Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Drug interactions with new hepatitis C oral drugs

Introduction: Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection has recently become a curable disease with antiviral therapy. The knowledge of drug interactions using direct-acting antivirals (DAA) may permit maximizing antiviral efficacy and avoiding drug-related toxicities. Ageing in the chronic hepatitis C population, along with added co-morbidities that require other medications, has increased the attention on drug interactions using DAA. Areas covered: This review provides an update of the most clinically significant pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic drug interactions occurring between currently available DAA and other medications. The review also revisits how drug interactions with DAA can be prevented and managed. Expert opinion: Interactions between DAA and other drugs are frequent in clinical practice. The most frequent drug interactions modify drug metabolism by inducing or inhibiting the cytochrome P450, leading to abnormal drug exposures. Through this mechanism HCV protease inhibitors, especially when co-formulated with ritonavir as pharmacoenhancer, and non-nucleoside HCV polymerase inhibitors interact with other medications. In contrast, NS5B nucleos(t)ide analog inhibitors (i.e., sofosbuvir) and some HCV NS5A inhibitors (i.e., ledipasvir), which do not or only marginally affect CYP450, are relatively free of significant pharmacokinetic interactions. However, exposure to HCV nucleos(t)ide analogs may be influenced by induction/inhibition of drug transporters (i.e., P-glycoprotein) as well as by pharmacodynamic interference with other nucleos(t)ide analogs used as antivirals or cancer drugs. Drug interactions for some NS5A inhibitors (i.e., daclatasvir) are generally moderate and can be managed with dose adjustments.
Inﬂuence of Exogenous Melatonin Administration on Salmonella Enteritidis Colonization in Molted Layers

Two studies were conducted to evaluate the effects of melatonin on Salmonella Enteritidis infection in experimentally challenged laying hens subjected to a forced molt. Leghorn hens ( > 50 wk of age) were randomly assigned to rooms, acclimated to a 16L:8D regimen, and provided ad libitum access to a nonmedicated mash layer diet and water. Birds in one room were molted (8L:16D; complete feed withdrawal), whereas birds in the second room served as nonmolted controls (CONT). Within each room, birds were randomly assigned to melatonin treatment (MEL; 12 birds/treatment), dosed orally commencing the same day as feed withdrawal for 10 d: (experiment I: 0 or 5 mg of melatonin; experiment II: 0, 10, or 20 mg of melatonin). Three days following feed withdrawal, all birds were experimentally infected with Salmonella Enteritidis, and after 10 d of feed withdrawal, all birds were killed and necropsied. In experiment I, concentrations of Salmonella Enteritidis in the cecal contents and the number
Relationship between serum selenium levels and patients with carcinoma

Serum selenium levels were determined by neutron activation analysis on 110 patients with carcinoma. An attempt was made to correlate the wide range in the serum concentrations of the trace element with the parameters employed in this study. An association was noted between the serum selenium levels and patient survival time, incidence of multiple primary malignancies, rate of recurrence of the primary lesion and the extent of local and disseminated involvement.
Post-exercise hypotension and heart rate variability response after water- and land-ergometry exercise in hypertensive patients

Background systemic arterial hypertension is the most prevalent cardiovascular disease; physical activity for hypertensive patients is related to several beneficial cardiovascular adaptations. This paper evaluated the effect of water- and land-ergometry exercise sessions on post-exercise hypotension (PEH) of healthy normotensive subjects versus treated or untreated hypertensive patients. Methods Forty-five older women composed three experimental groups: normotensive (N, n = 10), treated hypertensive (TH, n = 15) and untreated hypertensive (UH, n = 20). The physical exercise acute session protocol was performed at 75% of maximum oxygen consumption (VO2max) for 45 minutes; systolic (SBP), diastolic (DBP) and mean (MBP) blood pressure were evaluated at rest, peak and at 15, 30, 45, 60, 75 and 90 minutes after exercise cessation. Additionally, the heart rate variability (HRV) was analyzed by R-R intervals in the frequency domain for the assessment of cardiac autonomic function. Results In both exercise modalities, equivalent increases in SBP were observed from rest to peak exercise for all groups, and during recovery, significant PEH was noted. At 90 minutes after the exercise session, the prevalence of hypotension was significantly higher in water- than in the land-based protocol. Moreover, more pronounced reductions in SBP and DBP were observed in the UH patients compared to TH and N subjects. Finally, exercise in the water was more effective in restoring HRV during recovery, with greater effects in the untreated hypertensive group. Conclusion Our data demonstrated that water-ergometry exercise was able to induce expressive PEH and improve cardiac autonomic modulation in older normotensive, hypertensive treated or hypertensive untreated subjects when compared to conventional land-ergometry.
Corynebacterium diphtheriae and its relatives.

