Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relationship between UGT1A1*6/*28 polymorphisms and severe toxicities in Chinese patients with pancreatic or biliary tract cancer treated with irinotecan-containing regimens

Purpose The aim of this retrospective study was to investigate the relationship between UGT1A1 polymorphisms and toxicities in Chinese patients with pancreatic or biliary tract cancer receiving irinotecan-containing regimens as the second- or third-line chemotherapy. Patients and methods A total of 36 patients with unresectable pancreatic cancer and 12 patients with unresectable biliary tract cancer were included. Approximately 33 patients were treated with FOLFIRI regimen, a chemotherapy regimen, where FOL stands for folinic acid, F for fluorouracil, and IRI for irinotecan (irinotecan 180 mg/m2 at day 1, CF 200 mg/m2 at day 1–2, 5-FU 400 mg/m2 at day 1–2, followed by continuous infusion of 5-FU 600 mg/m2 for 22 hours at day 1–2, every 2 weeks). The other 15 patients were treated with irinotecan monotherapy (180 mg/m2, every 2 weeks). UGT1A1*6/*28 polymorphisms were detected by direct sequencing. Results The frequencies of GG, GA, AA genotypes for UGT1A1*6 were 70.8% (n=34), 25.0% (n=12), and 4.2% (n=2), respectively. And those of TA6/TA6, TA6/TA7, TA7/TA7 for UGT1A1*28 were 79.2% (n=38), 18.8% (n=9), and 2.0% (n=1), respectively. A total of 22 patients (45.8%) had grade III–IV neutropenia, and six patients (12.5%) experienced grade III–IV diarrhea. The incidence of grade III–IV neutropenia in patients with UGT1A1*6 GA or AA genotype was 71.4%, which was significantly higher than that with GG genotype (35.3%, P=0.022). No relationship was found between grade III–IV neutropenia and UGT1A1*28 polymorphism. The statistical analysis between grade III–IV diarrhea and UGT1A1*6/*28 polymorphisms was not conducted in view of the limited number of patients. Conclusion In Chinese patients with pancreatic or biliary tract cancer administered irinotecan-containing regimens, those with UGT1A1*6 variant may have a high risk of severe neutropenia.
Artifices for Persuading to Improve Eating Habits

Eating habits are influenced by emotional factors. Persuasion to change wrong habits should therefore act on the central and the peripheral route at the same time, by combining rational and emotional strategies appropriately. In this paper, we describe an ongoing research which is aimed at simulating persuasion dialogs in this domain. We describe how we collected and analyzed a corpus of messages and how we compared the persuasion strength of rational vs emotional, negatively vs positively framed discourses. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the knowledge representation methods that are suited to represent these strategies.
Using a 360° diagnostic screening tool to provide an evidence trail of junior doctor performance throughout their first postgraduate year

New medical graduates in the UK are known as Preregistration House Officers (PRHOs). At the end of this first postgraduate year, the Postgraduate Dean is responsible for allowing the PRHO to be fully registered with the General Medical Council. During the period 1999–2002 Professor Miriam Friedman Ben-David designed a more robust approach to appraisal and assessment of PRHOs, which provided educational feedback to all trainees, allowed any poor performers to be detected at an early stage, and provided ‘hard’ observable evidence for certification decisions. This paper describes the more recent development of her work resulting from further piloting of her system. The key tool, a 360° diagnostic questionnaire, is designed to identify strengths and weaknesses in individual performance. It is presently being used as a screening tool to identify any trainees needing additional support and further assessment. The tool also forms part of an evidence trail for all PRHOs and helps inform formative assessment as well as contributing, along with other evidence, to full registration decisions. The evaluation of this tool, also described in this paper, shows the feasibility of implementing such a system on a wider scale and illustrates the successful balance made between robustness and feasibility.
Vorteil durch Eigenständigkeit? Analyse der Publikationsleistung der universitären Plastischen Chirurgie in verschiedenen Organisationsstrukturen

