Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Grounding modeling using transmission line theory: Extension to arrangements composed of multiple electrodes

This paper presents the application of transmission line theory to analyze grounding arrangements composed of multiple parallel electrodes. The grounding system is treated as a multiconductor transmission line and a solution method based on a similarity transformation is used to solve the resultant equations. The impulse response of grounding arrangements composed of multiple grounding rods and horizontal electrodes are simulated, and the results are presented in terms of the grounding potential rise and impulse coefficient. The accuracy of the results is assessed by comparison with simulations of the same cases using an electromagnetic field approach. The proposed model is useful to estimate quantities related to the lightning response of typical grounding arrangements of transmission and distribution lines.
TESTS FOR THE DETERMINATION OF THE EFFECT OF ANTIMITOTIC PRODUCTS ON IMMUNE REACTIONS.

The differences reported by various authors in regard to the inhibitory effect of the same antimitotic product on the production of antibodies, may be attributable in particular to the antigen used and to the technique of administration of the product. These differences have made it necessary to work out a test that is not subject to criticism in these respects. After an investigation of the cytological reactions provoked in the mouse by various antigens, the authors have singled out three of these antigens: human albumin, the poliomyelitis virus and an allogeneic skin graft. The hyperbasophilic cells which are predominantly present in the lymphoid centres are, respectively, lymphocytes for the first, plasmocytes for the second and histiocytes for the third of these antigens. In view of the different mechanisms of action that are possible with the different antimitotic products the authors used three methods of administration: entirely `before' the antigenic stimulus; total dose administered entirely `after' the antigenic stimulus; total dose administered partially `before' and partially `after' the antigenic stimulus.
Effectiveness of a home care nursing program in the symptom management of patients with colorectal and breast cancer receiving oral chemotherapy: a randomized, controlled trial.

PURPOSE To assess the effectiveness of a symptom-focused home care program in patients with cancer who were receiving oral chemotherapy in relation to toxicity levels, anxiety, depression, quality of life, and service utilization. PATIENTS AND METHODS A randomized, controlled trial was carried out with 164 patients with a diagnosis of colorectal (n = 110) and breast (n = 54) cancers who were receiving oral capecitabine. Patients were randomly assigned to receive either a home care program by a nurse or standard care for 18 weeks (ie, six cycles of chemotherapy). Toxicity assessments were carried out weekly for the duration of the patients' participation in the trial, and validated self-report tools assessed anxiety, depression, and quality of life. RESULTS Significant improvements were observed in the home care group in relation to the symptoms of oral mucositis, diarrhea, constipation, nausea, pain, fatigue (first four cycles), and insomnia (all P < .05). This improvement was most significant during the initial two cycles. Unplanned service utilization, particularly the number of inpatient days (57 v 167 days; P = .02), also was lower in the home care group. CONCLUSION A symptom-focused home care program was able to assist patients to manage their treatment adverse effects more effectively than standard care. It is imperative that patients receiving oral chemotherapy are supported with such programs, particularly during initial treatment cycles, to improve their treatment and symptom experiences.
Student perceptions of tutor skills in problem‐based learning tutorials

The problem‐based learning (PBL) tutor plays a role that is different from the role of a teacher in a conventional teaching format. In the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, United Arab Emirates, all students are Arab nationals and tutors are expatriates with different sociocultural backgrounds from the students. This study was designed to investigate how students evaluate tutors in PBL tutorials and whether student evaluations of tutors change with the progress of students in PBL tutorials.
Morphological dynamics in compound processing

This paper explores the time-course of morphological processing of trimorphemic Finnish compounds. We find evidence for the parallel access to full-forms and morphological constituents diagnosed by the early effects of compound frequency, as well as early effects of left constituent frequency and family size. We also observe an interaction between compound frequency and both the left and the right constituent family sizes. Furthermore, our data show that suffixes embedded in the derived left constituent of a compound are efficiently used for establishing the boundary between compounds’ constituents. The success of segmentation of a compound is demonstrably modulated by the affixal salience of the embedded suffixes. We discuss implications of these findings for current models of morphological processing and propose a new model that views morphemes, combinations of morphemes and morphological paradigms as probabilistic sources of information that are interactively used in recognition of complex words.
Epigenetic marker (LINE-1 promoter) methylation level was associated with occupational lead exposure