CORYNEBACTERIUM DIPHTHERIAE. 385 Morphology, Ultrastructure, and Molecular Anatomy of Diphtheria Bacilli. 385 Cell envelope. 385 Murein (peptidoglycan, muropeptide) and arabinogalactan. 385 Lipids and protein of the outer envelope . 386 Cord factor of C. diphtheriae. 386 K (surface protein) antigens. 386 Receptors for corynebacteriophages . 389 From the Nucleus to the Cytoplasmic Membrane (Cellular Inclusions) . 389 Fatty material, lipoidal bodies, and fat granules. 389 Polyphosphate granules = metachromatic granules = volutin bodies. 389 Localization of tellurium . 391 Starch. 391 Intracytoplasmic membrane= intracytoplasmic membrane system (125)= mesosome(s) (80, 268). 392
Why European Firms issue Convertible Debt

We survey European managers to gain some insights into motivations of convertible issuance. Our analysis shows that a majority of firms issue convertibles as “delayed equity” and as “debt sweetener”. Managers also use convertibles to avoid short-term equity dilution and to signal firm’s future growth opportunities. We document a large cross-sectional variation across firms in rationales for issuing convertibles and find mixed support for most theoretical models. Our evidence suggests that the popularity of convertibles is driven primarily by their versatility in adjusting their design to fit the financing needs of individual firms, and by their increased demand among institutional investors.
Optimal spatial design for air quality measurement surveys

Measurement surveys using passive diffusion tubes are regularly carried out to elaborate atmospheric concentration maps over various areas. Sampling schemes must be designed to characterize both contaminant concentrations (of benzene or nitrogen dioxide for example) and their relations to environmental variables so as to obtain pollution maps as precise as possible. Here, a spatial statistical methodology to design benzene air concentration measurement surveys on the urban scale is exposed. In a first step, an a priori modeling is conducted that is based on the analysis of data coming from previous campaigns on two different agglomerations. More precisely, we retain a modeling with an external drift which consists of a drift plus a spatially correlated residual. The statistical analysis performed on available data leads to choose the most relevant auxiliary variables and to determine an a priori variogram model for the residual. An a priori distribution is also defined for the variogram parameters, whose values appear to vary from a campaign to another. In a second step, we optimize the positioning of the measuring devices on a third agglomeration according to a Bayesian criterion. Practically, we aim at finding the design that minimizes the mean over the urban domain of the universal kriging variance, whose parameters are based on the a priori modeling while accounting for the prior distribution over the variogram parameters. Two global optimization algorithms are compared: simulated annealing and a particle filter‐based algorithm. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Capillary and arterial cerebral amyloid angiopathy in Alzheimer's disease: defining the perivascular route for the elimination of amyloid β from the human brain