Zusammenfassung Einleitung: Trotz der Anerkennung als eigenständiges Fachgebiet ist die Plastische Chirurgie in der deutschen Universitätsmedizin noch unzureichend im Sinne unabhängiger Kliniken mit entsprechendem Forschungsfokus verankert. Ziel dieser Arbeit war es, die Publikationsleistung der deutschen akademischen Plastischen Chirurgie zu untersuchen und einen Vergleich zwischen eigenständigen Kliniken und untergeordneten Organisationsstrukturen zu ziehen. Material und Methodik: Mittels Webseiten-Analyse wurden Organisationsstrukturen und personelle Ausstattung an Universitätsklinika errmittelt. Via Pubmed-Analyse wurde die Publikationsleistung (Publikationsanzahl, kumulativer Impactfaktor, Impactfaktor/Publikation, Publikationen/Arzt, Publikationen/Klinik) im Zeitraum von 2009 bis 2013 eruiert. Die Verteilung von kumulativem Impactfaktor und Publikationsanzahl auf die verschiedenen Fachzeitschriften sowie die Entwicklung des Impactfaktors wurde in einer Journal-Analyse untersucht. Ergebnisse: An den 35 Universitätsklinika existierten 12 eigenständige Kliniken und 8 untergeordnete Organisationsstrukturen. An 15 Universitätsklinika gab es keine plastisch-chirurgischen Organisationsstrukturen. Der Personalschlüssel unterschied sich deutlich zwischen Kliniken (3,6 OberärztInnen/Einheit) und untergeordneten Organisationsstrukturen (1,1 OberärztInnen/Einheit). Der Großteil der Publikationen (89,0%) und kumulativen Impactfaktorpunkte (91,2%) sowie die meisten Publikationen/Arzt (54 Publikationen/Jahr) und pro Klinik (61 Publikationen/Jahr) waren an den eigenständigen Kliniken zu finden. Nur hier gab es Top-Publikationen mit einem Impactfaktor>5. Es zeichnete sich ein allgemeiner Negativtrend bzgl. Publikationszahl (− 13,4%) und kumulativen Impactfaktorpunkten (− 28,9%) ab. 58,4% aller Publikationen verteilten sich auf die Top-10 Zeitschriften, wovon ein Großteil (60% der Publikationen, 79,7% des kumulativen Impactfaktors) auf englischsprachige Fachzeitschriften entfiel. Der Impactfaktor der Top-10 Fachzeitschriften entwickelte sich im Untersuchungszeitraum positiv (+ 13,5%). Schlussfolgerung: Eigenständige Kliniken für Plastische Chirurgie sind im Gegensatz zu untergeordneten Organisationsstrukturen die zentralen Leistungsträger innerhalb der akademischen Plastischen Chirurgie, welche im Allgemeinen bzgl. der Publikationsleistung rückläufige Tendenzen zeigt. Die Art der Organisationsstruktur hat somit entscheidenden Einfluss auf die wissenschaftliche Leistungsfähigkeit.
ELECTRON MICROSCOPY OF RENAL COAGULATIVE NECROSIS DUE TO DL-SERINE, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO MITOCHONDRIAL PYKNOSIS.

Fishman and Artom' discovered the nephrotoxic action of dl-serine (alpha-amino beta-hydroxypropionic acid) in the course of a study concerned with the influence of dietary factors on tissue phospholipids in rats. Morehead, Fishman and Artom 2'3 and Wachstein 4 investigated the renal injury in greater detail. The lesion was regularly reproducible in male animals, with an incidence of ioo per cent. Following the intraperitoneal injection of IOO mg. of dl-serine, extensive renal necrosis occurred within several hours. The damage was found to be localized to the terminal portions of the proximal convoluted tubules, as evidenced by microdissection of such kidneys.4 The injury is caused by the unnatural d-isomer; I-serine is completely innocuous.5 Since the lesion apparently represented a pure form of coagulation necrosis, it seemed worth while to subject it to electron microscopic analysis.
The Importance of Prevalence in the Effectiveness of a ( Bio ) marker

