Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reduction-sensitive degradable micellar nanoparticles as smart and intuitive delivery systems for cancer chemotherapy

Introduction: Biodegradable micellar nanoparticles are one of the most promising platforms for targeted cancer chemotherapy. In particular, reduction-sensitive micellar nanoparticles that actively deliver and release drugs into cancer cells have recently appeared as an advanced drug release system. The in vitro and in vivo studies have pointed out that reduction-sensitive micellar drug formulations afford significantly enhanced antitumor activity as compared with ‘traditional' reduction-insensitive counterparts. Areas covered: This review provides an overview of recent advances in reduction-sensitive degradable micellar nanoparticles for triggered anticancer drug delivery. The design and preparation of reduction-sensitive micellar nanoparticles, redox-triggered in vitro and intracellular drug release, in vitro as well as in vivo antitumor performances of drug-loaded nanoparticles are discussed. Expert opinion: Reduction-sensitive degradable micellar nanoparticles with unique advantages of high stability against hydrolytic degradation, fast response to intracellular reducing environment and triggered drug release right in the cytosol and cell nucleus have demonstrated a tremendous potential in targeted and active intracellular delivery of potent and poorly soluble anticancer drugs. These intracellular-activatable fast drug releasing nanosystems may eventually be developed as ‘drug bomb' for effective treatment of various tumors including multidrug-resistant tumors.
Sovereign bond market and financial globalization

This PhD dissertation presents the analysis of the link between the government debt market, sovereign risk, financial stability and development of the local currency debt in emerging economies. The reserch contribution to the academic literature lies in the empirical analysis of capital flows in bond markets and, for this purpose, I constructed a novel database covering domestic and foreign holdings of government bonds in developed and emerging economies. As a result, this disertation projects a complete and coherent image of the globalisation of sovereign bond markets.
Patient-centered medical home features and expenditures by medicare beneficiaries.

OBJECTIVES To determine the impact of individual features of the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) care model on next-year healthcare expenditures including outpatient, inpatient, emergency department, pharmacy, and total healthcare expenditures among Medicare beneficiaries 65 years and older. STUDY DESIGN Analysis of retrospective longitudinal survey data. Methods Longitudinal files from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey were analyzed. Differences in expenditures for individuals whose usual sources of care did or did not have different PCMH features were estimated using recycled predictions from generalized linear regression models. RESULTS Having little to no difficulty contacting the regular source of care over the telephone during regular business hours was associated with significantly lower total and inpatient expenditures over the next year (differences of $2867 and $3736, respectively). Having a regular source of care with office hours at night or on weekends was associated with significantly lower outpatient, emergency department, and other expenditures (differences of $535, $103, and $328, respectively). Pharmacy expenditures were significantly higher for individuals whose usual source of care inquired about medications and treatments prescribed by other doctors (difference of $362). CONCLUSIONS This study points out the need to identify how individual PCMH features impact healthcare expenditures across different policy-relevant categories. Practices that have not fully adopted a PCMH model can still make progress in improving quality and controlling costs by adopting even some modest features of the PCMH model.
Bis(2,2′-bipyridine-κ2 N,N′)dichloridoplatinum(IV) dichloride monohydrate

In the title complex, [PtCl2(C10H8N2)2]Cl2·H2O, the Pt4+ ion is six-coordinated in a distorted octahedral environment by four N atoms from the two 2,2′-bipyridine ligands and two Cl atoms. As a result of the different trans influences of the N and Cl atoms, the Pt—N bonds trans to the Cl atom are slightly longer than those trans to the N atom. The compound displays intermolecular hydrogen bonding between the water molecule and the Cl anions. There are intermolecular π–π interactions between adjacent pyridine rings, with a centroid–centroid distance of 3.962 Å.
Enhanced Cosmetic Outcome with Running Horizontal Mattress Sutures

Background Cutaneous sutures should provide good wound eversion, firm closure, and cosmetically elegant results. Simple running sutures are commonly employed in cutaneous surgery but may not always be effective in achieving wound eversion. Objective We compared the cosmetic results of simple running nonabsorbable sutures with running horizontal mattress sutures in primary closures of facial defects. Methods Fifty-five patients with facial Mohs surgery defects appropriate for primary multilayer repair were randomized into one of two arms. Either the superior or the inferior half of the wound was closed with a running horizontal mattress suture. The other half of the wound was closed with a traditional simple running suture. At 1 week, 6 weeks, and 6 months, the cosmetically superior half of the wound, if any, was blindly determined by the investigators. Results The running horizontal mattress suture was significantly more cosmetically pleasing than the simple running suture. Forty-seven patients completed the study. At the 6-month follow-up, 25 patients did better with the horizontal suture and 5 did worse, and with 17 patients, there was no clinically perceptible difference. The 6-week scores predicted the outcome at 6 months, but the 1-week scores did not. Conclusions In primary closures of the face, the running horizontal mattress suture is a cosmetically elegant alternative to a traditional running cutaneous suture. The final scar appears smoother and flatter than those produced by traditional simple running sutures.
A verification methodology for prognostic algorithms