Accumulation of amyloid β (Aβ) in the extracellular spaces of the cerebral cortex and in blood vessel walls as cerebral amyloid angiopathy is a characteristic of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and the ageing human brain. Studies in animals suggest that Aβ is eliminated from the brain either directly into the blood or along perivascular interstitial fluid drainage channels. The aim of the present study is to define the perivascular route for the drainage of Aβ from the human brain. Smears and paraffin sections of post‐mortem cortical tissue from 17 cases of AD and from two controls were stained with thioflavin and for Aβ by immunohistochemistry. Histology and confocal microscopy showed that deposits of Aβ in the cortical parenchyma were continuous with Aβ in capillary walls but Aβ in artery walls was not in continuity with Aβ in brain parenchyma. Quantitative studies supported these observations. The results of this study suggest that when Aβ is eliminated from the extracellular spaces of the human brain by the perivascular route, it enters pericapillary spaces and from there drains along the walls of cortical arteries to leptomeningeal arteries. Factors such as overproduction of Aβ, entrapment of Aβ in drainage pathways and poor drainage of Aβ due to functional changes in ageing arteries might result in the failure of elimination of Aβ from the ageing brain and play a major role in the pathogenesis of AD. Such factors might affect therapies for AD that entail administration of anti‐Aβ antibodies to eliminate Aβ from the human brain.
Mining Taverna's semantic web of provenance

Taverna is a workflow workbench developed as part of the UK's myGrid project. Taverna's provenance model captures both internal provenance locally generated in Taverna and external provenance gathered from third‐party data providers. This model also supports overlaying secondary provenance over the primary logs and lineage. This design is motivated by the particular properties of bioinformatics data and services used in Taverna. A Semantic Web of provenance, Ouzo, is built to combine the above different provenance by means of semantic annotations. This paper shows how Ouzo can be mined by a provenance usage component, Provenance Query and Answer (ProQA). ProQA supports provenance retrievals as well as provenance abstraction, aggregation, and semantic reasoning. ProQA is implemented as a suite APIs which can be deployed as provenance services to compose system provenance workflows that analyse experiment results using the provenance records. We show how these features of Taverna's provenance support us in answering the questions from the provenance challenge workshop and a set of additional provenance queries. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
FACTORS INFLUENCING FIRE DISASTER MANAGEMENT PREPAREDNESS: A CASE OF PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN MAKUENI COUNTY, KENYA

The study sought to establish the factors influencing fire disaster preparedness in primary schools in Makueni County in Kenya. Using multiple regression analysis, the findings showed that fire safety policy knowledge had a beta (), fire safety guidelines implementation practices and fire safety resources provision. This infers that fire safety support resources provision affects fire disaster management preparedness in primary schools to a great extent followed by safety policy knowledge while fire safety guidelines implementation had the least effect. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated a significance value of 0.009 which is less than 0.05 thus the model was significant in predicting how policy knowledge, guidelines implementation practices and support resources provision influence fire disaster management preparedness in primary schools. A paired t-test revealed that there was no significant difference in the means of fire disaster preparedness in the public and private primary schools. Therefore, the study recommends more emphasis should be put on training of school stakeholders on fire disaster preparedness and provision of fire safety support resources for combating fire disasters in primary schools. Article visualizations:
Simultaneous Nitrification–Denitrification and Clarification in a Pseudoliquified Activated Sludge System

This paper describes results from a pilot study of a novel wastewater treatment technology, which incorporates nutrient removal and solids separation to a single step. The pseudoliquified activated sludge process pilot system was tested on grit removal effluent at flowrates of 29.4 to 54.7 m3/d, three different solid residence times (SRT) (15, 37, and 57 days), and over a temperature range of 12 to 28°C. Despite wide fluctuations in the influent characteristics, the system performed reliably and consistently with respect to organics and total suspended solids (TSS) removals, achieving biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and TSS reductions of >96% and approximately 90%, respectively, with BOD5 and TSS concentrations as low as 3 mg/L. Although the system achieved average effluent ammonia concentrations of 2.7 to 3.2 mg/L, nitrification efficiency appeared to be hampered at low temperatures (<15°C). The system achieved tertiary effluent quality with denitrification efficiencies of 90 and 91% total nitrogen removal efficiency at a total hydraulic retention time of 4.8 hours and an SRT of 12 to 17 days. With ferric chloride addition, effluent phosphorous concentrations of 0.5 to 0.8 mg/L were achieved. Furthermore, because of operation at high biomass concentrations and relatively long biological SRTs, sludge yields were over 50% below typical values for activated sludge plants. The process was modeled using activated sludge model No. 2, as a two‐stage system comprised an aerobic activated sludge system followed by an anoxic system. Model predictions for soluble BOD, ammonia, nitrates, and orthophosphates agreed well with experimental data.
Friends of Survivors