Metrics such as relative hazards and relative risks do not account for the prevalence of a marker over time and its relation to whether and when an outcome occurs. Uncommon markers that have good predictive values and common markers that are poorly predictive may not be (clinically) useful in predicting disease and other health outcomes. Recent work by Little et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2011;173(12):1380–1387) highlights the development of a newmethod that considers both factors in predicting outcomes. Measures that incorporate both marker prevalence and predictive values and therefore are measures of ‘‘effectiveness’’ may be broadly helpful in deciding which markers or exposures are useful in disease screening or should be targeted by health interventions.
On Computational Methods for the Valuation of Credit Derivatives

On computational methods for the valuation of credit derivatives Wanhe Zhang Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Computer Science University of Toronto 2010 A credit derivative is a financial instrument whose value depends on the credit risk of an underlying asset or assets. Credit risk is the possibility that the obligor fails to honor any payment obligation. This thesis proposes four new computational methods for the valuation of credit derivatives. Compared with synthetic collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) or basket default swaps (BDS), the value of which depends on the defaults of a prescribed underlying portfolio, a forward-starting CDO or BDS has a random underlying portfolio, as some “names” may default before the CDO or BDS starts. We develop an approach to convert a forward product to an equivalent standard one. Therefore, we avoid having to consider the default combinations in the period between the start of the forward contract and the start of the associated CDO or BDS. In addition, we propose a hybrid method combining Monte Carlo simulation with an analytical method to obtain an effective method for pricing forward-starting BDS. Current factor copula models are static and fail to calibrate consistently against market quotes. To overcome this deficiency, we develop a novel chaining technique to build a multi-period factor copula model from several one-period factor copula models. This allows the default correlations to be time-dependent, thereby allowing the model to fit market quotes consistently. Previously developed multi-period factor copula models require multi-dimensional integration, usually computed by Monte Carlo simulation,
Positive tropical marine low‐cloud cover feedback inferred from cloud‐controlling factors

Differences in simulations of tropical marine low‐cloud cover (LCC) feedback are sources of significant spread in temperature responses of climate models to anthropogenic forcing. Here we show that in models the feedback is mainly driven by three large‐scale changes—a strengthening tropical inversion, increasing surface latent heat flux, and an increasing vertical moisture gradient. Variations in the LCC response to these changes alone account for most of the spread in model‐projected 21st century LCC changes. A methodology is devised to constrain the LCC response observationally using sea surface temperature (SST) as a surrogate for the latent heat flux and moisture gradient. In models where the current climate's LCC sensitivities to inversion strength and SST variations are consistent with observed, LCC decreases systematically, which would increase absorption of solar radiation. These results support a positive LCC feedback. Correcting biases in the sensitivities will be an important step toward more credible simulation of cloud feedbacks.
Pathogenicity of Genetically Similar, H5N1 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Virus Strains in Chicken and the Differences in Sensitivity among Different Chicken Breeds

Differences in the pathogenicity of genetically closely related H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses (HPAIVs) were evaluated in White Leghorn chickens. These viruses varied in the clinical symptoms they induced, including lethality, virus shedding, and replication in host tissues. A comparison of the host responses in the lung, brain, and spleen suggested that the differences in viral replication efficiency were related to the host cytokine response at the early phase of infection, especially variations in the proinflammatory cytokine IL-6. Based on these findings, we inoculated the virus that showed the mildest pathogenicity among the five tested, A/pigeon/Thailand/VSMU-7-NPT/2004, into four breeds of Thai indigenous chicken, Phadu-Hung-Dang (PHD), Chee, Dang, and Luang-Hung-Khao (LHK), to explore effects of genetic background on host response. Among these breeds, Chee, Dang, and LHK showed significantly longer survival times than White Leghorns. Virus shedding from dead Thai indigenous chickens was significantly lower than that from White Leghorns. Although polymorphisms were observed in the Mx and MHC class I genes, there was no significant association between the polymorphisms in these loci and resistance to HPAIV.
A Sketch of Language History in the Korean Peninsula

