Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Incidence of cardiovascular diseases in a nationwide HIV/AIDS patient cohort in Taiwan from 2000 to 2014

Abstract The purpose of the study was to determine the incidence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) among people living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (PLWHA) in Taiwan. PLWHA were identified from the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control HIV Surveillance System between 2000 and 2014. To examine the effect of active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) on CVD incidence, incidence densities and standardised incidence rates (SIRs) of CVD were calculated after stratifying PLWHA by HAART. Of 26 272 PLWHA (mean age, 32.3 years) identified, 73.4% received HAART. Compared with general population, SIRs (95% confidence interval) were higher for incident coronary artery disease (1.11 (1.04–1.19)), percutaneous coronary intervention (1.32 (1.18–1.47)), coronary artery bypass surgery (1.47 (1.29–1.66)), sudden cardiac death (3.01 (2.39–3.73)), heart failure (1.50 (1.31–1.70)) and chronic kidney disease (1.95 (1.81–2.10)), but was lower for incident atrial fibrillation (0.53 (0.37–0.73)). Considering the effect of HAART on incident CVD, the SIRs for all-cause, ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke were higher in PLWHA who did not receive HAART, but were lower in PLWHA who received HAART. PLWHA had higher risks of incident coronary artery disease, percutaneous coronary intervention, coronary artery bypass surgery, sudden cardiac death, heart failure and chronic kidney disease. HAART reduces risks of incident CVD in PLWHA.
Childhood Adversity and Psychophysiological Reactivity to Pain in Adolescent Nonsuicidal Self-Injury

Background: Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI), the intentional, self-directed act of injuring one’s own body tissue, is a behavioral phenomenon closely linked to stress and its maladaptive regulation. NSSI is associated with childhood adversity that may underlie altered hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and autonomic nervous system response to stress in adolescents engaging in NSSI. Adolescents engaging in NSSI show decreased pain sensitivity and increased psychophysiological response to pain that may underlie the maintenance of the behavior and its stress-regulating function. Sampling and Methods: In a secondary analysis of previously published data we aimed to address the relationship between childhood adversity and altered psychophysiological pain response in an outpatient sample of n = 30 adolescents engaging in repetitive NSSI. Results: Greater childhood adversity is associated with greater cortisol secretion and increased and prolonged autonomic arousal following pain induction. Conclusions: The findings illustrate a potential neurobiological pathway linking childhood adversity to hyporesponsiveness of endogenous stress response systems that in turn show increased reactivity to the experience of pain. This hyperreactivity may counterbalance an inadequate stress response and in turn help to cope with stressful experiences. Directions for future research are discussed.
The macrophage migration inhibitory factor pathway in human B cells is tightly controlled and dysregulated in multiple sclerosis

In MS, B cells survive peripheral tolerance checkpoints to mediate local inflammation, but the underlying molecular mechanisms are relatively underexplored. In mice, the MIF pathway controls B‐cell development and the induction of EAE. Here, we found that MIF and MIF receptor CD74 are downregulated, while MIF receptor CXCR4 is upregulated in B cells from early onset MS patients. B cells were identified as the main immune subset in blood expressing MIF. Blocking of MIF and CD74 signaling in B cells triggered CXCR4 expression, and vice versa, with separate effects on their proinflammatory activity, proliferation, and sensitivity to Fas‐mediated apoptosis. This study reveals a new reciprocal negative regulation loop between CD74 and CXCR4 in human B cells. The disturbance of this loop during MS onset provides further insights into how pathogenic B cells survive peripheral tolerance checkpoints to mediate disease activity in MS.
Anaphylaxis management: a survey of school and day care nurses in Lebanon

