Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Superior Glucose Tolerance and Metabolomic Profiles, Independent of Adiposity, in HIV-Infected Women Compared With Men on Antiretroviral Therapy

AbstractIn epidemiologic studies, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected men on antiretroviral therapy (ART) are at higher risk of incident diabetes mellitus compared with women with similar treatment histories. We used metabolomics to determine whether a sex difference in plasma amino acids, acylcarnitines, and organic acids predictive of diabetes and impaired energy metabolism is present in HIV-infected persons on long-term ART.We enrolled 70 HIV-infected adults (43% women) on efavirenz, tenofovir, and emtricitabine (Atripla) with HIV-1 RNA <50 copies/mL for over 2 years. Half of the HIV-infected subjects were obese, and these were matched with 30 obese HIV-negative controls. All subjects had no history of diabetes, statin use, or heavy alcohol use. Fasting insulin sensitivity was measured using homeostatic model assessment 2 (HOMA2), and adipose tissue was measured using dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA). Liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry was used to quantitate fasting plasma branched chain and aromatic amino acids predictive of incident diabetes, and C3 and C5 acylcarnitinines and organic acids indicative of impaired energy metabolism.HIV-infected women had more baseline risk factors for insulin resistance: women were older (46 vs 44 years) and had a longer ART duration (8.4 vs 5.1 years, P < 0.05 for both) compared with men but had similar CD4+ count (median 701 cells/&mgr;L), smoking and hepatic C prevalence, and body mass index (BMI) (median 30.3 kg/m2). However, women had higher insulin sensitivity compared with men (P < 0.01), and lower plasma levels of isoleucine, leucine, valine, phenylalanine, and tyrosine (P < 0.01 for all), and lower C3 and C5 acylcarnitines (P < 0.01 for all), in multivariable regression models after adjusting for DEXA fat mass index, age, race, CD4+ count, smoking, and ART duration. In the obese HIV-infected subjects and HIV-negative controls, the relationship of sex and plasma metabolite levels did not significantly differ according to HIV-status.HIV-infected women on non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor-based ART had superior glucose tolerance and lower plasma metabolites associated with the development of diabetes compared with men with similar metabolic disease risk profiles. The relationship between sex and plasma metabolite levels did not significantly differ according to HIV-status among obese subjects, suggesting the observed sex-differences may not be specific to HIV infection.
Error Modeling and Estimation Fusion for Indoor Localization

There has been much interest in offering multimedia location-based service (LBS) to indoor users (e.g., sending video/audio streams according to user locations). Offering good LBS largely depends on accurate indoor localization of mobile stations (MSs). To achieve that, in this paper we first model and analyze the error characteristics of important indoor localization schemes, using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Wi-Fi. Our models are simple to use, capturing important system parameters and measurement noises, and quantifying how they affect the accuracies of the localization. Given that there have been many indoor localization techniques deployed, an MS may receive simultaneously multiple co-existing estimations on its location. Equipped with the understanding of location errors, we then investigate how to optimally combine, or fuse, all the co-existing estimations of an MS's location. We present computationally-efficient closed-form expressions to fuse the outputs of the estimators. Simulation and experimental results show that our fusion technique achieves higher location accuracy in spite of location errors in the estimators.
ClusterTree: Integration of Cluster Representation and Nearest-Neighbor Search for Large Data Sets with High Dimensions

We introduce the ClusterTree, a new indexing approach for representing clusters generated by any existing clustering approach. A cluster is decomposed into several subclusters and represented as the union of the subclusters. The subclusters can be further decomposed, which isolates the most related groups within the clusters. A ClusterTree is a hierarchy of clusters and subclusters which incorporates the cluster representation into the index structure to achieve effective and efficient retrieval. Our cluster representation is highly adaptive to any kind of cluster. It is well accepted that most existing indexing techniques degrade rapidly as the dimensions increase. The ClusterTree provides a practical solution to index clustered data sets and supports the retrieval of the nearest-neighbors effectively without having to linearly scan the high-dimensional data set. We also discuss an approach to dynamically reconstruct the ClusterTree when new data is added. We present the detailed analysis of this approach and justify it extensively with experiments.
On-the-Fly Audio Source Separation—A Novel User-Friendly Framework

