Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SEROSURVEY OF SELECTED ARBOVIRAL PATHOGENS IN FREE-RANGING, TWO-TOED SLOTHS (CHOLOEPUS HOFFMANNI) AND THREE-TOED SLOTHS (BRADYPUS VARIEGATUS) IN COSTA RICA, 2005–07

Abstract We screened for antibodies to 16 arboviruses in four populations of free-ranging sloths in Costa Rica. Blood samples were taken from 16 Hoffman's two-toed sloths (HTSs; Choloepus hoffmanni) and 26 brown-throated sloths (BTSs; Bradypus variegatus) over a 3-yr period. We used serologic assays to detect antibodies against 10 arboviruses previously described in sloths (St. Louis encephalitis [SLEV], Changuinola, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, Ilheus [ILHV], Oropouche, Mayaro, Utinga, Murutucu, Punta Toro, and vesicular stomatitis [VSV] viruses) and six arboviruses not described in sloths (Rio Grande, West Nile [WNV], eastern equine encephalitis, Piry, Munguba, and La Crosse viruses). Overall, 80% of sloths had detectable antibodies to SLEV, 67% had antibodies to ILHV, 32% to Punta Toro virus, 30% to Changuinola virus, 15% to WNV, 14% to VSV, 11% to Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, and 10% to Rio Grande virus. No samples had detectable antibodies to the remaining eight viruses. We found a significant increase in prevalence of antibody to VSV in HTSs between 2005 and 2007, and for WNV antibody between 2005 and 2006. We found no significant differences in the prevalences of antibodies to the sampled viruses between the two locations. Antibody prevalences were significantly higher in HTSs than in BTSs for SLEV in 2005. Antibody-positive results for ILHV were likely due to cross-reaction with SLEV. The novel finding of antibodies to Rio Grande virus in sloths could be due to cross-reaction with another phlebovirus. These findings might have implications for land management and domestic animal health. Due to the nature of the study, we could not determine whether sloths could represent amplification hosts for these viruses, or whether they were only exposed and could be used as sentinel species. Further studies are needed to fully characterize arboviral exposure in sloths.
CD1d on antigen‐transporting APC and splenic marginal zone B cells promotes NKT cell‐dependent tolerance

CD1d‐reactive NKT cells are required for the development of antigen‐specific T regulatory (Tr) cells responsible for mediating systemic tolerance induced through an immune privileged site suchas the eye. The aim of this study was to elucidate the cellular source of CD1d needed for NKT cell activation. Transforming growth factor β (TGFβ)‐2‐treated peritoneal exudate cells (PEC) functionally resemble "eye‐derived" antigen‐presenting cells (APC) and contribute to the generation of Tr cells both in vitro and in vivo. However, when TGFβ‐2‐treated PEC were pretreated with CD1d‐specific antibodies or lacked CD1d expression they failed to induce Tr cells. In addition, we show that the subpopulation of marginal zone (MZ) B cells within the spleen is necessary for induction of Tr cells and that they also must express CD1d. The role of MZ B in tolerance is novel and previously unexplored. Thus, CD1d is necessarily expressed on putative eye‐derived APC and splenic MZ B cells for efficient generation of Tr cells in CD1d‐reactive NKT cell‐dependent tolerance.
Seropositivity and Titers of Anti-Smooth Muscle Actin Antibody Are Associated with Relapse of Type 1 Autoimmune Hepatitis