Among 7100 languages spoken on Earth, the Koreanic language is the 13th largest, with about 77 million speakers in and around the Korean Peninsula. In comparison to other languages of similar size, however, surprisingly little is known about the evolution of the Koreanic language. This is mainly due to two reasons. The first reason is that the genealogical relationship of the Koreanic to other neighboring languages remains uncertain, and thus inference from the linguistic comparative method provides only provisional evidence. The second reason is that, as the ancestral Koreanic speakers lacked their own writing system until around 500 years ago, there are scant historical materials to peer into the past, except for those preserved in Sinitic characters that we have no straightforward way of interpreting. Here I attempt to overcome these disadvantages and shed some light on the linguistic history of the Korean Peninsula, by analyzing the internal variation of the Koreanic language with methods adopted from evolutionary biology. The preliminary results presented here suggest that the evolutionary history of the Koreanic language is characterized by a weak hierarchical structure, and intensive gene/culture flows within the Korean Peninsula seem to have promoted linguistic homogeneity among the Koreanic variants. Despite the gene/culture flows, however, there are still three detectable linguistic barriers in the Korean Peninsula that appear to have been shaped by geographical features such as mountains, elevated areas, and ocean. I discuss these findings in an inclusive manner to lay the groundwork for future studies.
Oxford Battery Degradation Dataset 1

Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are the most popular energy storage technology in consumer electronics and electric vehicles and are increasingly applied in stationary storage systems. Yet, concerns about safety and reliability remain major obstacles, which must be addressed in order to improve the acceptance of this technology. The gradual degradation of Li-ion cells over time lies at the heart of this problem. Time, usage and environmental conditions lead to performance deterioration and cell failures, which, in rare cases, can be catastrophic due to fires or explosions. The physical and chemical mechanisms responsible for degradation are numerous, complex and interdependent. Our understanding of degradation and failure of Li-ion cells is still very limited and more limited yet are reliable and practical methods for the detection and prediction of these phenomena. This dataset contains the results of long term cycling of 8 lithium-ion cells in our lab in Oxford. The full details are given in the readme.txt file.
Corporate Sustainability and Shareholder Wealth—Evidence from British Companies and Lessons from the Crisis

This study examines the impact of corporate sustainability (CS) on stock market returns for FTSE 350 companies over the period 2006–2012. We find that an investment strategy that bought shares in companies with balanced financial, social, and environmental activities would have earned an annual four-factor alpha for a value-weighted portfolio of 3.54% per year during the sample period and 2.98% above industry benchmarks. In addition, we find that CS is negatively correlated with stock return volatility, and investing in companies with CS not only generates higher returns during peak phases, but also diminishes shareholders’ losses during bear phases. We have also carried out an additional, out-of-the-sample analysis for the years 2013–2015 which confirmed our results.
Koszul Equivalences in $A_\infty$-Algebras

We prove a version of Koszul duality and the induced derived equivalence for Adams connected $A_\infty$-algebras that generalizes the classical Beilinson-Ginzburg-Soergel Koszul duality. As an immediate consequence, we give a version of the Bern\v{s}te{\u\i}n-Gel'fand-Gel'fand correspondence for Adams connected $A_\infty$-algebras. We give various applications. For example, a connected graded algebra $A$ is Artin-Schelter regular if and only if its Ext-algebra $\Ext^\ast_A(k,k)$ is Frobenius. This generalizes a result of Smith in the Koszul case. If $A$ is Koszul and if both $A$ and its Koszul dual $A^! $ are noetherian satisfying a polynomial identity, then $A$ is Gorenstein if and only if $A^! $ is. The last statement implies that a certain Calabi-Yau property is preserved under Koszul duality.
Segmentation of range and intensity images using multiscale Markov random field representations

A nonlinear Markov random field (MRF) model-based segmentation method that uses multiscale MRF representations is developed. The proposed method labels the surface boundaries at a variety of spatial scales while labeling the surfaces, therefore it merges the advantages of region-based and edge-based segmentation approaches. The scheme is capable of fusing boundary information obtained at multiple scales simultaneously, resulting in a robust segmentation of range and intensity images. <<ETX>>
Towards Adaptive Project Tracking using Individual Productivity Metrics