Prognosis is a fundamental enabling technique for condition-based maintenance (CBM) systems and prognostics and health management (PHM) systems and therefore, plays a critical role in the successful deployment of these systems. The purpose of prognosis is to predict the remaining useful life of a system/subsystem or a component when a fault is detected. Although different prognostic algorithms have been developed and tentatively applied to various mechanical and electrical systems in the past decade, the verification and validation (V&V) remains a challenging open problem. The difficulties lie in the facts that first, there is usually no statistically sufficient data to do V&V and second, there is no rigorous and general V&V framework available. In this paper, a verification methodology based on exact filtering and Monte Carlo method is proposed to verify a user defined particle-filtering based prognostic algorithm. The methodology is a general one that can be extended to verification of other prognostic algorithms straightforward. When statistically sufficient data are available, validation can be implemented under the similar framework. The verification methodology is demonstrated on the prognosis of a seeded-fault planetary helicopter gearbox carrier.
Global Inflation: The Role of Food, Housing and Energy Prices

This paper studies the role of global factors in causing common movements in consumer price inflation, with particular focus on the food, housing and energy sub-indices. It uses a comprehensive dataset of 223 countries and territories collected from national and international sources. Global factors explain a large share of the variance of national inflation rates for advanced countries - and more generally those with greater GDP per capita, financial development and central bank transparency - but not for middle and low income countries. Common factors explain a large share of the variance in food and energy prices.
Uneven Odds, Unequal Outcomes: Inequality of Opportunity in the Middle East and North Africa

Perceptions of eroding living standards and low life satisfaction are widespread in the Middle East and North Africa region today, along with pessimism about prospects for economic mobility. Conventional measures of economic well-being offer little in the way of explanation' in most countries in the region, extreme poverty is low and declining and economic inequality is lower than in other parts of the world. This book investigates possible reasons for this disconnect, focusing on the role played by inadequate and unequal access to opportunities to realize one's aspirations for economic mobility. The inability of most countries in the region to meet the aspirations of citizens is closely linked to persistent weaknesses in the labor markets where the pace of job creation has been chronically below levels required to absorb the growing and increasingly better educated population. A high degree of segmentation in the labor markets also puts the youth and women in the region at a particular disadvantage. While labor markets are critical for mobility, opportunities and life paths can diverge even earlier in life if access to basic services in health, education and infrastructure are unequally distributed among children in their formative years. This book documents sharp disparities in the quality of services available to children of varying birth circumstances in the region. Although the most intense debates in development coalesce around inequality of income or wealth, the notion of inequality of opportunity has an intuitive appeal that can bridge ideological differences. By drawing attention to the notion of equality of opportunity to create a level playing field for all sections of society, the book highlights the need to critically examine the social contract and governance structures that guide the delivery of services and are instrumental for implementing necessary reforms to make labor markets more dynamic and equitable.
Pandemic Influenza A (H1N1) Virus 2009 in a Prospectively Followed Cohort of Prematurely Born Infants

The hospitalization rate for pandemic influenza A (H1N1)v 2009 of 150 prospectively followed, prematurely born infants did not differ significantly from that of term-born infants from the same geographical area (0.7% vs. 0.07%, P = 0.12), but was higher for other viral lower respiratory tract infections (5.3% vs. 0.6%, P < 0.0001). Pandemic influenza A H1N1immunization uptake in the prematurely born infants was low (9.3%).
Crowdsourcing for Search System Design : Feasibility of Scalable Search for Disaster Victims

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) equipped with video cameras are used in current search system designs to detect disaster victims shortly after natural disasters such as an earthquake or tsunami. These search systems gather disaster information as a video feed, followed by real-time information processing by either a single human searcher or a computer vision algorithm. These search systems are effective but are geographically limited to searching over small regions relative to vast scale of a natural disaster. To address this limitation, we propose a scalable search strategy using a large, untrained crowd of volunteers for information processing of video feeds from UAV teams. An experiment is conducted comparing the detection accuracy for different video feed altitudes between a single human searcher, a crowd of searchers, and a computer vision algorithm. Our results show crowdsourcing may indeed enable scalable information processing of search system designs, as large and untrained crowds are able to match or outperform both single human searchers and the computer vision algorithm at appropriate video feed altitudes. These findings are a first step towards developing scalable information processing of search system designs, thus enabling search over vast regions of disaster-affected area.
Gene Expression Programming Software Application for High Energy Physics Data Analysis