Background It is important to avoid relapse in autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) because repeated multiple relapses have been associated with a worse prognosis. However, risk factors for relapse before initiation of treatment are not fully understood. The aim of this study was to find predictive markers for relapse of type 1 AIH. Material/Methods We reviewed the records of 53 patients diagnosed with type 1 AIH based on the revised scoring system proposed by the International Autoimmune Hepatitis Group (IAIHG) between 2009 and 2014 at 4 hospitals belonging to the Saga Study Group of Liver Diseases (SASLD). We analyzed the differences in background characteristics between patients with or without relapse. Results All patients achieved remission after treatment, and 9 (17%) subsequently relapsed. The relapsed patients were significantly younger and had a higher positive rate of anti-smooth muscle antibody (ASMA) than the non-relapsed patients (100% vs. 25%, P=0.0012). Moreover, relapse rate increased with titer of ASMA, while titer of antinuclear antibody was not associated with relapse rate. Conclusions ASMA is a useful predictive marker for relapse of type 1 AIH during or after withdrawal of medical therapy. More careful attention should be paid to immunosuppressive therapy in patients with high titers of ASMA.
ARE SELF-INITIATED EXPATRIATES BORN OR MADE? EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SIE ORIENTATION AND INDIVIDUAL ROI

In this paper I draw on a qualitative study of 71 long-term expatriates to examine the phenomenon of company-assigned (CA) expatriates being pushed towards a self-initiated expatriate (SIE) orientation while employed by an MNC. I depart from established views (e.g. Vance, 2005) to suggest that an SIE orientation does not necessarily pre-date employment with an MNC, but instead emerges out of career and compensation frustrations that push CA expatriates to engage individual agency in seeking external job opportunities. Using psychological contract fulfillment to explore individual return on investment, I challenge existing notions as to how SIEs develop their career orientation to ask, ‘Are SIEs born or made? ’ and what are the implications for individuals and the firms that employ them.
Is growth corrupted or bureaucratic? Panel evidence from the enlarged EU

ABSTRACT This article aims at analysing the issue of conditional convergence in the new enlarged European Union (EU) over the period 1995–2012 by means of panel data techniques. We examined the issue of conditional convergence in the enlarged EU giving particular attention to the effects of corruption and bureaucracy on growth controlling for a widely used set of explanatory variables such as investment (domestic and foreign), human capital formation, inflation, general government final consumption and trade openness. Furthermore, we examine if growth responds differently to corruption and bureaucracy in the new EU members by means of two group-specific interaction variables to capture possible different responses to corruption and bureaucracy. The analysis reveals evidence of conditional convergence in the enlarged EU, with investment share, foreign direct investment, human capital, and country openness appearing as robust growth drivers. In contrast, inflation and government consumption rather hamper growth. Furthermore, the effects of corruption and bureaucracy on growth seem to differ across old and new EU members.
An Up-to-date Meta-analysis of Coffee Consumption and Risk of Prostate Cancer.

PURPOSE Results of the association between coffee consumption (CC) and the risk of prostate cancer (PC) are still controversy. Based on published relevant studies, we conducted an up-to-date meta-analysis to investigatethis issue. MATERIALS AND METHODS The protocol used in this article is in accordance with the PRISMA checklist. Eligible studies were screened and retrieved by using PUBMED and EMBASE as well as manual review of references up to July 2016. We calculated the pooled relative risk (RR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) with random effect models. The dose-response relationship was assessed by generalized least-squares trend estimation analysis. RESULTS Totally, we included twenty-eight studies (14 case-control and 14 cohort studies) on CC with 42399 PC patients for the final meta-analysis. No significant association of PC was found for high versus non/lowestCC, with RR = 1.07 (95% CI: 0.96-1.18). In subgroup meta-analysis by study design, there were no significant positive associations between CC and PC in case-control studies (RR = 1.19, 95% CI: 1.05-1.35) or in the cohort studies (RR = 0.97, 95% CI: 0.84-1.12). Additionally, RR with different quality of studies were respectively 1.15 (95% CI: 0.99-1.34) and 1.28 (95% CI: 1.03-1.58) for high and low quality in the case-control studies; while were respectively 1.02 (95% CI: 0.88-1.20) and 0.81 (95% CI: 0.57-1.14) in the cohort studies. When analyzed by geographic area, we found no association between CC and PC, with RR = 1.06 (95% CI: 0.86-1.30) for 10 studies from Europe, 1.06 (95% CI: 0.94-1.20) for 13 studies conducted in America; 1.12 (95% CI: 0.70-1.79) for 4 studiesfrom Asia. However, in subgroup analysis by subtype of the disease, there was a significant negative (beneficial) association in the localized PC (RR = 0.90, 95% CI: 0.84-0.97), but not for the advanced PC (RR = 0.90, 95%CI: 0.70-1.16). Additionally, RR = 0.99 (95% CI: 0.98-0.99) for an increment of one cup per day of coffee intake shows significant association with the localized PC. CONCLUSION Our results indicate that CC has no harmful effect on PC. On the contrary, it has an effect on reducing the localized PC risk. Further prospective cohort studies of high quality are required to clarify this relationship.
Contemporary use of bevacizumab in ovarian cancer

