Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Blood Pressure Targets in Subjects With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus/Impaired Fasting Glucose: Observations From Traditional and Bayesian Random-Effects Meta-Analyses of Randomized Trials

Background— Most guidelines for treatment of hypertension recommend a blood pressure (BP) goal of <140/90 mm Hg, and a more aggressive goal of <130/80 mm Hg for patients with diabetes mellitus. However, in the recent Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes (ACCORD) trial, a lower BP was not beneficial. The optimal BP target in subjects with diabetes mellitus or those with impaired fasting glucose/glucose tolerance is therefore not well defined. Methods and Results— We performed PUBMED, EMBASE, and CENTRAL searches for randomized clinical trials from 1965 through October 2010 of antihypertensive therapy in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus or impaired fasting glucose/impaired glucose tolerance that enrolled at least 100 patients with achieved systolic BP of ⩽135 mm Hg in the intensive BP control group and ⩽140 mm Hg in the standard BP control group, had a follow-up of at least 1 year, and evaluated macrovascular or microvascular events. We identified 13 randomized clinical trials enrolling 37 736 participants. Intensive BP control was associated with a 10% reduction in all-cause mortality (odds ratio, 0.90; 95% confidence interval, 0.83 to 0.98), a 17% reduction in stroke, and a 20% increase in serious adverse effects, but with similar outcomes for other macrovascular and microvascular (cardiac, renal, and retinal) events compared with standard BP control. The results were similar in a sensitivity analysis using a bayesian random-effects model. More intensive BP control (⩽130 mm Hg) was associated with a greater reduction in stroke, but did not reduce other events. Meta–regression analysis showed continued risk reduction for stroke to a systolic BP of <120 mm Hg. However, at levels <130 mm Hg, there was a 40% increase in serious adverse events with no benefit for other outcomes. Conclusions— The present body of evidence suggests that in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus/impaired fasting glucose/impaired glucose tolerance, a systolic BP treatment goal of 130 to 135 mm Hg is acceptable. However, with more aggressive goals (<130 mm Hg), we observed target organ heterogeneity in that the risk of stroke continued to fall, but there was no benefit regarding the risk of other macrovascular or microvascular (cardiac, renal and retinal) events, and the risk of serious adverse events even increased.
Option pricing for a stochastic-volatility jump-diffusion model with log-uniform jump-amplitudes

An alternative option pricing model is proposed, in which the stock prices follow a diffusion model with square root stochastic volatility and a jump model with log-uniformly distributed jump amplitudes in the stock price process. The stochastic-volatility follows a square-root and mean-reverting diffusion process. Fourier transforms are applied to solve the problem for risk-neutral European option pricing under this compound stochastic-volatility jump-diffusion (SVJD) process. Characteristic formulas and their inverses simplified by integration along better equivalent contours are given. The numerical implementation of pricing formulas is accomplished by both fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) and more highly accurate discrete Fourier transforms (DFTs) for verifying results and for different output
Ibudilast, a Pharmacologic Phosphodiesterase Inhibitor, Prevents Human Immunodeficiency Virus-1 Tat-Mediated Activation of Microglial Cells

Human Immunodeficiency Virus-1 (HIV-1)-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) occur, in part, due to the inflammatory response to viral proteins, such as the HIV-1 transactivator of transcription (Tat), in the central nervous system (CNS). Given the need for novel adjunctive therapies for HAND, we hypothesized that ibudilast would inhibit Tat-induced excess production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNFα) in microglial cells. Ibudilast is a non-selective cyclic AMP phosphodiesterase inhibitor that has recently shown promise as a treatment for neuropathic pain via its ability to attenuate glial cell activation. Accordingly, here we demonstrate that pre-treatment of both human and mouse microglial cells with increasing doses of ibudilast inhibited Tat-induced synthesis of TNFα by microglial cells in a manner dependent on serine/threonine protein phosphatase activity. Ibudilast had no effect on Tat-induced p38 MAP kinase activation, and blockade of adenosine A2A receptor activation did not reverse ibudilast's inhibition of Tat-induced TNFα production. Interestingly, ibudilast reduced Tat-mediated transcription of TNFα, via modulation of nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) signaling, as shown by transcriptional activity of NF-κB and analysis of inhibitor of kappa B alpha (IκBα) stability. Together, our findings shed light on the mechanism of ibudilast's inhibition of Tat-induced TNFα production in microglial cells and may implicate ibudilast as a potential novel adjunctive therapy for the management of HAND.
Goal Setting as a Strategy for Health Behavior Change