Gene Expression Programming is an evolutionary algorithm developed in 2001. For a number of benchmark applications, it is a few order of magnitude more efficient that the better known genetic algorithms and genetic programming. The algorithm was recently successfully tested in particle physics for signal and background classification. The present paper presents a software implementation of this algorithm, adequate for the analysis of particle physics data.
Priming with Chlamydia trachomatis Major Outer Membrane Protein (MOMP) DNA followed by MOMP ISCOM Boosting Enhances Protection and Is Associated with Increased Immunoglobulin A and Th1 Cellular Immune Responses

ABSTRACT We previously reported that DNA vaccination was able to elicit cellular immune responses and partial protection againstChlamydia trachomatis infection. However, DNA immunization alone did not generate immune responses or protection as great as that induced by using live organisms. In this study, we evaluated the immunologic effects of a combinational vaccination approach usingC. trachomatis mouse pneumonitis (MoPn) major outer membrane protein (MOMP) DNA priming followed by boosting with immune-stimulating complexes (ISCOM) of MOMP protein (MOMP ISCOM) for protection of BALB/c mice against MoPn lung infection. Substantially better protection to challenge infection was observed in mice given combinational vaccination compared with mice given MOMP ISCOM immunization alone, and the protection approximated that induced by live organisms. Enhanced protection was correlated with stronger delayed-type hypersensitivity, higher levels of gamma interferon production, and increased immunoglobulin A antibody responses in lung homogenates. The results indicate that DNA priming followed by ISCOM protein boosting may be useful in designing a fully protective chlamydial vaccine.
Eddy-Current Simulations Using an Independent Impedance Method in Anisotropic Biological Tissues

A widely applied method for simulating the induced eddy currents in biological tissues is the impedance method (IM). This method has recently been extended to the independent impedance method (IIM), which identifies and solves a linear system of independent equations, resulting in acceleration of computations. Both IM and IIM assume isotropic material properties, even though some tissues have directionally dependent characteristics. Therefore, we formulate IIM toward space-dependent anisotropic material properties. In this paper, the method is applied to the simulation of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for both isotropic and anisotropic spherical head models. The numerical results show that anisotropy has a nonnegligible effect on the induced currents, yielding maximum differences of about 40% in the skull and 19% in gray matter. The method is validated by comparing the results with finite element method (FEM) solutions. This study leads to a more realistic numerical modeling of the eddy currents due to the incorporation of anisotropy.
From 'Blockchain Hype' to a Real Business Case for Financial Markets

There has been a huge amount of coverage in the press about the great potential uses of bitcoin-related technology for financial markets, such as improvements in efficiency. In addition to the supporters of blockchain, many have been critical of its real-life applications within the business world and suggest that what we are witnessing is nothing short of “blockchain hype,” and that this technology can only be applied to bitcoins. This paper will demonstrate that there are real business cases for improving financial markets based on the lessons learned from cryptocurrencies, but, unlike what the hype-enthusiasts suggest, they are not application of a technology to the existing business models within financial markets. They are reforms of the business model itself. What needs to be exported from the world of cryptocurrencies are aspects of the market organization, inspiration for a different accounting and legal system, and some aspects of the technology. These can result in a huge contribution towards more robust, efficient, and stable markets. However, the process cannot be immediate and effortless, and can only be achieved within a market-wide strategic perspective. In this paper, I develop these concepts initially within a parallel analysis of cryptocurrencies and financial markets. Then, I will focus on a specific business case regarding the collateralization of financial derivatives, which will highlight quantifiable benefits in terms of reducing costs, capital, and risk. It is an example of a situation where the use of cryptocurrency technology is not more important than the business ideas developed in the analysis of cryptocurrencies; yet it was inconceivable prior to the advent of distributed ledgers, smart contracts, and oracles
Reforming institutional responses to violence against women

Battering has been described as an example of the total institution (Avni, 1991), within which batterers use violence, threats of violence, isolation, and other tactics of abuse to enforce compliance with their rules. Battering has well-documented physical, psychological, social, and economic consequences for women. It flourishes within the batterer-enforced privacy of the home. When it does come to the attention of outsiders, it is too often disregarded or trivialised – even when women seek protection through the justice system. In effect, this form of violence against women continues because it works. Drawing on both the literature and my own research, I argue that although there are various positive initiatives, single interventions are rarely enough to successfully breach the walls of the total institution and provide the resources needed for women to live independently of the men who batter them. Refuges (shelters) and advocacy programmes for women, stopping violence programmes for men, criminal justice policies mandating the arrest and prosecution of batterers, and the availability of civil-law remedies for battered women none of these has proved to be the “magic bullet” (Buzawa & Buzawa, 1993b) which will, of itself, end battering. This is hardly surprising considering the resilience of the total institution and the multiple resources battered women require if they are to exercise a presumed choice to leave the batterer. I argue that a more comprehensive approach is needed in which multiple interventions are delivered in a consistent and co-ordinated manner with the twin objectives of (a) enhancing the safety and autonomy of women and (b) holding men accountable for their use of violence. Within the justice system, this can be achieved by legislative and administrative reforms which reduce the ability of decision makers to exercise discretion in woman-blaming and batterer-colluding ways, which ensure that there is a common set of priorities across agencies, which provide for the sharing of safety-relevant information between agencies and which include mechanisms for battered women’s advocates to monitor institutional practices so that decision makers can, in effect, be held accountable to battered women.
Risk Analysis of Deep Sternal Wound Infections and Their Impact on Long-Term Survival: A Propensity Analysis