Introduction: Ovarian cancer remains the most lethal gynecologic malignancy. Although standard platinum-based chemotherapy results in high response rates, more than 70% of patients with advanced disease will experience recurrence within 5 years. Therefore, novel treatment strategies to increase primary efficacy, decrease recurrence after primary treatment and improve the response rate for recurrent disease are needed. Areas covered: This review covers antiangiogenesis therapy and the efficacy of bevacizumab as primary treatment and in platinum-sensitive and resistant recurrent disease. Expert opinion: The evidence provided from Phase III trials has supported the efficacy of bevacizumab in primary and recurrent ovarian cancer management. Future investigation is needed to improve clinical performance (via biomarkers of efficacy, early discontinuation, additional agents, etc.), as well as, more sensitive tools to assess direct patient impact.
When Too Much IT Knowledge Is a Dangerous Thing

In recent years, large companies have invested a great deal of money ? and faith ? in process-enabling information technology, IT that facilitates the execution of entire business processes rather than individual tasks. But all too often, such investments fail to pay off: The new systems fail to live up to expectations, register a measurable financial impact, improve work processes or bring about organizational change. Technical snafus, a scarcity of good advice for managers and failure to follow such guidance are not the problems. The fundamental issue is that managers usually follow what amounts to a universal checklist, one that assumes that all implementations are basically alike. Taken as a whole, the list is merely a collection of undifferentiated findings and conclusions rather than a synthesis that would help with the particular implementation effort at hand. The executive in charge of the effort is left to discern which findings apply, under what circumstances and why. Instead of a longer or different list, this article offers a synthesis that highlights how big IT implementations differ from one another and how managers should handle the differences in order to realize the full promise of technological change.
Ultrasound‐Triggered Destruction of Folate‐Functionalized Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticle‐Loaded Microbubble for Targeted Tumor Therapy

A multifunctional drug delivery vehicle, which combines the active targeted mesoporous silica nanoparticle (MSN) and microbubble (MB) drug delivery system, is proposed and fabricated. The resulting delivery vehicle integrates the merits of high drug loading capacity, multitargeting, and ultrasound‐guided releasing. Folate (FA), which serves as an active ligand, is modified to the surface of MSN (MSN‐FA) to enhance cell membrane translocation. MSN‐FA is loaded with tanshinone IIA (TAN), then encapsulated in a microbubble (denoted as MSN‐FA‐TAN‐MB) for more precise tumor targeting. The conjunction between FA and MSN is confirmed by fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The characteristics and morphology of MSN‐FA‐TAN‐MB are investigated by confocal microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. In vitro cytotoxicity and cellular uptake studies of MSN‐FA‐TAN‐MB are conducted on A549 and HeLa tumor cells. FA‐facilitated MSN‐FA‐TAN uptake is shown by HeLa cells that overexpress FA receptors via a FA‐receptor‐mediated endocytosis mechanism. The ultrasound response property of MSN‐FA‐TAN‐MB is also verified. MSN‐FA‐TAN‐MB shows significant antitumor efficacy in vivo with the assistance of FA, MB, and an external ultrasound irradiation. Thus, this multifunctional vehicle may provide a novel strategy for tumor targeting and imaging in tumor therapy.
CNN-Based Real-Time Dense Face Reconstruction with Inverse-Rendered Photo-Realistic Face Images