This paper addresses the challenging problem of single-channel audio source separation. We introduce a novel user-guided framework where source models that govern the separation process are learned on-the-fly from audio examples retrieved online. The user only provides the search keywords that describe the sources in the mixture. In this framework, the generic spectral characteristics of each source are modeled by a universal sound class model learned from the retrieved examples via nonnegative matrix factorization. We propose several group sparsity-inducing constraints in order to efficiently exploit a relevant subset of the universal model adapted to the mixture to be separated. We then derive the corresponding multiplicative update rules for parameter estimation. Separation results obtained from automated and user tests on mixtures containing various types of sounds confirm the effectiveness of the proposed framework.
A Probabilistic Model-Based Approach to Consistent White Matter Tract Segmentation

Since the invention of diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI), currently the only established method for studying white matter connectivity in a clinical environment, there has been a great deal of interest in the effects of various pathologies on the connectivity of the brain. As methods for in vivo tractography have been developed, it has become possible to track and segment specific white matter structures of interest for particular study. However, the consistency and reproducibility of tractography-based segmentation remain limited, and attempts to improve them have thus far typically involved the imposition of strong constraints on the tract reconstruction process itself. In this work we take a different approach, developing a formal probabilistic model for the relationships between comparable tracts in different scans, and then using it to choose a tract, a posteriori, which best matches a predefined reference tract for the structure of interest. We demonstrate that this method is able to significantly improve segmentation consistency without directly constraining the tractography algorithm.
Downregulation of gap junction expression and function by endoplasmic reticulum stress

Gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC) plays a critical role in the control of multiple cell behavior as well as in the maintenance of tissue and organ homeostasis. However, mechanisms involved in the regulation of gap junctions (GJs) have not been fully understood. Given endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and dysfunction of GJs coexist in several pathological situations, we asked whether GJs could be regulated by ER stress. Incubation of mesangial cells with ER stress‐inducing agents (thapsigargin, tunicamycin, and AB5 subtilase cytotoxin) resulted in a decrease in connexin 43 (Cx43) expression at both protein and mRNA levels. This was accompanied by a loss of GJIC, as evidenced by the reduced numbers of dye‐coupled cells after single cell microinjection or scrape loading dye transfer. Further studies demonstrated that ER stress significantly inhibited the promoter activity of the Cx43 gene, reduced [35S]‐methionine incorporation into Cx43 protein and accelerated degradation of Cx43. ER stress also decreased the Cx43 protein levels in several different cell types, including human umbilical vein endothelial cells, mouse‐derived renin‐secreting cells and human hepatoma cells. Furthermore, induction of ER stress by hypoxic chemicals thenoyltrifluoroacetone and cobalt chloride was found to be associated with a reduction in Cx43. Our findings thus reveal a close link between ER stress and GJs. ER stress may represent a novel mechanism underlying the altered GJs in a variety of pathological situations. J. Cell. Biochem. 107: 973–983, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Two Are Better Than One: Adaptive Sparse System Identification Using Affine Combination of Two Sparse Adaptive Filters

Sparse system identification problems often exist in many applications, such as echo interference cancellation, sparse channel estimation, and adaptive beamforming. One of popular adaptive sparse system identification (ASSI) methods is adopting only one sparse least mean square (LMS) filter. However, the adoption of only one sparse LMS filter cannot simultaneously achieve fast convergence speed and small steady-state mean state deviation (MSD). Unlike the conventional method, we propose an improved ASSI method using affine combination of two sparse LMS filters to simultaneously achieving fast convergence and low steady-state MSD. First, problem formulation and standard affine combination of LMS filters are introduced. Then an approximate optimum affine combiner is adopted for the proposed filter according to stochastic gradient search method. Later, to verify the proposed filter for ASSI, computer simulations are provided to confirm effectiveness of the proposed filter which can achieve better estimation performance than the conventional one and standard affine combination of LMS filters.
Cremophor RH40-PEG 400 microemulsions as transdermal drug delivery carrier for ketoprofen

The aim of this study was to prepare novel microemulsion for transdermal drug delivery of ketoprofen (KP). The microemulsion composed of ketoprofen as model drug, isopropyl myristate (IPM) as oil phase, surfactant mixture consisting of polyoxyl 40 hydrogenated castor oil (Cremophor RH40) as surfactant and polyethylene glycol 400 (PEG400) as co-surfactant at the ratio 1:1, and water were prepared. The viscosity, droplet size, pH, conductivity of microemulsions, and skin permeation of KP through shed snake skin were evaluated. The particle size, pH, viscosity and conductivity of microemulsions were in the range of 114–210 nm, 6.3–6.8, 124–799 cPs and 1–45 µS/cm, respectively. The ratio of IPM, and surfactant mixture played the important role in the skin permeation of KP microemulsions. As the amount of surfactant mixture and IPM increased, the skin permeation of KP decreased. The formulation composed of 30% IPM, 45% surfactant mixture and 25% water showed the highest skin permeation flux. The incorporation of terpenes in the 2.5% KP microemulsions resulted in significant enhancement in skin permeation of KP. The rank order of enhancement ratio for skin permeation enhancement of terpenes was α-pinene > limonene > menthone. The results suggested that the novel microemulsion system containing IPM, water, Cremophor RH40:PEG400 and terpenes can be applied for using as a transdermal drug delivery carrier.
Deriving recommendations in clinical practice guidelines

