Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
[Use of leflunomide in a cytomegalovirus infection resistant: a report of a case].

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is one of the most common complications in transplant patients, which can lead to multiple organ failure. The 80-90% of patients are cured with intravenous treatment standard (ganciclovir), or its oral prodrug (valganciclovir). In case there is no answer, we have alternatively another antiviral, foscarnet. A small number of patients do not respond to this, having a bad prognosis. The aim is to describe the case of a double lung transplant for cystic fibrosis, and recurrent CMV infection in which the use of leflunomide gets lower and even reach undetectable viral load. DESCRIPTION OF CASE woman, 22 year old, double lung transplant for cystic fibrosis in March 2014. The CMV serology performed was positive in the donor and negative in the recipient. Controls viral load during prophylaxis with valganciclovir were negative in the receiver until the 6th month after transplantation, at which viral load was detected in controls (2 090 IU/ml). The patient was admitted to our hospital to receive intravenous treatment with ganciclovir, after one month with intravenous therapy viral load persisted positive (42 400 IU/ml). One study of resistance showed that was resistant to ganciclovir, so began treatment with intravenous foscarnet. This drug achieved negativizar viral load, so the treatment was discontinued, continuing with fortnightly controls viral load. After two months without treatment, viral load increased to 13 665 IU/ml, why was requested to Pharmacy Service the off-label use of leflunomide, with the intention that use oral therapy, instead of intravenous therapy. The patient was treated with valganciclovir until have the authorization of use of leflunomide, although unanswered, since in March 2015, at the start of leflunomide treatment the patient had a viral load of 17 344 IU/ml. The initial regimen was 100 mg of leflunomide daily for the first five days, followed by 20 mg every 12 hours. After fifteen days of treatment viral load had fallen to 531 IU/ml, becoming undetectable in one month. After four months of treatment the patient remains with undetectable viral load without having any adverse effect associated with it. CONCLUSION our case is an example where the use of leflunomide in CMV infection resistant to other therapies is an effective and convenient alternative for patients because it keeps undetectable viral load with an oral therapy without having to enter the hospital for intravenous treatment.
Overflow handling in inner-product processors

Several DSP applications demand high speed inner-product processors (IPP). Most current implementations of IPP use the multiply-accumulate (MAC) concept to perform the IP operations. Rather than using MAC accumulate to perform the IP operation, the authors show two superior designs, MIPP and CSIPP, that outperform the standard implementations. The speed improvement ratio is estimated to be between 2 to 4 for both designs. The paper also presents a new technique to detect and correct overflow occurrence in MIPP and CSIPP.
The Role of Surveillance in Mature Arteriovenous Fistula Management

The existing guidelines recommend arteriovenous fistulae (AVF) surveillance by access blood flow (Qa) measurement and the correction of hemodynamically significant stenoses to prolong access survival. Unfortunately, many studies supporting these recommendations are inadequate methodologically; therefore, both the optimal criteria for surveillance and the value of preventive stenosis repair in AVF remain controversial. Recent literature confirms that Qa measurement allows an accurate identification of both stenosis (area under the curve (AUC) ranging from 0.80–0.93) and access at risk of failure (AUC ranging from 0.82–0.98) in AVFs and suggests a Qa <700–1000 ml/min and/or a reduction in Qa >25% as optimal predictors for stenosis and a Qa <400 ml/min for incipient thrombosis. Recent prospective studies evaluated whether Qa surveillance could improve AVF patency rates compared to monitoring based on clinical and dialysis-related criteria alone. The majority of studies have historical, rather than concurrent, control groups and provide conflicting results, some showing a reduction and some showing no change in thrombosis rates by Qa monitoring. On the other hand, the few randomized controlled studies available show that Qa surveillance, when coupled with preemptive intervention, reduces the already low thrombosis rate in AVF and suggest that the functional access life can be prolonged. However, there is still the need for additional methodologically adequate studies to understand fully the role of surveillance in AVF management.
Control system design of multivariable non‐linear space robots

Purpose – The paper's purpose is to initiate an effort that will result in a systematic approach for design of control systems for multivariable, nonlinear, and unstable space robots.Design/methodology/approach – The design approach is based on multivariable describing function (DF) models of the space robot coupled with the use of factorization technique. The design approach is to obtain the multivariable DF models followed by application of a previously developed factorization‐based controller design formula. Finally, the design must be verified by a non‐linear simulation to make sure that approximations made during design are valid.Findings – It is found that the DF approach may successfully be applied in order to control nonlinear, multivariable, and unstable systems such as space robots.Research limitations/implications – At present, the approach is verified to be applicable to rigid space robots.Practical implications – The major outcome of this research is that complicated controllers of a class of.
Sex-specific durational differences in English and Swedish