This article discusses the beneficial effects of setting goals in health behavior change and maintenance interventions. Goal setting theory predicts that, under certain conditions, setting specific difficult goals leads to higher performance when compared with no goals or vague, nonquantitative goals, such as "do your best. " In contrast to the graduated, easy goals often set in health behavior change programs, goal setting theory asserts a positive linear relationship between degree of goal difficulty and level of performance. Research on goal setting has typically been conducted in organizational and laboratory settings. Although goal setting procedures are used in many health behavior change programs, they rarely have been the focus of systematic research. Therefore, many research questions still need to be answered regarding goal setting in the context of health behavior change. Finally, initial recommendations for the successful integration of goal setting theory in health behavior change programs are offered.
Security Analysis of Hardened Retina Based Fuzzy Vault

Biometric techniques are gaining importance for personal authentication and identification. Biometric templates are vulnerable to variety of attacks due to their inherent nature. When a person’s biometric is compromised his identity is lost. In contrast to password, biometric is not revocable. Therefore providing security to the stored biometric template is very crucial. Crypto biometric systems are authentication systems frame work, which blends the idea of cryptography and biometrics. Fuzzy vault is a proven crypto biometric construct which is used to secure the biometric templates. However fuzzy vault suffer from certain limitations like non-revocability, cross matching. Security of the fuzzy vault is affected by the non-uniform nature of the biometric data. Fuzzy vault when hardened with password overcomes these limitations. Password provides an additional layer of security and enhances user privacy. Retina has certain advantages over other biometric traits. Retinal scans are used in high-end security applications like access control to areas or rooms in military installations, power plants, and other high risk security areas. In the proposed method retina based fuzzy vault is hardened for achieving high level security. The proposed hardened retina based fuzzy vault is robust against stored biometric template attacks.
Clothes state recognition using 3D observed data

In this paper, we propose a deformable-model-driven method to recognize the state of hanging clothes using three-dimensional (3D) observed data. For the task to pick up a specific part of the clothes, it is indispensable to obtain the 3D position and posture of the part. In order to robustly obtain such information from 3D observed data of the clothes, we take a deformable-model-driven approach[4], that recognizes the clothes state by comparing the observed data with candidate shapes which are predicted in advance. To carry out this approach despite large shape variation of the clothes, we propose a two-staged method. First, small number of representative 3D shapes are calculated through physical simulations of hanging the clothes. Then, after observing clothes, each representative shape is deformed so as to fit the observed 3D data better. The consistency between the adjusted shapes and the observed data is checked to select the correct state. Experimental results using actual observations have shown the good prospect of the proposed method.
Physical experimentation with prefetching helper threads on Intel's hyper-threaded processors

Pre-execution techniques have received much attention as an effective way of prefetching cache blocks to tolerate the ever-increasing memory latency. A number of pre-execution techniques based on hardware, compiler, or both have been proposed and studied extensively by researchers. They report promising results on simulators that model a simultaneous multithreading (SMT) processor. We apply the helper threading idea on a real multithreaded machine, i.e., Intel Pentium 4 processor with hyper-threading technology, and show that indeed it can provide wall-clock speedup on real silicon. To achieve further performance improvements via helper threads, we investigate three helper threading scenarios that are driven by automated compiler infrastructure, and identify several key challenges and opportunities for novel hardware and software optimizations. Our study shows a program behavior changes dynamically during execution. In addition, the organizations of certain critical hardware structures in the hyper-threaded processors are either shared or partitioned in the multithreading mode and thus, the tradeoffs regarding resource contention can be intricate. Therefore, it is essential to judiciously invoke helper threads by adapting to the dynamic program behavior so that we can alleviate potential performance degradation due to resource contention. Moreover, since adapting to the dynamic behavior requires frequent thread synchronization, having light-weight thread synchronization mechanisms is important.
Meta-Analysis of Long-Chain Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids (LCω-3PUFA) and Prostate Cancer

We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to estimate the potential association between LCω-3PUFAs and prostate cancer (PC). A comprehensive literature search was performed through 2013 to identify prospective studies that examined dietary intakes of long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCω-3PUFA) or blood biomarkers of LCω-3PUFA status and risk of PC. Random-effects meta-analyses were conducted to generate summary relative risk estimates (SRREs) for LCω-3PUFAs and total PC, and by stage and grade. Subgroup analyses were also conducted for specific fatty acids and other study characteristics. Twelve self-reported dietary intake and 9 biomarker studies from independent study populations were included in the analysis, with 446,243 and 14,897 total participants, respectively. No association between LCω-3PUFAs and total PC was observed (SRRE = 1.00, 95% CI: 0.93–1.09) for the dietary intake studies (high vs. low LCω-3PUFAs category comparison) or for the biomarker studies (SRRE of 1.07, 95% CI: 0.94–1.20). In general, most summary associations for the dietary intake studies were in the inverse direction, whereas the majority of summary associations for the biomarker studies were in the positive direction, but all were weak in magnitude. The results from this meta-analysis do not support an association between LCω-3PUFAs and PC.
Patterns of sequence conservation at termini of long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons and DNA transposons in the human genome: lessons from phage Mu.