Since sexual assault survivors are most likely to disclose their experiences to a friend; prevention efforts increasingly focus on friends as informal helpers. The current study examined friends’ perceptions of the disclosure experience. Undergraduates (N=1,241) at the University of New Hampshire completed a shortened version of the Ahrens and Campbell (2000) Impact on Friends measure. Results found that about 1 in 3 female undergraduates and 1 in 5 male students were told by a friend that they were a victim of an unwanted sexual experience. Gender differences were found in friends’ responses to disclosure. Women reported greater emotional distress in response to a friend's disclosure, greater positive responses and lesser-perceived confusion/ineffectiveness as compared to men. Implications include the need to develop specific and clear educational material to help the community cope with and effectively respond to unwanted sexual experiences on college campuses.
An Ising-based approach to the study of inter-organizational team dynamics

In this paper inter-organizational teams are analyzed using the social network perspective, identifying three types of networks, i.e., the hierarchical, the knowledge, and the friendship ones. The main team dynamic concerning how team members change opinions is investigated by employing the Ising model of social interactions, with the aim of investigating the team performance in terms of conflict reduction and final level of agreement. A simulation analysis is carried out to assess the effect of the environment as well as of the team size, the density, and the connectivity of the social networks, on team performance. Results confirm that the team size, the network density and a random connectivity positively impact team performance, while environmental turbulence negatively affects the team performance.
Photopatch Testing in Chinese Patients Over 10 Years

BackgroundPhotoallergic contact dermatitis (PACD) is a hypersensitivity reaction that occurs when a previously photosensitized exogenous agent comes into contact with UV radiation. The best method for testing PACD is photopatch testing (PPT). ObjectivesThe primary objective of the study was to determine the frequency of PACD to 20 different photoallergens in common usage in China during a 10-year period. MethodsAll patients (n = 6153) who had PPTs done between 2005 and 2014 at the Department of Dermatology of Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, were included. ResultsA total of 3767 PACD reactions in 3668 subjects (59.61%) were recorded. Of these allergens, chlorpromazine (CPZ) (51.82%), para-aminobenzoic acid (11.94%), thimerosal (9.81%), potassium dichromate (6.37%), sulfanilamide (5.38%), and formaldehyde (4.7%) were the top 6 allergens that elicited PACD reactions. A comparison of PACD reactions between January 2005 to December 2009 and January 2010 to December 2014 revealed a statistically significant decrease in PACD reaction for chlorpromazine, potassium dichromate, p-aminobenzoic acid, and p-phenylenediamine. Formaldehyde showed a trend toward a statistically significant increase in sensitization over the 10-year period. ConclusionsIn conclusion, positive PACD reactions were most frequent to chlorpromazine in our population. New allergens such as potassium dichromate and formaldehyde should be added to the test series.
Ferromagnetic resonance study on magnetic homogeneity in spin-sprayed NiZn ferrite films highly permeable at GHz frequencies

In this paper we report a ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) study which gives a direct proof that the excellent films prepared utilizing the NH/sub 3/-added oxidizing solution (called hereafter NH/sub 3/-added films) are magnetically more homogeneous than the prepared without adding NH/sub 3/OH (called conventional films).
Platelet Aggregation Caused by Dithiothreitol