Following a survey of sex-specific duration differences (restricted mainly to vowels) found in a number of languages, data from 48 speakers of American English and 9 speakers of Central Standard Swedish are investigated for sex-specific differences in segment duration. A set of complex patterns arise from the data. Greater female durations are mainly confined to places of prominence, greater male durations to consonantal material. Since differences in whole-utterance duration are found to be the exception, intra-utterance duration differences result from differences in temporal distribution.
Proximal and Distal Predictors of Reading Comprehension: Evidence from Young Korean Readers

The present study investigated proximal and distal predictors of reading comprehension by including latent factors such as alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, semantic knowledge, word reading, oral reading fluency, and reading comprehension. The sample consisted of 79 five-year-old Korean-monolingual children who were assessed at the end of the school year. The results showed that alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, and semantic knowledge latent variables were all positively and highly related to word-reading skills, but phonological awareness made a unique contribution above and beyond alphabet knowledge and semantic knowledge. Word reading was highly related to oral reading fluency and directly related to reading comprehension. Oral reading fluency, although a separate construct from word reading accuracy, was not uniquely related to reading comprehension after accounting for the effects of word reading and semantic knowledge. Semantic knowledge was fairly strongly and uniquely related to reading comprehension.
Immediate Effect of Active Abdominal Contraction on Inter-recti Distance.

STUDY DESIGN Controlled laboratory study. BACKGROUND Inter-recti distance (IRD) is the measurement of the linear distance between the medial aspects of the rectus abdominis muscle. Inter-recti distance has been reported to decrease in postpartum women during a curl-up maneuver. OBJECTIVE To determine if IRD decreases with active abdominal contraction in men and in nulliparous and parous women. METHODS Fifty-six subjects (male, 11; nulliparous female, 22; parous female, 23) participated. Inter-recti distance was measured with the abdominal muscles at rest and during active contraction (curl-up), at 2 locations (above and below the umbilicus), using ultrasound imaging. A mixed-model, repeated-measures analysis of covariance was used for each of the 2 locations, to determine whether IRD differed between contraction states among the 3 groups, with age and umbilicus circumference as covariates. When significant differences were found, planned t test comparisons were made. RESULTS The parous group's IRD significantly decreased from rest to contraction at both locations, whereas the nulliparous and male groups' IRD did not significantly change from rest to contraction. The nulliparous group's IRD was significantly narrower than the other groups at rest at both locations, and narrower than the parous group during active contraction. CONCLUSION Parous women had a narrower IRD in the curl-up condition than at rest, as hypothesized. However, an unexpected finding of a lack of significant within-group change in IRD in nulliparous women and men occurred. Findings suggest that the IRD in men may only differ from that of nulliparous women.
A Measure of the Information Loss for Inspection Point Reduction

Since the vehicle program in automotive industry gets more and more extensive, the costs related to inspection increase. Therefore, there are needs for more effective inspection preparation. In many situations, a large number of inspection points are measured, despite the fact that only a small subset of points is needed. A method, based on cluster analysis, for identifying redundant inspection points has earlier been successfully tested on industrial cases. Cluster analysis is used for grouping the variables into clusters, where the points in each cluster are highly correlated. From every cluster only one representing point is selected for inspection. In this paper the method is further developed and multiple linear regression is used for evaluating how much of the information that is lost when discarding an inspection point. The information loss can be quantified using an efficiency measure based on linear multiple regression, where the part of the variation in the discarded variables that can be explained by the remaining variables is calculated. This measure can be illustrated graphically and that helps to decide how many clusters that should be formed, i.e. how many inspection points that can be discarded.
DIMPLE-II: Dynamic Membership Protocol for Epidemic Protocols

Epidemic protocols have two fundamental assumptions. One is the availability of a mechanism that provides each node with a set of log(N) (fanout) nodes to gossip with at each cycle. The other is that the network size N is known to all member nodes. While it may be trivial to support these assumptions in small systems, it is a challenge to realize them in large open dynamic systems, such as peer-to-peer (P2P) systems. Technically, since the most fundamental parameter of epidemic protocols is log(N), without knowing the system size, the protocols will be limited. Further, since the network churn, frequently observed in P2P systems, causes rapid membership changes, providing a different set of log(N) at each cycle is a difficult problem. In order to support the assumptions, the fanout nodes should be selected randomly and uniformly from the entire membership. This paper investigates one possible solution which addresses both problems; providing at each cycle a different set of log(N) nodes selected randomly and uniformly from the entire network under churn, and estimating the dynamic network size in the number of nodes. This solution improves the previously developed distributed algorithm called Shuffle to deal with churn, and utilizes the Shuffle infrastructure to estimate the dynamic network size. The effectiveness of the proposed solution is evaluated by simulation. According to the simulation results, the proposed algorithms successfully handle network churn in providing random log(N) fanout nodes, and practically and accurately estimate the network size. Overall, this work provides insights in designing epidemic protocols for large scale open dynamic systems, where the protocols behave autonomically.
Between Science and Technology