Long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons and DNA transposons are transposable elements (TEs) that perform cleavage and transfer at precise DNA positions. Here, we present statistical analyses of sequences found at the termini of precise TEs in the human genome. The results show that the terminal di- and trinucleotides of these TEs are highly conserved. 5'TG.CA3' occurs most frequently at the termini of LTR retrotransposons, while 5'CAG.CTG3' occurs most frequently in DNA transposons. Interestingly, these sequences are the most flexible base pair steps in DNA. Both the sequence preference and the degree of conservation of each position within the human LTR dinucleotide termini are remarkably similar to those experimentally demonstrated in transposable phage Mu. We discuss the significance of these observations and their implication for the function of terminal residues in the transposition of precise TEs.
An Expert Advisor for Photolithography

The Photolithography Advisor is a program for the diagnosis and correction of negative resist photolithography defects occurring during integrated circuit fabrication. Given a set of observed symptoms on a wafer, the Advisor diagnoses defects due to these symptoms and recommends corrective action for each. An early prototype of the program was tested in a research lab, where experimental ICs were processed. A more thorough experiment is now in progress to measure the system's performance in a manufacturing environment.
The Potential Impact on Farmer Health of Enhanced Export Horticultural Trade between the U.K. and Uganda

The export of vegetables from African countries to European markets presents consumers with an ethical dilemma: should they support local, but relatively well-off farmers, or poorer farmers from distant countries? This paper considers the issue of farm worker health in the U.K. and Uganda, and considers the dilemma facing U.K. consumers if Uganda achieves their aim of exporting more vegetables to the U.K. Self-reported health scores of 1,200 farm workers in the U.K. and Uganda were measured with the internationally recognised SF-36 questionnaire and compared to an international population norm. The age-corrected health status of U.K. farm workers was significantly lower than the population norm, whereas Ugandans scored significantly higher (indicating good health) for physical health and lower for mental health. If Ugandan produce enters U.K. markets, then consumers may wish to consider both the potential benefits that enhanced trade could offer Ugandan farmers compared with its impacts on U.K. workers.
Valsartan in the treatment of heart failure or left ventricular dysfunction after myocardial infarction

The physiological role of the renin angiotensin aldosterone system (RAAS) is to maintain the integrity of the cardiovascular system. The effect of angiotensin II is mediated via the angiotensin type I receptor (AT1) resulting in vasoconstriction, sodium retention and myocyte growth changes. This causes myocardial remodeling which eventually leads to left ventricular hypertrophy, dilation and dysfunction. Inhibition of the RAAS with angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors after acute myocardial infarction has been shown to reduce cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) specifically inhibit the AT1 receptor. It has not been known until the performance of the VALIANT (valsartan in acute myocardial infarction trial) whether blockade of the angiotensin receptor with an ARB or combination of an ACE inhibitor and ARB leads to similar outcomes as an ACE inhibitor. The VALIANT trial demonstrated equal efficacy and non-inferiority of the ARB valsartan 160 mg bid compared with captopril 50 mg tds, when administered to high risk patients with left ventricular dysfunction or heart failure in the immediate post myocardial infarction period. The combination therapy showed no incremental benefit over ACE inhibition or an ARB alone and resulted in increased adverse effects. This review examines the role of valsartan in left ventricular dysfunction post myocardial infarction. We also discuss pharmacokinetics, dosing, side effects, and usage in the elderly.
Estimate large motions using reliability-based dynamic programming

Detecting and estimating motions of fast moving objects has many important applications. However, most existing motion estimation techniques have difficulties in handling large motions in the scene. In this paper, the reliability-based dynamic programming technique proposed by Gong and Yang is extended and applied to large motion estimation problem. Compared with the Gong and Yang approach, the extended algorithm removes the constant penalty assumption and also explicitly enforces the inter-scanline consistency constraint. The experimental results indicate that the new algorithm can effectively estimate velocities for fast moving objects. The algorithm can also be configured to produce sparse but reliable flow fields.
Finding Communities of Practice from User Profiles Based on Folksonomies

User profiles can be used to identify persons inside a community with similar interests. Folksonomy systems allow users to individually tag the objects of a common set (e.g., web pages). In this paper, we propose to create user pro- files from the data available in such folksonomy systems by letting users specify the most relevant objects in the system. Instead of using the objects directly to represent the user profile, we propose to use the tags associated with the specified objects to build the user profile. We have designed a prototype for the research domain to use such tag-based profiles in finding persons with similar interests. The combination of tag-based profiles with standard recommender system tech- nology has resulted in a new kind of recommender system to recommend related publications, keywords, and persons. Especially the latter is useful to find persons to potentially cooperate with and to monitor the community to be able to enhance a user's current Community of Practice.
Mining educational data to improve students' performance: a case study