With the powerfulness of convolution neural networks (CNN), CNN based face reconstruction has recently shown promising performance in reconstructing detailed face shape from 2D face images. The success of CNN-based methods relies on a large number of labeled data. The state-of-the-art synthesizes such data using a coarse morphable face model, which however has difficulty to generate detailed photo-realistic images of faces (with wrinkles). This paper presents a novel face data generation method. Specifically, we render a large number of photo-realistic face images with different attributes based on inverse rendering. Furthermore, we construct a fine-detailed face image dataset by transferring different scales of details from one image to another. We also construct a large number of video-type adjacent frame pairs by simulating the distribution of real video data.11. All these coarse-scale and fine-scale photo-realistic face image datasets can be downloaded from https://github.com/Juyong/3DFace. With these nicely constructed datasets, we propose a coarse-to-fine learning framework consisting of three convolutional networks. The networks are trained for real-time detailed 3D face reconstruction from monocular video as well as from a single image. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that our framework can produce high-quality reconstruction but with much less computation time compared to the state-of-the-art. Moreover, our method is robust to pose, expression and lighting due to the diversity of data.
The respiratory system in pediatric chronic heart disease

Cardiovascular disease in the pediatric population closely affects the respiratory system inducing water retention in the lungs and pulmonary edema, airway compression by cardiovascular structures, restrictive pulmonary physiology as a result of hemodynamic changes and surgical repair, susceptibility to respiratory infections, development of pulmonary hypertension, thrombosis, or hemorrhage. Chronic heart failure and congenital heart disease are characterized by various respiratory manifestations and symptoms mimicking lung disease, which are frequently difficult to diagnose and treat. Pulmonary function is multiply affected in pediatric heart disease with mostly restrictive but also obstructive and diffusion abnormalities. Patients with Fontan circulation represent a separate group with slow, passive pulmonary blood flow and distinct pathophysiology with low cardiac output heart failure, restrictive lung pattern, increased thromboembolic complications and rare conditions such as protein losing enteropathy and plastic bronchitis. Distinguishing between cardiovascular and pulmonary symptoms may be challenging in the growing population of pediatric and adult survivors of congenital heart disease and understanding of the relationship of the two systems in heart disease is crucial for the optimal management of these patients.
Monetary Policy and the Asset Risk-Taking Channel

Motivated by VAR evidence, we develop a monetary DSGE model where an agency problem between bank financiers, stemming from limited liability and unobservable risk taking, distorts banks' incentives leading them to choose excessively risky investments. A monetary policy expansion magnifies these distortions, increasing excessive risk taking and lowering the expected return on investment. We estimate the model on US data using Bayesian techniques and assess how this novel channel affects optimal monetary policy. Our results suggest that the monetary authority should stabilize the real interest rate, trading off more inflation volatility in exchange for less volatility in risk taking and output.
Commodity market instability and development: Issues and policies

The paper review various aspects of commodity market instability and development, with the purpose to identify whether research has dealt with some of the pressing issues relating to the topic during the past years, and to identify promising areas for further research. Particular emphasis is given to the areas of distortions, asymmetries, and irreversibilities, and it is revealed that while these topics are very relevant, not enough research has addressed them. The paper concludes by discussing the various policies that can be implemented at the international levewl to alleviate problems of food commodity market instability.
Harm reduction—a systematic review on effects of alcohol reduction on physical and mental symptoms