Is monitoring clinical outcomes in primary care possible and, if so, is it worthwhile? Several arguments can be readily raised against monitoring outcomes in primary care. Many patients attending primary care have minor self-limiting illnesses, and the only outcomes that might be of interest for monitoring would be significant adverse events such as drug reactions. At the practice or practitioner level the numbers of patients with significant disorders are small, and distinguishing the impact of variations in quality of care from case mix and random variation is difficult. Research evidence is often incomplete and the relationship between the process of care and its outcome is not well established. The interval between the delivery of healthcare interventions and eventual outcome can be many years, as in the case of illness prevention strategies. Primary care is provided by teams, and it is frequently impossible to ascribe a particular outcome to the care provided by an individual doctor or nurse. Some family doctors …
View enhancement in stereo streams assisted by object model

Object registration between virtual model and real object in image sequences is a challenging task. With partial reconstruction of the real object from binocular images, we approach the problem in a 3D-3D way. The system we developed includes three major components: reconstruction, 3D-3D object registration and visual augmentation from object models. For reconstruction, a perspective stereo-motion based approach is used to recover the projective depths of features, a surface smoothing algorithm of moving least squares under perspective assumption enhances the accuracy of the reconstructions. For 3D-3D object registration, we use model template search to obtain an initial guess of the pose transformation from the model to image data, then Iterative Closest Point algorithm is applied to refine the initial guess. Experiments on real sequences show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
SOCIAL SCIENCE KNOWLEDGE AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

What role does culture play in the process of economic development? Economists have been reluctant to incorporate cultural endowments, or cultural change, in their models of economic development. Anthropologists have been critical of economic theory for avoiding the role of culture. But they have provided very little insight into how culture should be taken into account (Bardhan 1989; Harrison and Huntington 2000). In the previous chapter I have presented a model of the dialectical relationships among changes in cultural endowments, resource endowments, technology and institutions (Fig. 1.1). In this chapter an attempt will be made to explore in greater depth the relationships between cultural endowments and economic development. 1 I first review the efforts of a number of development economists to draw on the anthropological literature in an attempt to understand the role of cultural endowments and cultural change in the process of economic development. I then explore the potential value of a deeper mining of the anthropological literature for economists who would like to incorporate the role of cultural endowments, and of cultural change, into the analysis of the processes of economic development or the design of development institutions. Economists have made substantial contributions to our understanding of the sources of technical and institutional change. But, until recently, they have given relatively little attention to the role of cultural endowments or cultural change in economic development. To the extent that cultural endowments are considered at all by economists they tend to be subsumed under the concept of tastes. And tastes, even more than technology and institutions, have traditionally been regarded as not subject to economic analysis. 2 At an intuitive level I have little difficulty in accepting the view that cultural endowments, including religion and ideology, exert at least some influence on the supply of institutional innovation. Cultural endowments can make some forms of institutional change less costly to establish and can impose severe costs on others. It has been argued, for example, that the traditional moral obligation in the Japanese village community to cooperate in communal infrastructure maintenance has made it less costly to implement rural development programs than in societies lacking such traditions (Ishakawa 1981). In Northern Italy dense networks of social institutions—ranging from choral societies to soccer clubs—some with traditions running back to the late Middle Ages, have contributed to the effectiveness of recent reforms in regional governance (Putnam 1993). The traditional patterns of cooperation have …
On the reduced North Atlantic storminess during the last glacial period: the role of topography in shaping synoptic eddies