Context. Occupational and environmental exposures to lead (Pb) are a worldwide concern. DNA methylation plays an important role in the development of Pb toxicity. Here, we try to find out the evidence to prove that the methylation of the LINE-1 promoter may be involved in Pb toxicity. Methods. To determine whether the methylation level of the LINE-1 is associated with the risk of Pb poisoning, we first constructed a Pb acetate-treated cell model to detect the association between LINE-1 methylation and Pb exposure. A case–control study involving 53 workers from a battery plant and 57 healthy volunteers with matching age and gender distribution was carried out. We employed methylation-specific real-time PCR to determine the relationship between LINE-1 methylation level and Pb exposure. Results. In the cell model, Pb exposure significantly decreased the level of LINE-1 methylation (p = 0.009). Significant difference in methylation frequencies was found between the exposed and control samples (p < 0.001). We also found a decreasing trend of LINE-1 methylation level with increasing blood Pb level (p < 0.001). Conclusions. Therefore, the LINE-1 promoter methylation might contribute to the risk of Pb poisoning and identified a possible epigenetic biomarker for Pb toxicity, especially in individuals occupationally exposed to Pb.
Asymptotic behavior of \(\ell_p\)-based Laplacian regularization in semi-supervised learning

Given a weighted graph with $N$ vertices, consider a real-valued regression problem in a semi-supervised setting, where one observes $n$ labeled vertices, and the task is to label the remaining ones. We present a theoretical study of $\ell_p$-based Laplacian regularization under a $d$-dimensional geometric random graph model. We provide a variational characterization of the performance of this regularized learner as $N$ grows to infinity while $n$ stays constant, the associated optimality conditions lead to a partial differential equation that must be satisfied by the associated function estimate $\hat{f}$. From this formulation we derive several predictions on the limiting behavior the $d$-dimensional function $\hat{f}$, including (a) a phase transition in its smoothness at the threshold $p = d + 1$, and (b) a tradeoff between smoothness and sensitivity to the underlying unlabeled data distribution $P$. Thus, over the range $p \leq d$, the function estimate $\hat{f}$ is degenerate and "spiky," whereas for $p\geq d+1$, the function estimate $\hat{f}$ is smooth. We show that the effect of the underlying density vanishes monotonically with $p$, such that in the limit $p = \infty$, corresponding to the so-called Absolutely Minimal Lipschitz Extension, the estimate $\hat{f}$ is independent of the distribution $P$. Under the assumption of semi-supervised smoothness, ignoring $P$ can lead to poor statistical performance, in particular, we construct a specific example for $d=1$ to demonstrate that $p=2$ has lower risk than $p=\infty$ due to the former penalty adapting to $P$ and the latter ignoring it. We also provide simulations that verify the accuracy of our predictions for finite sample sizes. Together, these properties show that $p = d+1$ is an optimal choice, yielding a function estimate $\hat{f}$ that is both smooth and non-degenerate, while remaining maximally sensitive to $P$.
Spatial arrangement of cerebro‐pontine terminals

Understanding the interaction of the cerebral cortex and cerebellum requires knowledge of the highly complex spatial characteristics of cerebro‐cerebellar signal transfer. Cerebro‐pontine fibers from one neocortical site terminate in several sharply demarcated patches across large parts of the pontine nuclei (PN), and fibers from different neocortical areas terminate in the same pontine region. To determine whether projections from segregated neocortical sites overlap in the PN, we studied double anterograde tracing of cerebro‐pontine terminals from large parts of rat neocortex. In none of these experiments, including double injection into two functionally related areas, were we able to demonstrate overlapping patches, although close spatial relationships were always detected. This non‐overlapping distribution is consistent with a compartmentalized organization of the cerebro‐pontine projection and may be the basis of the fractured type of maps found in the cerebellar granular layer. The critical distance between two sites on the neocortical surface that project to non‐overlapping patches in the PN was found to be 600 μm, by using double injection within the whisker representation of the primary somatosensory area. This matches the diameter of dendritic trees of layer 5 projection neurons, indicating that non‐overlapping populations of neocortical projection neurons possess non‐overlapping patches of pontine terminals. Estimations based on this critical distance and the pontine volume anterogradely labeled by one injection site indicate that the size of the PN may be well suited to accommodate a complete set of non‐overlapping pontine patches from all possible neocortical sites. J. Comp. Neurol. 435:418–432, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Concatenated Coding Schemes for High Areal Density Bit-Patterned Media Magnetic Recording

This paper proposes a new concatenated error correction coding scheme for 2-D magnetic recording (TDMR). The designed concatenated coding scheme consists of outer codes as binary polar codes and an inner code as non-binary low-density parity-check (LDPC) code. These error-correcting codes (ECCs) are considered to achieve large coding gains with small bandwidth expansion in the presence of intersymbol interference and inter-track interference. Polar codes have attracted much attention as one of the ECCs that provably achieve the optimal symmetric capacity of memoryless channels with an explicit construction and are decoded by the successive-cancellation decoding algorithm, whose computational complexity is comparatively low. Using systematic polar codes, we are able to design proper low-complexity ECCs with run-length-limited constraints for any TDMR schemes based on the selection criterion (which is called channel polarization) for choosing parity and information symbols by the magnitude of the approximately calculated mutual information amount regarding each recorded symbol in a codeword. Concretely, the concatenated coding schemes are designed for four-track and three-track recording, and the block error rate (BER) performances of 2-D partial response equalized signal processing schemes with proposed concatenated ECCs for bit-patterned media recording are evaluated. As a result, it shows that the BER performances of the proposed schemes are superior to that of the conventional scheme using a 1-D high rate binary LDPC code.
Higher mortality rates among inborn infants admitted to neonatal intensive care units at night.