Basic research or fundamental research is distinct from both pure and applied research, in that it is pure research with expected useful results. The existence of basic or fundamental research is problematic, at least for both inductivists and instrumentalists, but also for Popper. Assuming scientific research to be the search for explanatory conjectures and for refutations, and assuming technology to be the search of conjectures and some corroborations, we can easily place basic or fundamental research between science and technology as a part of their overlap. As a bonus, the present view of basic or fundamental research as an overlap explains the specific hardship basic research workers encounter.
Remote sensing of total precipitable water vapor by microwave radiometers and GPS during the 1997 Water Vapor Intensive Operating Period

During September 15 to October 5, 1997, an intensive experiment to measure atmospheric water vapor was conducted at the Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program's Cloud and Radiation Testbed (CART) site in north central Oklahoma. This experiment was called the 1997 Water Vapor Intensive Operating Period (WVIOP'97). Among the goals of WVIOP'97 was the comparison of different methods of measuring precipitable water vapor (PWV). This paper focuses on the inter-comparison of PWV measurements by ground-based microwave radiometers, Global Positioning System-PWV instruments (GPS-PWV), and by radiosondes. For this experiment 3-hourly radiosondes for in situ measurements were deployed. Microwave radiometric measurements of water vapor in the zenith direction were made by two independent radiometers that produce PWV and cloud liquid path from brightness temperature T/sub b/ measurements. These radiometers were operated by the Environmental Technology Laboratory and operate at the frequency pairs of (20.6, 31.65 GHz) and (23.87, 31.65 GHz). The calibration of the instruments was achieved by the so-called "tip cal" method and their data, in terms of derived PWV are compared. Two independent GPS-PWV instruments were also operated 9 km apart and, in addition, two different processing algorithms were applied to the data from each of these instruments.
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) isolated from dogs with recurrent pyoderma

Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has been recently growing problem in small animal clinical practice due to increasing resistance to multiple number of antimicrobials. Present study reports about the antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of MRSA isolated from the dogs with recurrent pyoderma. Based on the cultural and biochemical studies 12 isolates were identified as Staphylococcus aureus. Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus was identified based on the disc diffusion method. Fifty percent of the dogs showed the methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolates which were resistant to almost all the antimicrobials used in the present study. Other fifty percent dogs had methicillin susceptible Staphylococcus aureus which were susceptible to amoxicillin with sulbactum, cefpodoxime with clavulanic acid, enrofloxacin, cephalexin, ciprofloxacin, chloramphenicol, amoxicillin and clavulanic acid, cephadroxil and cefpodoxime. Most of the cultures were resistant to tylosin, lincomycin, erythromycin, azithromycin, gentamicin, amikacin. The alarming antimicrobial resistance and methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus recorded in the present study of dogs with recurrent pyoderma suggest maintenance of personal hygiene by the small animal owners.
Controlled jump Markov processes with local transitions and their fluid approximation

Stochastic jump processes, especially birth-and-death processes, are widely used in the queuing theory, computer networks and information transmission. The state of such process describes the instant length of the queues (numbers of packets at different edges to be transmitted through the net). If the birth and death rates are big, trajectories of such processes are close to the trajectories of deterministic dynamic systems. Therefore, if we consider the related optimal control problems, we expect that the optimal control strategy in the deterministic ('fluid') model will be nearly optimal in the underlying stochastic model. In the current paper, a new technique for calculating the accuracy of this approximation is described. In a nutshell, instead of the study of trajectories, we investigate the corresponding dynamic programming equations. It should be emphasized that we deal also with multiple-dimensional lattices, so that the results are applicable to complex communicating systems of queues. Other areas of application are population dynamics, mathematical epidemiology, and inventory systems.
Nutritional issues for older adults: addressing degenerative ageing with long-term studies