The North Atlantic storminess of Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) fully coupled climate simulations is generally less intense than that of their pre-industrial (PI) counterparts, despite having stronger baroclinicity. An explanation for this counterintuitive result is presented by comparing two simulations of the IPSL full climate model forced by PMIP3 (Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project Phase 3) LGM and PI conditions. Two additional numerical experiments using a simplified dry general circulation model forced by idealized topography and a relaxation in temperature provide guidance for the dynamical interpretation. The forced experiment with idealized Rockies and idealized Laurentide Ice Sheet has a less intense North Atlantic storm-track activity than the forced experiment with idealized Rockies only, despite similar baroclinicity. Both the climate and idealized runs satisfy or support the following statements. The reduced storm-track intensity can be explained by a reduced baroclinic conversion which itself comes from a loss in eddy efficiency to tap the available potential energy as shown by energetic budgets. The eddy heat fluxes are northeastward oriented in the western Atlantic in LGM and are less well aligned with the mean temperature gradient than in PI. The southern slope of the Laurentide Ice Sheet topography forces the eddy geopotential isolines to be zonally oriented at low levels in its proximity. This distorts the tubes of constant eddy geopotential in such a way that they tilt northwestward with height during baroclinic growth in LGM while they are more optimally westward tilted in PI.
Multiple test set generation method for LFSR-based BIST

In this paper we propose a new reseeding method for LFSR-based test pattern generation suitable for circuits with random pattern resistant faults. The character of our method is that the proposed test pattern generator (TPG) can work both in normal LFSR mode, to generate pseudorandom test vectors, and in jumping mode to make the TPG jump from a state to the required state (seed of next group). Experimental results indicate that its superiority against other known reseeding techniques with respect to the length of the test sequence and the required area overhead.
Detection of Murine Norovirus-1 by Using TAT Peptide-Delivered Molecular Beacons

ABSTRACT A TAT peptide-delivered molecular beacon was developed and utilized to enumerate murine norovirus 1, a human norovirus (NoV) surrogate, in RAW 264.7 cells. This allowed the detection of a single infective virus within 6 h, a 12-fold improvement in time required for viral detection and quantification compared to that required by the conventional plaque assay.
Local Driving in Higher-Order Positive Supercompilation via the Ω-theorem

A program transformation technique should terminate, return efficient output programs and be efficient itself. These requirements are mutually conflicting, so a balance must be sought between definite termination and possible efficiency. For positive supercompilation [17], ensuring termination requires memoisation of expressions, and these are subsequently used to determine when to perform generalization and folding [16]. For a first-order language, every infinite sequence of transformation steps must include function unfolding, so it is sufficient to memoise only those expressions immediately prior to a function unfolding step. However, for a higher-order language, it is possible for an expression to have an infinite sequence of transformation steps which do not include function unfolding, so memoisation prior to a function unfolding step is not sufficient by itself to ensure termination. But memoising additional expressions is expensive during transformation and may lead to less efficient output programs due to auxiliary functions. This additional memoisation may happen explicitly during transformation or implicitly via a pre-processing transformation as outlined in previous work by the first author [5]. We introduce a new technique for local driving in higher-order positive supercompilation which obliviates the need for memoising other expressions than function unfolding steps, thereby improving efficiency of both the transformation and the generated programs. We exploit the fact, due to the second author in the setting of type-free λ-calculus [20] known as the Ω-theorem, that every expression with an infinite sequence of transformation steps not involving function unfolding must have the term Ω = (λx.x x) (λx.x x) embedded within it in a certain sense. The technique has proven useful on a host of examples.
Validation and Application of the Modified Satellite-Based Priestley-Taylor Algorithm for Mapping Terrestrial Evapotranspiration

Satellite-based vegetation indices (VIs) and Apparent Thermal Inertia (ATI) derived from temperature change provide valuable information for estimating evapotranspiration (LE) and detecting the onset and severity of drought. The modified satellite-based Priestley-Taylor (MS-PT) algorithm that we developed earlier, coupling both VI and ATI, is validated based on observed data from 40 flux towers distributed across the world on all continents. The validation results illustrate that the daily LE can be estimated with the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) varying from 10.7 W/m2 to 87.6 W/m2, and with the square of correlation coefficient (R2) from 0.41 to 0.89 (p < 0.01). Compared with the Priestley-Taylor-based LE (PT-JPL) algorithm, the MS-PT algorithm improves the LE estimates at most flux tower sites. Importantly, the MS-PT algorithm is also satisfactory in reproducing the inter-annual variability at flux tower sites with at least five years of data. The R2 between measured and predicted annual LE anomalies is 0.42 (p = 0.02). The MS-PT algorithm is then applied to detect the variations of long-term terrestrial LE over Three-North Shelter Forest Region of China and to monitor global land surface drought. The MS-PT algorithm described here demonstrates the ability to map regional terrestrial LE and identify global soil moisture stress, without requiring precipitation information.