OBJECTIVE To examine circadian variation in deaths among infants < or =32 weeks' gestation admitted to Canadian neonatal intensive care units (NICU). STUDY DESIGN We examined all infants (n=5192) between 24 and 32 weeks' gestation with complete data, who were admitted to 17 tertiary Canadian Neonatal Network NICUs from January 1996 to October 1997. Multivariable logistic regression was used to compare risk-adjusted early neonatal mortality rates (death within 7 days of NICU admission) of infants admitted during daytime (8 am to 5 pm) with infants admitted at night. RESULTS Sixty percent (n=3131) of infants were admitted to the NICU at night. Patient risk factors significantly (P<.05) predictive of early neonatal death from multivariable logistic regression were male sex, outborn status, APGAR score <7 at 5 minutes, presence of congenital anomalies, low gestational age, and high admission Score for neonatal acute physiology, version II (SNAP-II). For inborn infants, in-house presence of a neonatal fellow or attending neonatologist at night (odds ratio, 0.6) and NICU admission at night (odds ratio, 1.6) were also predictive. CONCLUSIONS Risk-adjusted early neonatal mortality odds was 60% higher among inborn infants < or =32 weeks' gestation admitted to NICUs at night compared with during daytime, equivalent to 29 excess deaths per 1000 infants.
Serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants and abnormal bleeding: a review for clinicians and a reconsideration of mechanisms.

BACKGROUND It is generally believed that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) drugs increase the risk of abnormal bleeding and decrease the risk of ischemic heart disease events by blocking the uptake of serotonin into platelets, leading to an impairment in the platelet hemostatic response. OBJECTIVE To perform a detailed qualitative review of existing literature on the association of abnormal bleeding with the use of SSRIs. DATA SOURCES We conducted a PubMed search during June 2009 using the search terms antidepressants and SSRIs (including the names of individual SSRIs: fluoxetine, sertraline, paroxetine, fluvoxamine, citalopram, and escitalopram) in association with bleeding, platelets, hemostasis, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), aspirin, antiplatelet drugs, proton pump inhibitors, peptic ulcer, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, menstruation, pregnancy, postpartum hemorrhage, surgery, tooth extraction, dental bleeding, stroke, ischemic heart disease, and other terms related to the field. We then searched the reference lists of identified studies. STUDY SELECTION We provide a qualitative discussion of all studies that would inform clinicians about the mechanisms of bleeding and bleeding risks associated with these drugs in different clinical contexts. RESULTS Epidemiologic studies show that SSRI use is associated with roughly doubled odds of upper gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding; bleeding at other sites has been less commonly described, as has a possibly increased risk of bleeding associated with surgical procedures. The risk of SSRI-associated GI bleeding is increased with the concurrent use of NSAIDs, anticoagulants, and antiplatelet agents and is decreased by concurrent proton pump inhibitors. The risk of bleeding is increased in patients with cirrhosis of the liver or liver failure. There is, curiously, little literature on use of SSRIs and menstrual or postpartum blood loss. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors appear protective against ischemic heart disease events. The data are too limited to allow interpretations about influences on ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke. CONCLUSIONS On the basis of the findings of our literature search, we suggest that SSRI-induced increase in gastric acid secretion may explain the GI bleeding risk and that SSRI-related effects on platelet reactivity, endothelial reactivity, and inflammatory markers may explain the ischemic heart disease protective effect. Because the absolute risk of GI bleeds with SSRIs is low, precautions are probably necessary only in high-risk patients, such as those with acid-peptic disease and those with a history of bleeds. We discuss management issues and areas for future research.
Transmembrane structures of amyloid precursor protein dimer predicted by replica-exchange molecular dynamics simulations.