Objective Children are at a high risk of developing allergic reactions. Since they spend lots of time at the school or day care, the odds of having an allergic event in this setting is high, hence placing the onus of properly managing their event on nurses. In Lebanon, little is known whether a standardised policy for managing allergic and anaphylactic reaction exists, leaving children unsafe and the school personnel liable. Thus, the aim of this study is to describe the current practices in the management of severe allergies and anaphylaxis by Lebanese nurses working in schools and day cares and to explore the perceived need for a protocol to manage anaphylaxis reaction. Methods A cross-sectional survey with nurses working at schools and day cares in Lebanon was conducted. Results A total of 59 school and day care nurses participated. Eighteen of the school and day care nurses reported having a written policy describing the management steps. Only 12 had witnessed an anaphylactic event. Of those, 10 reported administering an antihistamine medication orally instead of epinephrine intramuscular. Most respondents (56) believed that a standardised guideline for the management of anaphylaxis was essential, and 9 indicated being hesitant to give the epinephrine intramuscular even in the presence of a policy. Finally, 55 stated the need for training nurses in identifying and managing anaphylaxis as a must. Conclusion Currently, the management of anaphylaxis reaction in schools and day cares is suboptimal. Hence, there is a need for a standardised nursing guideline and training for nurses in these settings .
Fit Gap Analysis Methods for ERP Systems Literature Review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are used for enterprise business processes execution and management. Selection of an appropriate ERP system is one of the important tasks in the overall implementation process, and a fit-gap analysis is used for these purposes. The fit-gap analysis allows evaluating gaps in business requirements and functionality of ERP systems considered for evaluation. Despite the importance of the fit-gap analysis in the implementation processes, it heavily relies on a judgmental analysis and requires a significant effort. The objective of the proposed research is to simplify the fit-gap analysis process. The present paper aims at identifying the existing fit-gap analysis in the related literature. A systematic literature review is performed using the defined scientific databases. It focuses on the fit-gap method design for specific ERP systems, as well as methods suitable for different types of ERP systems. The research results are the fit-gap analysis methods and their advantages and limitations. The selected literature also reviews typically used methods for reducing gaps.
Proteolipid domains form in biomimetic and cardiac mitochondrial vesicles and are regulated by cardiolipin concentration but not monolyso-cardiolipin

Cardiolipin (CL) is an anionic phospholipid mainly located in the inner mitochondrial membrane, where it helps regulate bioenergetics, membrane structure, and apoptosis. Localized, phase-segregated domains of CL are hypothesized to control mitochondrial inner membrane organization. However, the existence and underlying mechanisms regulating these mitochondrial domains are unclear. Here, we first isolated detergent-resistant cardiac mitochondrial membranes that have been reported to be CL-enriched domains. Experiments with different detergents yielded only nonspecific solubilization of mitochondrial phospholipids, suggesting that CL domains are not recoverable with detergents. Next, domain formation was investigated in biomimetic giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) and newly synthesized giant mitochondrial vesicles (GMVs) from mouse hearts. Confocal fluorescent imaging revealed that introduction of cytochrome c into membranes promotes macroscopic proteolipid domain formation associated with membrane morphological changes in both GUVs and GMVs. Domain organization was also investigated after lowering tetralinoleoyl-CL concentration and substitution with monolyso-CL, two common modifications observed in cardiac pathologies. Loss of tetralinoleoyl-CL decreased proteolipid domain formation in GUVs, because of a favorable Gibbs-free energy of lipid mixing, whereas addition of monolyso-CL had no effect on lipid mixing. Moreover, murine GMVs generated from cardiac acyl-CoA synthetase-1 knockouts, which have remodeled CL acyl chains, did not perturb proteolipid domains. Finally, lowering the tetralinoleoyl-CL content had a stronger influence on the oxidation status of cytochrome c than did incorporation of monolyso-CL. These results indicate that proteolipid domain formation in the cardiac mitochondrial inner membrane depends on tetralinoleoyl-CL concentration, driven by underlying lipid-mixing properties, but not the presence of monolyso-CL.
Relationship between self-efficacy and HIV testing uptake among young men who have sex with men in Myanmar: a cross-sectional analysis