Summary MacIntyre et al. showed that over 1 mM dithiothreitol (DTT) aggregates blood platelets in the presence of fibrinogen; aggregation is not inhibited by prostaglandin E1. We confirmed their data and found that 70 mM 2-mercaptoethanol was also active. DTT- induced aggregation was not associated with platelet shape change or secretion of dense granule contents, was not inhibited by tetracaine or metabolic inhibitors, was prevented at pH 6.5, and prevented, reversed, or arrested by EDTA, depending on when the EDTA was added. DTT did not cause aggregation of thrombasthenic, EDTA-treated, or cold (0° C) platelets, which also failed to aggregate with ADP. Platelets stimulated with DTT bound 125I-labeled fibrinogen. Thus DTT appears to “expose” the fibrinogen receptors. SDS gel electrophoresis of platelet fractions prepared by use of Triton X-114 showed that aggregating concentrations of DTT reduced proteins of apparent Mr 69,000 and 52,000 (probably platelet albumin) and, to a variable extent, glycoproteins Ib, IIb and III. Exposure of unlabeled or 125I- labeled platelets to ADP had no discernible effect on the electrophoretic patterns.
Cephalothin and cefamandole penetration into bone, synovial fluid, and wound drainage fluid.

UNLABELLED Concentrations of cephalothin or cefamandole were measured in serum, bone, synovial fluid, and wound drainage fluid in fifty-seven patients undergoing total hip or knee replacement after a two-gram intravenous bolus injection. The concentrations were similar in serum and synovial fluid for both antibiotics; however, in bone and drainage fluid the concentration of cefamandole was higher by a factor of three. Concentrations of the same antibiotic at the hip and knee were not significantly different even though a tourniquet was used for the knee replacement procedures. CLINICAL RELEVANCE The antibiotics penetrate bone and enter synovial fluid so rapidly that it is unnecessary to administer prophylactic antibiotics prior to the time of surgery.
Short Sale Constraints and Single Stock Futures Introductions

This paper exploits the unique experimental setting created by nearly 1,300 new single stock futures listings on the OneChicago exchange between 2003 and 2009. I investigate the impact of derivatives introductions on the tightness of short sale constraints facing their underlying assets. After controlling explicitly for supply and demand conditions in the stock lending market, this experiment reveals a precipitous decline in active utilization rates and loan fees in the lending market, after the futures introductions. The paper provides strong evidence that supports the view that derivatives represent a viable alternate synthetic short selling venue relaxing short sale constraints facing their underlying assets.
The influence of corporate social responsibility on the level of corporate tax avoidance

This thesis empirically studies the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate tax avoidance. Based on a sample of 3304 observations between 2002 and 2014, I find that the CSR score of companies is negatively related to their effective tax rate. This indicates that on average, responsible companies are more involved in tax avoidance activities compared to less responsible companies. This result is robust against different sets of control variables. The results of this thesis are contrary towards previous research, where most studies find a negative relation between CSR and tax avoidance. In addition, I examine how four dimensions of CSR are related to corporate tax avoidance and I find that economic performance and environmental performance are positive significant related towards tax avoidance. This indicates that shareholder and client loyalty, as well as resource and emission reduction, relate to a higher extent of corporate tax avoidance.
Visual Complexity and Affect: Ratings Reflect More Than Meets the Eye

Pictorial stimuli can vary on many dimensions, several aspects of which are captured by the term ‘visual complexity. ’ Visual complexity can be described as, “a picture of a few objects, colors, or structures would be less complex than a very colorful picture of many objects that is composed of several components. ” Prior studies have reported a relationship between affect and visual complexity, where complex pictures are rated as more pleasant and arousing. However, a relationship in the opposite direction, an effect of affect on visual complexity, is also possible; emotional arousal and valence are known to influence selective attention and visual processing. In a series of experiments, we found that ratings of visual complexity correlated with affective ratings, and independently also with computational measures of visual complexity. These computational measures did not correlate with affect, suggesting that complexity ratings are separately related to distinct factors. We investigated the relationship between affect and ratings of visual complexity, finding an ‘arousal-complexity bias’ to be a robust phenomenon. Moreover, we found this bias could be attenuated when explicitly indicated but did not correlate with inter-individual difference measures of affective processing, and was largely unrelated to cognitive and eyetracking measures. Taken together, the arousal-complexity bias seems to be caused by a relationship between arousal and visual processing as it has been described for the greater vividness of arousing pictures. The described arousal-complexity bias is also of relevance from an experimental perspective because visual complexity is often considered a variable to control for when using pictorial stimuli.