The ageing process is influenced by a variety of factors, including extrinsic, malleable lifestyle variables. The present paper deals with the epidemiological evidence for the role of dietary patterns and key nutritional concerns in relation to survival and ageing-related disorders that present themselves in later life. Healthful dietary patterns appear to be most relevant in old age. Specific nutritional concerns are related to vitamin D, vitamin B12 and protein malnutrition. An important challenge to further expand the knowledge base is currently addressed by the NuAge project, acknowledging the complexity of the ageing process and integrating different dimensions of research into human healthy ageing. In the meantime, reversing poor adherence to existing guidelines for a healthy diet remains a first challenge in public health nutritional practices.
Statistical properties of mobile-to-mobile land communication channels

Statistical properties of mobile-to-mobile land communication channels have been developed. In particular, the level-crossing rate and duration of fades of the envelope, the probability distribution of random FM, the expected number of crossings of the random phase and random FM of the channel, and the power spectrum of random FM of the channel have been considered. >
Acceptance and Viewpoint of Iranian Catalogers Regarding RDA: The Case of the National Library and Archive of Iran

The general purpose of this study is to assess the amount of catalogers’ familiarity with Resource Description and Access (RDA) and their readiness for acceptance of these rules and the effect of training on this issue. The methodology of the presented research is a survey study using a descriptive-analytic approach. In this research, the familiarity of 49 catalogers, working for the Cataloging In Publication (CIP) department at the National Library and Archive of Iran with RDA was monitored before and after a training session through a questionnaire. It was specifically prepared for measuring catalogers’ familiarity with, and acceptance of, RDA and also highlighting the self-identified and actual levels of this familiarity and acceptance. The results show that before training, catalogers’ self-identified familiarity with RDA was higher than the average level. But after the training session, both self-identified and actual familiarity raised dramatically. Furthermore, the significant difference between the research population's features and self-identified, actual familiarity and the rules’ acceptance rate among catalogers was examined. In this study, it was confirmed that there is a significant difference between self-stated and actual familiarity of catalogers regarding RDA. According to the results, M.A. catalogers have a self-identified familiarity higher than B.A. catalogers. It was also confirmed that the actual familiarity of catalogers with an M.A. degree before training is higher than catalogers holding a B.A.
Dissemination and communication of agrometeorological information—global perspectives

Agrometeorological information and services from the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) are increasingly being demanded by the farming community to cope more efficiently with climate variability and the increasing incidence of extreme meteorological events such as droughts, floods, frosts and wind erosion. While considerable advances have been made in the collection, archiving and analysis of weather and climate data, their transformation into information that can be readily used by the farm sector has lagged behind, especially in developing countries where such information needs are the greatest. One of the important reasons is the lack of adequate interaction with the user community in assessing the appropriate dissemination and communication procedures that can enhance the value of the agrometeorological information and services. A brief review of the present status of dissemination and communication of agrometeorological information by the NMHSs and associated agencies in different regions around the world is presented. A description of the user communities for agrometeorological information and their varying needs is also presented. Opportunities and challenges in the dissemination and communication of agrometeorological information by the NMHSs are described with suitable examples which emphasize that continued improvements are necessary to make agrometeorological information more accessible and useful to the user community. Copyright © 2006 Royal Meteorological Society
Vasopressin Increases Cerebral Perfusion Pressure but not Cerebral Blood Flow in Neurosurgical Patients with Catecholamine-Refractory Hypotension: A Preliminary Evaluation Using the Non-Invasive Quantix ND in Comparison to the Literature

The maintenance of sufficient mean arterial pressure (MAP) is important for all patients in intensive care but for neurosurgical patients after SAH or TBI it is essential to avoid secondary brain damage or delayed ischemia. So far most neurosurgical intensive care units use intracranial pressure (ICP) and cerebral perfusion pressure (CPP) as therapy guidance for those patients. Use of fluid resuscitation and catecholamines is standard to achieve CPP between 50-70 mmHg. But sometimes catecholamine-refractory hypotension occurs. In those cases, arginin-vasopressin (AVP) might be the drug of choice. AVP and its synthetic analogies are widely used in modern medicine and gained interest in treatment of septic shock or refractory hypotension after cardiac surgery or hypovolemic shock. Recent papers also showed a significant impact of AVP in resuscitation after traumatic brain injury (TBI) and influence on CPP in TBI patients during ICU treatment. But litttle is known about the effects of AVP on cerebral perfusion and oxygenation. The present preliminary study was carried out to examine the influence of AVP administration on cerebral blood flow by using the non invasive Quantix ND device. We found significantly increased MAP and CPP but no concomitant elevation in CBF. In contrast, in two patients the CBF even decreased despite elevation of CPP. We conclude that AVP is an alternative drug to maintain MAP and CPP but has to be used with care in patiens with already compromised cerebral perfusion.