Men who have sex with men (MSM) are disproportionally affected by the HIV epidemic. Self-efficacy is an important individual psychosocial factor associated with access to and use of health and HIV-related services. We estimated HIV testing prevalence and examined the relationship between HIV testing self-efficacy and self-reported HIV testing behavior among young MSM (YMSM) in Myanmar. We enrolled 585 MSM aged 18–24 years from six urban areas using respondent-driven sampling (RDS) technique. RDS analyses were performed to provide estimates for the key outcome of interest. More than a third (34.5%) had never been tested for HIV, whereas 27.5% and 38.0% had their most recent HIV test more than three months and within the past three months from the time of interview, respectively. Young MSM who reported high self-efficacy (adjusted relative risk ratio [ARR]=7.35, 95%CI = 2.29–23.5) and moderate self-efficacy (ARR = 8.61, 95%CI = 3.09–24.0) were more likely to report having tested for HIV in the past three months compared to their counterparts who reported low self-efficacy. Findings highlight a positive association between self-efficacy and HIV testing uptake, indicating a potential causal relationship. Further research is needed to examine the direction of this association and inform future public health interventions targeting YMSM in Myanmar.
A Method for Chainsaw Sound Detection Based on Haar-like Features

Illegal deforestation has long been a major environmental issue causing climate changes, flooding, landslides, global warming, species extinction, etc. This paper deals with the detection of actively-cutting chainsaw for the efficient real-time monitoring of forest areas. As a solution to this problem, we propose a novel technique based on the extraction of 2D Haar wavelet coefficients from the spectrogram of environmental sounds. Considering an accuracy of 97%, our method can be used to develop a good detection system for preventing the illegal logging.
Massive MU-MIMO Downlink Training with Orthogonal Pilots Allocation

This paper considers a multi-cell massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) downlink system. To detect the signals transmitted from BS, users should have their channel information. Instead of assuming that each user can perfectly know the expected value of its effective channel gain, users use least-square (LS) estimation to estimate their effective channel gains through downlink training. However, the estimated effective channel gains will be polluted by interference from other cells due to the limited pilots, which will degrade the system performance if it is not treated well. To alleviate it, a novel pilots allocation scheme is proposed in which users who use the same uplink pilot sequence are allocated with mutual orthogonal downlink pilots. With this scheme, we prove for maximum-ratio transmission (MRT) and zero-forcing (ZF) precoding that the relative estimation error of the effective channel gain tends to zero when the number of BS antenna goes to infinity. Simulation results validate the efficiency of our proposal.
Concept Design of QoS Oriented MAC for 5G Spectrum Access Systems in 3.5 GHz

The federal communications commission (FCC) has addressed a three-tiered spectrum access system (SAS) in the so-called innovation band (3.5 GHz) which includes priority access licenses (PAL) an unlicensed spectrum access as general authorized access (GAA). Hence, the issue of finding a scheme that achieves an optimal spectrum access with quality-of-service (QoS) requirements among the citizens broadband radio service devices (CBSDs) and their nodes in term of maximizing the throughput is addressed. In this paper we present the design and results of a hybrid medium access control (HMAC) scheme for SAS based on a grouping approach using the distributed IEEE 802.11 enhanced distributed coordination function (EDCF) and the point coordination function (PCF) in respect to maximize the system throughput of the GAA users in an unlicensed spectrum. The system improvement shows how the HMAC scheme can be used in a minimum intrusive way to enhance the system throughput compared with the EDCF and PCF (SoA) scheme, especially in the case of overlapping basic service sets (BSS). Moreover, the suggested scheme is able to handle a large number of QoS accessing nodes which opens a new perspective for high connection density in a SAS context and beyond 5G.
Going beyond incentivizing formal health providers: Evidence from the Rwanda Community Performance‐Based Financing program

