Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
HIV Infection Enhances TRAIL-Induced Cell Death in Macrophage by Down-Regulating Decoy Receptor Expression and Generation of Reactive Oxygen Species

Background Tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) could induce apoptosis of HIV-1-infected monocyte-derived macrophage (MDM), but the molecular mechanisms are not well understood. Methodology/Principal Findings By using an HIV-1 Env-pseudotyped virus (HIV-1 PV)-infected MDM cell model we demonstrate that HIV-1 PV infection down-regulates the expression of TRAIL decoy receptor 1 (DcR1) and 2 (DcR2), and cellular FLICE-inhibitory protein (c-FLIP), but dose not affect the expression of death receptor 4 and 5 (DR4, DR5), and Bcl-2 family members in MDM cells. Furthermore, recombinant soluble TRAIL and an agonistic anti-DR5 antibody, AD5-10, treatment stimulates reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation and JNK phosphorylation. Conclusions/Significance HIV infection facilitates TRIAL-induced cell death in MDM by down-regulating the expression of TRAIL decoy receptors and intracellular c-FLIP. Meanwhile, the agonistic anti-DR5 antibody, AD5-10, induces apoptosis synergistically with TRAIL in HIV-1-infected cells. ROS generation and JNK phosphorylation are involved in this process. These findings potentiate clinical usage of the combination of TRAIL and AD5-10 in eradication of HIV-infected macrophage and AIDS.
Fast Computation of Isochrones in Road Networks

We study the problem of computing isochrones in road networks, where the objective is to identify the region that is reachable from a given source within a certain amount of time. While there is a wide range of practical applications for this problem (e.g., reachability analyses, geomarketing, visualizing the cruising range of a vehicle), there has been little research on fast computation of isochrones on large, realistic inputs. In this work, we formalize the notion of isochrones in road networks and present a basic approach for the resulting problem based on Dijkstra's algorithm. Moreover, we consider several speedup techniques that are based on previous approaches for one-to-many shortest path computation (or similar scenarios). In contrast to such related problems, the set of targets is not part of the input when computing isochrones. We extend known Multilevel Dijkstra techniques (such as CRP) to the isochrone scenario, adapting a previous technique called isoGRASP to our problem setting (thereby, enabling faster queries). Moreover, we introduce a family of algorithms based on (single-level) graph partitions, following different strategies to exploit the efficient access patterns of PHAST, a well-known approach towards one-to-all queries. Our experimental study reveals that all speedup techniques allow fast isochrone computation on input graphs at continental scale, while providing different tradeoffs between preprocessing effort, space consumption, and query performance. Finally, we demonstrate that all techniques scale well when run in parallel, decreasing query times to a few milliseconds (orders of magnitude faster than the basic approach) and enabling even interactive applications.
Ambient occlusion in screen-space for mesostructure objects

In the traditional ambient occlusion algorithm for microstructures, the determination of occlusion is a time-consuming task. To improve the rendering speed, the paper proposes a screen-based ambient occlusion method. By using off-screen technique, only the visible points are used to determine the occlusion. Using the depth texture of the whole scene, the size of ambient occlusion can be quickly computed by the maximum of the block angle. The whole scene can be rendered using the deferred shading technology. Experimental results show that our method is more efficient than the available methods on computing the ambient occlusion. It does not need any pre-processing, and the time used for ambient occlusion determination is less than other methods.
Detecting Low Concentrations of Airborne Asp / Pen Spores and Aspergillus Spp . in HEPA-Filtered Hospital Air Using Filtration , Microscopy and qPCR Analysis September

A sampling protocol is described for detecting low concentrations of both airborne spores and fungi in HEPA-filtered hospital air. The 25 mm Bi-Air (BA) filter cassette was used to collect duplicate sample traces on 25 mm mixed cellulose ester (MCE) filters, concentrating the sample by a factor of 20.6 compared to standard 25 mm cassettes. One sample trace was analyzed for Asp/Pen-like spores by microscopy at 600X magnification. The second duplicate sample trace was aechived; and submitted for quantitative PCR (qPCR) analysis if Asp/Pen-like spores were detected. Microscopy provided a rapid method for pre-screening critical-care areas of healthcare facilities for Asp/Pen-like spores. The qPCR method identified Asp/Pen-like spores with sufficient sensitivity to detect Aspergillus spp. at the concentrations routinely collected in HEPAfiltered hospital air. MCE filters were suitable for the detection of low concentrations of fungal spores when the samples were analyzed by both microscopy and qPCR. The results for microscopy were equivalent to qPCR in the range of 10-42 spores/sample and 10-263 spore equivalents (sp-eq) per sample, with a coefficient of correlation (r-value) of 0.99. Samples were collected in operating rooms, intensive care units, post-operative recovery, and surgical support areas of seven hospitals. The geometric mean (GM) concentrations for Asp/Pen-like spores ranged from 0.8 spores/m to 2.8 spores/m by microscopy and from 1 sp-eq/m to 225 sp-eq/m by qPCR. The method was successfully used for baseline sampling, incident investigation, and postremediation clearance sampling. Following development of the method, the field samples were routinely submitted to a commercial laboratory for microscopic analysis.
Clopidogrel Loading With Eptifibatide to Arrest the Reactivity of Platelets: Results of the Clopidogrel Loading With Eptifibatide to Arrest the Reactivity of Platelets (CLEAR PLATELETS) Study