Educational data mining concerns with developing methods for discovering knowledge from data that come from educational domain. In this paper we used educational data mining to improve graduate students’ performance, and overcome the problem of low grades of graduate students. In our case study we try to extract useful knowledge from graduate students data collected from the college of Science and Technology – Khanyounis. The data include fifteen years period [1993-2007]. After preprocessing the data, we applied data mining techniques to discover association, classification, clustering and outlier detection rules. In each of these four tasks, we present the extracted knowledge and describe its importance in educational domain.
Contrastive Numerical Investigations on Thermo-Structural Behaviors in Mass Concrete with Various Cements

This work is a contrastive investigation of numerical simulations to improve the comprehension of thermo-structural coupled phenomena of mass concrete structures during construction. The finite element (FE) analysis of thermo-structural behaviors is used to investigate the applicability of supersulfated cement (SSC) in mass concrete structures. A multi-scale framework based on a homogenization scheme is adopted in the parameter studies to describe the nonlinear concrete behaviors. Based on the experimental data of hydration heat evolution rate and quantity of SSC and fly ash Portland cement, the hydration properties of various cements are studied. Simulations are run on a concrete dam section with a conventional method and a chemo-thermo-mechanical coupled method. The results show that SSC is more suitable for mass concrete structures from the standpoint of temperature control and crack prevention.
Easy PRAM-Based High-Performance Parallel Programming with ICE

Parallel machines have become more widely used. Unfortunately parallel programming technologies have advanced at a much slower pace except for regular programs. For irregular programs, this advancement is inhibited by high synchronization costs, non-loop parallelism, non-array data structures, recursively expressed parallelism and parallelism that is too fine-grained to be exploitable. We present ICE, a new parallel programming language that is easy-to-program, since: (i) ICE is a synchronous, lock-step language so there is no need for programmer-specified synchronization; (ii) for a PRAM algorithm its ICE program amounts to directly transcribing it; and (iii) the PRAM algorithmic theory offers unique wealth of parallel algorithms and techniques. We propose ICE to be a part of an ecosystem consisting of the XMT architecture, the PRAM algorithmic model, and ICE itself, that together deliver on the twin goal of easy programming and efficient parallelization of irregular programs. The XMT architecture, developed at UMD, can exploit fine-grained parallelism in irregular programs. We have built the ICE compiler which translates the ICE language into the multithreaded XMTC language; the significance of this is that multi-threading is a feature shared by practically all current scalable parallel programming languages thus providing a method to compile ICE code. As one indication of ease of programming, we observed a reduction in code size in 11 out of 16 benchmarks as compared to hand-optimized XMTC. For these programs, the average reduction in number of lines of code was 35.5 percent. The remaining 5 benchmarks had almost the same code size for both ICE and hand-optimized XMTC. Our main result is perhaps surprising: The run-time was comparable to XMTC with a 0.53 percent average gain for ICE across all benchmarks.
Workload assessment for mental arithmetic tasks using the task-evoked pupillary response

Pupillometry is a promising method for assessing mental workload and could be helpful in the optimization of systems that involve human-computer interaction. The present study focuses on replicating the pupil diameter study by Ahern (1978) for mental multiplications of varying difficulty, using an automatic remote eye tracker. Our results showed that the findings of Ahern were replicated and that the mean pupil diameter and mean pupil diameter change (MPDC) discriminated just as well between the three difficulty levels as did a self-report questionnaire of mental workload (NASA-TLX). A higher mean blink rate was observed during the multiplication period for the highest level of difficulty in comparison with the other two levels. Moderate to strong correlations were found between the MPDC and the proportion of incorrect responses, indicating that the MPDC was higher for participants with a lower performance. For practical applications, validity could be improved by combining pupillometry with other physiological techniques.
Quantification Bias Caused by Plasmid DNA Conformation in Quantitative Real-Time PCR Assay

Quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) is the gold standard for the quantification of specific nucleic acid sequences. However, a serious concern has been revealed in a recent report: supercoiled plasmid standards cause significant over-estimation in qPCR quantification. In this study, we investigated the effect of plasmid DNA conformation on the quantification of DNA and the efficiency of qPCR. Our results suggest that plasmid DNA conformation has significant impact on the accuracy of absolute quantification by qPCR. DNA standard curves shifted significantly among plasmid standards with different DNA conformations. Moreover, the choice of DNA measurement method and plasmid DNA conformation may also contribute to the measurement error of DNA standard curves. Due to the multiple effects of plasmid DNA conformation on the accuracy of qPCR, efforts should be made to assure the highest consistency of plasmid standards for qPCR. Thus, we suggest that the conformation, preparation, quantification, purification, handling, and storage of standard plasmid DNA should be described and defined in the Minimum Information for Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments (MIQE) to assure the reproducibility and accuracy of qPCR absolute quantification.