Abeta peptide is an essential protein in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease and is derived from amyloid precursor protein (APP) in the membrane by beta- and gamma-secretase cleavage. An experimental study has shown that a pairwise replacement of Gly with Leu in APP enhances homodimerization but leads to a drastic reduction of Abeta secretion. To resolve this apparent discrepancy, we predicted the wild-type (WT) and mutant APP dimer conformations by replica-exchange molecular dynamics simulations using the implicit membrane model IMM1. The simulations illustrate large conformational differences between the WT and mutant APP fragments in the membrane. Dimerization of the WT is due to two C(alpha)-H.O hydrogen bonds between two APP fragments, whereas dimerization of the mutant is due to hydrophobic interactions. In the mutant, each APP fragment is more tilted, and the gamma-cleavage site is shifted toward the center of the membrane. This position produces a mismatch between the active site of gamma-secretase and the gamma-cleavage site of APP that might prohibit Abeta production.
Comparison of Three Commercial Test Systems for Biotyping Haemophilus influenzae and Haemophilus parainfluenzae

ABSTRACT The biotypes of Haemophilus influenzae and Haemophilus parainfluenzae isolates were determined with three commercially available biochemical test kits: the IDS RapID NH system, the Neisseria-Haemophilus identification test (NHI card), and the API NH strip. The API NH strip performed best, correctly classifying the biotypes of 371 of 380 (97.6%) different challenge strains.
High blood alcohol levels in women.

Abstract After consuming comparable amounts of ethanol, women have higher blood ethanol concentrations than men, even with allowance for differences in size, and are more susceptible to alcoholic liver disease. Recently, we documented significant "first-pass metabolism" of ethanol due to its oxidation by gastric tissue. We report a study of the possible contribution of this metabolism to the sex-related difference in blood alcohol concentrations in 20 men and 23 women. Six in each group were alcoholics. The first-pass metabolism was determined on the basis of the difference in areas under the curves of blood alcohol concentrations after intravenous and oral administration of ethanol (0.3 g per kilogram of body weight). Alcohol dehydrogenase activity was also measured in endoscopic gastric biopsies. In nonalcoholic subjects, the first-pass metabolism and gastric alcohol dehydrogenase activity of the women were 23 and 59 percent, respectively, of those in the men, and there was a significant correlation (rs.
Effects of alcohol on group formation among male social drinkers.

OBJECTIVE Social factors affect alcohol use and misuse, yet researchers rarely study the acute effects of alcohol in groups. This study used systematic observation techniques to measure the effects of alcohol on behavioral responses during an initial group interaction. METHOD Fifty-four male social drinkers were assembled into three-person groups of strangers, and all members of each group were administered either a 0.82 g/kg dose of alcohol or a placebo to be consumed during a 30-minute period. This social interaction was video recorded, and the duration and sequence of selected smiling and speech behaviors were coded on a 1-second time base. RESULTS Alcohol consumption increased individual- and group-level coordination of smiling and speech behaviors over time and improved self-reported bonding. CONCLUSIONS These data suggest that alcohol may facilitate social bonding during initial group formation. Measuring behavioral responses in a social context provides new directions for studying the acute effects of alcohol.
Analysis of the Viral Elements Required in the Nuclear Import of HIV-1 DNA

ABSTRACT HIV-1 possesses an exquisite ability to infect cells independently from their cycling status by undergoing an active phase of nuclear import through the nuclear pore. This property has been ascribed to the presence of karyophilic elements present in viral nucleoprotein complexes, such as the matrix protein (MA); Vpr; the integrase (IN); and a cis-acting structure present in the newly synthesized DNA, the DNA flap. However, their role in nuclear import remains controversial at best. In the present study, we carried out a comprehensive analysis of the role of these elements in nuclear import in a comparison between several primary cell types, including stimulated lymphocytes, macrophages, and dendritic cells. We show that despite the fact that none of these elements is absolutely required for nuclear import, disruption of the central polypurine tract-central termination sequence (cPPT-CTS) clearly affects the kinetics of viral DNA entry into the nucleus. This effect is independent of the cell cycle status of the target cells and is observed in cycling as well as in nondividing primary cells, suggesting that nuclear import of viral DNA may occur similarly under both conditions. Nonetheless, this study indicates that other components are utilized along with the cPPT-CTS for an efficient entry of viral DNA into the nucleus.
QAM-FBMC: A New Multi-Carrier System for Post-OFDM Wireless Communications

Recently, as asynchronous heterogeneous network scenario becoming one of the key features for next generation wireless communications, superior spectrum confinement as well as higher spectral efficiency compared to cyclic prefixed orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CP-OFDM) has been taken into consideration for future radio access technologies. In this paper, we propose a new quadrature amplitude modulation based filter-bank multi-carrier (QAM-FBMC) system that provides with an inherent spectral efficiency gain against CP-OFDM, which comes from reduction of the redundancies such as cyclic prefix (CP) and guard-band, while keeping the symbol rate same as in CP-less OFDM. We propose a new transceiver structure consisting of at least two different filter-bank bases at both transmitter and receiver sides. Practical algorithms including channel estimation and equalization to mitigate multi-path fading channel without CP are proposed. Various evaluation results show that the proposed system performs comparable to the CP-OFDM system even without CP and guard-band reduction is also available from the well-confined spectrum.