The objectives of this study are to determine risk factors associated with deep sternal wound infections (DSWIs) following cardiac surgery, and to describe their impact on long-term survival. Data was obtained from a departmental database. Analysis included 7,978 consecutive patients who underwent cardiac surgery between 1997 and 2003. To identify risk factors for DSWI, regression analysis was performed. The probability scores obtained from logistic regression were used for propensity analysis of 2 groups. Kaplan-Meier analysis with log-rank test and Cox proportional hazard models were then used in survival analysis. DSWI developed in 123 of 7,978 patients (1.5%). Preoperative predictors of DSWI were body mass index >30 kg/m2 (odds ratio [OR], 1.6; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.1 to 2.4; P < 0.05), diabetes mellitus (OR, 2.4; 95% CI, 1.6 to 3.4; P < 0.001), urgent operation (OR, 1.7; 95% CI, 1.2 to 2.6; P < 0.05), smoking history within past year (OR, 2.7; 95% CI, 1.5 to 4.9; P < 0.001), smoking history within past 2 weeks (OR, 2.6; 95% CI, 1.5 to 4.5; P < 0.001), and a history of stroke (OR, 1.9; 95% CI, 1.1 to 3.1; P < 0.005). In addition, total length of hospital stay (OR, 1.01; 95% CI, 1.01 to 1.02; P < 0.05) and sepsis and/or endocarditis following surgery (OR, 5.1; 95% CI, 2.9 to 9.0; P < 0.001) were also predictive of DSWI. Patients with DSWI had a prolonged total length of hospital stay (40.3 days versus 16.1 days; P < 0.001), and higher 30-day mortality (1.6% versus 7.3% in DSWI group, P < 0.05). There were no differences between groups in 4-year and 8-year survival rates, with 77.2% and 61.8%, respectively, in patients with DSWI compared with 78.0% and 67.5% in patients without DSWI (P = 0.16). After adjustments for preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative factors, the adjusted hazard ratio of long-term mortality for patients with DSWI was 0.9 (95% CI, 0.6 to 1.2, P = 0.39). Though DSWIs are associated with increased early mortality, patients undergoing cardiac surgery complicated by DSWI do not experience worse long-term survival.
Knocking Out Cytosolic Cysteine Synthesis Compromises the Antioxidant Capacity of the Cytosol to Maintain Discrete Concentrations of Hydrogen Peroxide in Arabidopsis1[W]

Plant cells contain different O-acetylserine(thiol)lyase (OASTL) enzymes involved in cysteine (Cys) biosynthesis and located in different subcellular compartments. These enzymes are made up of a complex variety of isoforms resulting in different subcellular Cys pools. To unravel the contribution of cytosolic Cys to plant metabolism, we characterized the knockout oas-a1.1 and osa-a1.2 mutants, deficient in the most abundant cytosolic OASTL isoform in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). Total intracellular Cys and glutathione concentrations were reduced, and the glutathione redox state was shifted in favor of its oxidized form. Interestingly, the capability of the mutants to chelate heavy metals did not differ from that of the wild type, but the mutants have an enhanced sensitivity to cadmium. With the aim of establishing the metabolic network most influenced by the cytosolic Cys pool, we used the ATH1 GeneChip for evaluation of differentially expressed genes in the oas-a1.1 mutant grown under nonstress conditions. The transcriptomic footprints of mutant plants had predicted functions associated with various physiological responses that are dependent on reactive oxygen species and suggested that the mutant was oxidatively stressed. Evidences that the mutation caused a perturbation in H2O2 homeostasis are that, in the knockout, H2O2 production was localized in shoots and roots; spontaneous cell death lesions occurred in the leaves; and lignification and guaiacol peroxidase activity were significantly increased. All these findings indicate that a deficiency of OAS-A1 in the cytosol promotes a perturbation in H2O2 homeostasis and that Cys is an important determinant of the antioxidative capacity of the cytosol in Arabidopsis.