Based on the knowledge that alcohol misuse causes a multitude of diseases and increased mortality, this systematic review examines whether a reduction of the individual alcohol consumption can contribute to a minimization of health risks within a harm reduction approach. In fact, the reviewed 63 studies indicate that interventions aiming at alcohol reduction (including total abstinence as one possible therapeutic aim) indeed resulted in or were associated with positive effects in harmful, hazardous or alcohol‐dependent drinkers. Major benefits were observed for reducing alcohol‐associated injuries, recovery of ventricular heart function in alcoholic cardiomyopathy, blood pressure lowering, normalization of biochemical parameter, body weight reduction, histological improvement in pre‐cirrhotic alcohol‐related liver disease and slowed progression of an already existing alcohol‐attributable liver fibrosis. Furthermore, reduced withdrawal symptoms, prevalence of psychiatric episodes and duration of in‐patient hospital days, improvement of anxiety and depression symptoms, self‐confidence, physical and mental quality of life, fewer alcohol‐related adverse consequences as well as lower psychosocial stress levels and better social functioning can result from reduced alcohol intake. The reviewed literature demonstrated remarkable socioeconomic cost benefits in areas such as the medical health‐care system or workforce productivity. Individuals with heightened vulnerability further benefit significantly from alcohol reduction (e.g. hypertension, hepatitis C, psychiatric co‐morbidities, pregnancy, but also among adolescents and young adults). Concluding, the reviewed studies strongly support and emphasize the importance and benefits of early initial screening for problematic alcohol use followed by brief and other interventions in first contact medical health‐care facilities to reduce alcohol intake.
Peering into the separate roles of root and shoot cytosolic glutamine synthetase 1;2 by use of grafting experiments in Arabidopsis

ABSTRACT Cytosolic glutamine synthetase 1;2 plays an important role in the primary nitrogen assimilation in roots. Based on characterization of the knockout mutant gln1;2 we have recently demonstrated that Gln1;2 is also essential for ammonium handling in shoots. Here we built reciprocally grafted plants between wild type (Wt) and gln1;2 in order to separate the root and shoot roles of Gln1;2. Significant reduction in silique number and seed yield were observed in the grafted plants 1;2shoot/Wtroot relative to Wtshoot/1;2root and Wtshoot/Wtroot. Shoot Gln1;2 thus played a crucial role for seed production. Tracing experiments with 15N showed that the relative nitrogen remobilization from vegetative organs to seeds in gln1;2 was just as efficient as in the Wt plants. This was the case although the total quantity of nitrogen in gln1;2 was significantly lower compared to that in the Wt. We conclude that the functions of shoot Gln1;2 are primarily associated with internal N signaling for establishment of seed yield capacity rather than with nitrogen remobilization.
Randomized Double-blind Trial of Ringer Lactate Versus Normal Saline in Pediatric Acute Severe Diarrheal Dehydration

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of Ringer lactate (RL) versus normal saline (NS) in the correction of pediatric acute severe diarrheal dehydration, as measured by improvement in clinical status and pH (≥7.35). Methods: A total of 68 children ages 1 month to 12 years with acute severe diarrheal dehydration (World Health Organization [WHO] classification) were randomized into RL (n = 34) and NS groups (n = 34) and received 100 mL/kg of the assigned intravenous fluid according to WHO PLAN-C for the management of diarrheal dehydration. The primary outcome was an improvement in clinical status and pH (≥7.35) at the end of 6 hours. Secondary outcomes were changes in serum electrolytes, renal and blood gas parameters, the volume of fluid required for dehydration correction excluding the first cycle, time to start oral feeding, hospital stay, and cost-effectiveness analysis. Results: Primary outcome was achieved in 38% versus 23% (relative risk = 1.63, 95% confidence interval 0.80–3.40) in RL and NS groups, respectively. No significant differences were observed in secondary outcomes in electrolytes, renal, and blood gas parameters. None required second cycle of dehydration correction. Median (interquartile range) time to start oral feeding (1.0 [0.19–2.0] vs 1.5 [0.5–2.0] hours) and hospital stay (2.0 [1.0–2.0] vs 2.0 [2.0–2.0] days) was similar. The median total cost was higher in RL than NS group ( 120 [ 120– 180] vs 55 [ 55– 82], P ⩽ 0.001). Conclusion: In pediatric acute severe diarrheal dehydration, resuscitation with RL and NS was associated with similar clinical improvement and biochemical resolution. Hence, NS is to be considered as the fluid of choice because of the clinical improvement, cost, and availability.