Pay-for-performance programs are introduced in an increasing number of low- and middle-income countries with the goal of reducing maternal and child mortality and morbidity through increased health service utilization and quality. Although most programs incentivize formal health providers, some constraints to utilization might be better alleviated by incentivizing other actors in the health care system. This paper presents results from a randomized controlled trial set to evaluate the effects of two incentive schemes that were introduced on top of Rwanda's national Performance-Based Financing program at the health facility level. One scheme rewarded community health worker cooperatives for the utilization of five services by their communities. The second scheme provided in-kind transfers to users of three services. The analysis finds no impact of the cooperative performance payments on coverage of the targeted services, behaviors of community health workers, or outcomes at the cooperative level. Although health centers experienced frequent stock outs of the gifts, the demand-side intervention significantly increased timely antenatal care by 9.3 percentage points and timely postnatal care by 8.6 percentage points. This study shows that demand-side incentives can increase service utilization also when provided in addition to a supply-side pay-for-performance scheme.
Acquisition of Physical Data in an Automated System for Monitoring Medication Stocks

Medical units from public system constantly need new ideas to improve the processes that support medical activity, making each procedure more efficient through some control and automation measures. Besides medical interventions that are performed into a hospital, one of the main activities made by the medical staff is the management of medication for patients. This paper describes a monitoring system which has two functions: one based on weight sensors, that allows detection of taking or placing medication vials, and another one, based on radio-frequency identification (RFID), that reacts when objects with special tags (which contain electronically stored information) are placed nearby RFID reader. The aim of this paper is to present the data acquisition phase of this environment interaction system.
Repair of large incisional hernias with onlay mesh

Background Any surgical incision can lead to the occurrence of incisional hernia (IH) even laparoscopic trocar incision. IHs typically develop within the first 5 years of surgery; however, their development may be delayed. In large hernias, the amount of viscera which progressively stretches and holds the hernia sac can form a 'second abdomen' making the repair of hernia difficult. Aim IH after abdominal surgery is an important problem. We aimed to evaluate the short-term recurrence rate as well as surgical complications in patients operated with onlay mesh repair technique for large and giant IHs. Patient and methods In our study, we had 40 patients who were complaining of large IH with a defect size of 10 cm or more. All of these patients were operated using the onlay mesh technique in which polypropylene mesh was used. Results A total of 40 cases of IH were repaired with placement of onlay mesh; two (5%) cases developed recurrence. The incidence of seroma in our study was 22.5%, making it the most common complication following the repair of IH. Seroma formation was followed by surgical site infection (15%) as the second most common complication. Conclusion Repair of large and giant IH using prosthetic nonabsorbable mesh has a reasonably good outcome with acceptable rates of recurrence. The technique of mesh placement is still at the surgeon's discretion. However, onlay mesh repair has shown promising results in our study. Seroma is the most common complication following the repair of large and giant IHs.
The Invisible Maze Task (IMT): Interactive Exploration of Sparse Virtual Environments to Investigate Action-Driven Formation of Spatial Representations

The neuroscientific study of human navigation has been con-strained by the prerequisite of traditional brain imaging studies that re-quire participants to remain stationary. Such imaging approaches neglect a central component that characterizes navigation -the multisensory ex-perience of self-movement. Navigation by active movement through space combines multisensory perception with internally generated self-motion cues. We investigated the spatial micro genesis during free ambulatory exploration of interactive sparse virtual environments using motion cap-ture synchronized to high resolution electroencephalographic (EEG) data as well psychometric and self-report measures. In such environments, map-like allocentric representations must be constructed out of transient, egocentric first-person perspective 3-D spatial information. Considering individual differences of spatial learning ability, we studied if changes in exploration behavior coincide with spatial learning of an environment. To this end, we analyzed the quality of sketch maps (a description of spatial learning) that were produced after repeated learning trials for differently complex maze environments. We observed significant changes in active exploration behavior from the first to the last exploration of a maze: a decrease in time spent in the maze predicted an increase in subsequent sketch map quality. Furthermore, individual differences in spatial abilities as well as differences in the level of experienced immersion revealed an impact on the quality of spatial learning. Our results demonstrate the feasibility to observe behavioral changes associated with spatial learning, opening the way to the study of cortical dynamics of navigation.
A centrosomal protein STARD9 promotes microtubule stability and regulates spindle microtubule dynamics

