasma viscosity (p), b at corrected hematocrit (b45), hematocrit (Hct), and red blood cell (RBC) rigidity were assessed at rest, at maximal exercise and 24 h after exercise Results: b and p were not different between the three groups at any time. Exercise induced changes in b in HbAA and HbASAT groups but not in HbAS group. b45 was higher in HbAS group compared with the other groups (P 0.05), at rest and 24 h after exercise and increased only in HbAA group in response to exercise. HbAS group had lower Hct than HbAA group at any time. Hct and p increased after exercise and declined under baseline values 24 h after exercise in all groups. RBC rigidity was higher in HbAS group compared with HbAA and HbASAT groups at any time, and was lower and higher at maximal exercise and 24 h after exercise, respectively, in all groups compared with resting values Conclusions: These results demonstrate that HbAS group is prone to higher RBC rigidity, which might lead to hemorheological alterations that are thought to participate to microcirculation disorders. However, these alterations are limited by the coexistence of -thalassemia. Moreover, hemorheological parameters were not further impaired in SCT athletes with or without -thalassemia in response to exercise. Training status might be protective from physiological stresses usually leading to sickling process in SCT carriers. Key Words: HEMOGLOBINOPATHY, BLOOD VISCOSITY, RED BLOOD CELL DEFORMABILITY
Whole‐genome amplification for the detection of molecular targets and minimal residual disease monitoring in acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

Accurate genomic characterization requires sufficient amounts of optimal quality DNA. An approach for increasing the DNA amount is the whole‐genome amplification (WGA) method. We applied WGA to the molecular quantification and minimal residual disease (MRD) evaluation of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), aiming to compare the results obtained from genomic DNA and amplified DNA with WGA, and to evaluate the applicability and the reliability of WGA‐DNA. Twenty paired samples from adult ALL patients were sequenced to identify the functional germline V‐D‐J segment at diagnosis; real‐time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RQ‐PCR) quantitative analysis was performed both at diagnosis and follow‐up. Genomic DNA and WGA‐DNA screening identified equivalent 87 rearrangements. At diagnosis, the quantitative evaluation of genomic DNA samples showed 1 logarithm difference to WGA‐DNA samples; these levels are comparable, being within the degree of acceptability and confidence. In the follow‐up samples, RQ‐PCR analysis on genomic DNA and WGA showed concordant MRD results in 16/18 samples, while 2/18 were MRD‐positive outside the quantitative range by RQ‐PCR (i.e. <5 × 10−5) on genomic DNA and MRD‐negative on WGA‐DNA. WGA‐DNA enables: (i) the design of accurate targets for MRD evaluation in ALL patients, (ii) accurate disease quantification at diagnosis, (iii) MRD quantification comparable to genomic DNA.