Quality and productivity are two of the most important factors in software development. Quality based software productivity improvement is essential for the software process improvement. In this paper, quality recognition mechanism and individual productivity metrics are suggested to avoid the large effort in typical measurement of productivity and quality in daily project. A framework using individual productivity metrics is designed to achieve adaptive software project tracking in legacy system reengineering projects.
An endorsement-based reputation system for trustworthy crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is a new distributed computing paradigm that leverages the wisdom of crowd and the voluntary human effort to solve problems or collect data. In this paradigm of soliciting user contributions, the trustworthiness of contributions becomes a matter of crucial importance to the viability of crowdsourcing. Prior mechanisms either do not consider the trustworthiness of contributions or assess the quality of contributions only after the event, resulting in irreversible effort exertion and distorted player utilities. In this paper, we propose a reputation system to not only assess but also predict the trustworthiness of user contributions. In particular, we explore an inter-worker relationship called endorsement to improve trustworthiness prediction using machine learning methods, while taking into account the heterogeneity of both workers and tasks.
Design of flexible-length S-random interleaver for turbo codes

We introduce a method for generating a sequence of semi-random interleavers, intended to be optimally stored and employed in a turbo coding system that requires flexibility of the input block (i.e., interleaver) size N. A distinctive feature of this method is seen in the very simple rules for obtaining shorter/longer interleavers by pruning/adding positions to the interleaver currently used in the system. For each N, the obtained bit error rate (BER) is not higher than the BER for ordinary S-random interleaver of the same N. The method always converges and is suitable for obtaining interleavers of large lengths.
Getting portals to behave

Data visualization environments help users understand and analyze their data by permitting interactive browsing of graphical representations of the data. To further facilitate understanding and analysis, many visualization environments have special features known as portals, which are sub-windows of a data canvas. Portals provide a way to display multiple graphical representations simultaneously, in a nested fashion. This makes portals an extremely powerful and flexible paradigm for data visualization. Unfortunately, with this flexibility comes complexity. There are over a hundred possible ways each portal can be configured to exhibit different behaviors. Many of these behaviors are confusing and certain behaviors can be inappropriate for a particular setting. It is desirable to eliminate confusing and inappropriate behaviors. The authors construct a taxonomy of portal behaviors and give recommendations to help designers of visualization systems decide which behaviors are intuitive and appropriate for a particular setting. They apply these recommendations to an example setting that is fully visually programmable and analyze the resulting reduced set of behaviors. Finally, the authors consider a real visualization environment and demonstrate some problems associated with behaviors that do not follow their recommendations.
Impacts of Broad-Scale Surface Freshening of the Southern Ocean in a Coupled Climate Model

AbstractThe Southern Ocean surface has freshened in recent decades, increasing water column stability and reducing upwelling of warmer subsurface waters. The majority of CMIP5 models underestimate or fail to capture this historical surface freshening, yet little is known about the impact of this model bias on regional ocean circulation and hydrography. Here experiments are performed using a global coupled climate model with additional freshwater applied to the Southern Ocean to assess the influence of recent surface freshening. The simulations explore the impact of persistent and long-term broad-scale freshening as a result of processes including precipitation minus evaporation changes. Thus, unlike previous studies, the freshening is applied as far north as 55°S, beyond the Antarctic ice margin. It is found that imposing a large-scale surface freshening causes a surface cooling and sea ice increase under preindustrial conditions, because of a reduction in ocean convection and weakened entrainment of warm.
Angiotensin II type 1a receptor signalling directly contributes to the increased arrhythmogenicity in cardiac hypertrophy

Angiotensin II has been implicated in the development of various cardiovascular ailments, including cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure. The fact that inhibiting its signalling reduced the incidences of both sudden cardiac death and heart failure in several large‐scale clinical trials suggests that angiotensin II is involved in increased cardiac arrhythmogenicity during the development of heart failure. However, because angiotensin II also promotes structural remodelling, including cardiomyocyte hypertrophy and cardiac fibrosis, it has been difficult to assess its direct contribution to cardiac arrhythmogenicity independently of the structural effects.