ABSTRACT Centrosomal proteins play important roles in the spindle assembly and the segregation of chromosomes in the eukaryotic cells. STARD9, a recently identified centrosomal protein, was reported to influence the spindle pole assembly. However, the role of STARD9 in maintaining the stability and organization of microtubules are not known. Here, we show that STARD9 regulates the assembly and dynamics of both interphase and mitotic microtubules. The knockdown of STARD9 in HeLa or HCT116 cells with siRNA or shRNA induced a strong depolymerization of the interphase microtubules. The over-expression of the motor domain of STARD9 stabilizes microtubules against cold and nocodazole suggesting that STARD9 stabilizes microtubules in HeLa cells. Using fluorescent recovery after photobleaching, we showed that the knockdown of STARD9 strongly reduced microtubule dynamics in the live spindles of HeLa cells. The reassembly of microtubules in the STARD9-depleted cells was strongly reduced as compared to the microtubules in the control cells implying the role of STARD9 in the nucleation of microtubules. Further, the depletion of STARD9 inhibited chromosome separation and the STARD9-depleted HeLa cells were blocked at mitosis. Interestingly, the frequency of multipolar spindle formation increased significantly in the STARD9-depleted HeLa cells in the presence of vinblastine and the STARD9-depleted cells showed much higher sensitivity towards vinblastine than the control cells indicating a new approach for cancer chemotherapy. The evidence suggests that STARD9 regulates the assembly and stability of both interphase and spindle microtubules and thereby, play important roles in the cell cycle progression.
Awareness, experience and prevalence of heated tobacco product, IQOS, among young Korean adults

Introduction Philip Morris International introduced ‘IQOS’ to the Korean market in June 2017. To monitor the use of IQOS among young Korean adults, we identified their awareness, experience and current use of IQOS. Methods Three months after the introduction of IQOS in Korea, we conducted an online survey with 228 general young adults, aged 19–24 years. Results 87 participants (38.1%) were aware of IQOS, 13 (5.7%) were IQOS ever users and 8 (3.5%) were current IQOS users. All the current IQOS users were triple users of conventional cigarettes and electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes). There were no IQOS-only users and one IQOS ever user was a non-cigarette smoker. Among the eight current IQOS users who smoked 9.1 conventional cigarettes a day on average, four smoked 10–20 HEETS sticks a day. The current IQOS users decided to use IQOS because they believed it was less harmful or to stop smoking. The current conventional cigarette smokers were much more likely to be aware of IQOS (OR 4.496; 95% CI 2.185 to 9.250) and to be IQOS ever users (OR 11.649; 95% CI 1.024 to 132.564). Conclusion Awareness, experience and use of IQOS among young Korean adults were relatively higher than among their Japanese counterparts. Current IQOS users were more likely to smoke conventional cigarettes and/or e-cigarettes, which contradicts the tobacco industry’s claims that conventional cigarette smokers will switch to heated tobacco products. Until obtaining robust evidence concerning heated tobacco products, the government should regulate the tobacco industry’s marketing tactics and health claims.
Study of Systems Error Compensation Methods Based on Molecular-Electronic Transducers of Motion Parameters

The main objective of the paper is to study the system errors of azimuth determination in the dynamic scheme of north finding on the base of the molecular-electronic sensitive angular motion sensor. Introduced theoretical and experimental study of some error compensation methods. Investigated the most significant system inaccuracies of azimuth determination depended on MET sensor g-sensitivity factor and the occurrence of rotation uneven in the system and as a result of tiny angular accelerations which appeared. Methods and algorithms of error reduce are experimentally verified.