Background—Pretreatment is not the most common strategy practiced for clopidogrel administration in elective coronary stenting. Moreover, limited information is available on the antiplatelet pharmacodynamics of a 300-mg versus a 600-mg clopidogrel loading dose, and the comparative effect of eptifibatide with these regimens is unknown. Methods and Results—Patients undergoing elective stenting (n=120) were enrolled in a 2×2 factorial study (300 mg clopidogrel with or without eptifibatide; 600 mg clopidogrel with or without eptifibatide) (Clopidogrel Loading With Eptifibatide to Arrest the Reactivity of Platelets [CLEAR PLATELETS] Study). Clopidogrel was administered immediately after stenting. Aggregometry and flow cytometry were used to assess platelet reactivity. Eptifibatide added a ≥2-fold increase in platelet inhibition to 600 mg clopidogrel alone at 3, 8, and 18 to 24 hours after stenting as measured by 5 &mgr;mol/L ADP–induced aggregation (P<0.001). Without eptifibatide, 600 mg clopidogrel produced better inhibition than 300 mg clopidogrel at all time points (P<0.001). Glycoprotein IIb/IIIa (GPIIb/IIIa) blockade was associated with lower cardiac marker release. Active GPIIb/IIIa expression was inhibited most in the groups treated with eptifibatide (P<0.05). Conclusions—In elective stenting without clopidogrel pretreatment, use of a GPIIb/IIIa inhibitor produces superior platelet inhibition and lower myocardial necrosis compared with high-dose (600 mg) or standard-dose (300 mg) clopidogrel loading alone. In the absence of a GPIIb/IIIa inhibitor, 600 mg clopidogrel provides better platelet inhibition than the standard 300-mg dose. These results require confirmation in a large-scale clinical trial.
Spatially adaptive regularization for feature enhanced imaging in harsh sensing environments

In harsh remote sensing (RS) scenarios, reconstructive processing of the low resolution RS imagery is complicated due to the uncertainties attributed to uncontrolled multiplicative perturbations in the imaging system operators and unknown data and noise statistics. In this study, we address a new feature enhanced reconstructive RS image post processing approach that incorporates into the previously addressed unified descriptive experiment design regularization (DEDR) - variational analysis (VA) framework (DEDR-VA method) for RS image recovery in harsh sensing environments the spatially adaptive, i.e., image texture sensitive adjustments of the DEDR-VA degrees of freedom (corresponding regularization parameters). With such alternative spatially selective adaptive specifications of the DEDR-VA processing degrees of freedom, the incorporation of the third level regularization via performing projections onto convex solution sets (POCS) guarantees image sparsity and edges preservation. This enables the overall multilevel DEDR-VA-POCS (M-DEDR) technique to attain feature enhanced reconstructive imaging via performing robust spatially adaptive noise suppression with enhanced recovery of the image fine details. We feature the local statistics-based procedure for spatially adaptive adjustments of the DEDR regularization parameters and comment on the near real-time computational implementation of the overall unified M-DEDR technique. Last, the effectiveness of the proposed method is corroborated via reported computer simulation.
Carotenoid dietary intakes and plasma concentrations are associated with heel bone ultrasound attenuation and osteoporotic fracture risk in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Norfolk cohort

Abstract Carotenoids are found in abundance in fruit and vegetables, and may be involved in the positive association of these foods with bone health. This study aimed to explore the associations of dietary carotenoid intakes and plasma concentrations with bone density status and osteoporotic fracture risk in a European population. Cross-sectional analyses (n 14 803) of bone density status, using calcaneal broadband ultrasound attenuation (BUA) and longitudinal analyses (n 25 439) of fracture cases were conducted on data from the prospective European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition-Norfolk cohort of middle-aged and older men and women. Health and lifestyle questionnaires were completed, and dietary nutrient intakes were derived from 7-d food diaries. Multiple regression demonstrated significant positive trends in BUA for women across quintiles of dietary α-carotene intake (P=0·029), β-carotene intake (P=0·003), β-cryptoxanthin intake (P=0·031), combined lutein and zeaxanthin intake (P=0·010) and lycopene intake (P=0·005). No significant trends across plasma carotenoid concentration quintiles were apparent (n 4570). The Prentice-weighted Cox regression showed no trends in fracture risk across dietary carotenoid intake quintiles (mean follow-up time 12·5 years), except for a lower risk for wrist fracture in women with higher lutein and zeaxanthin intake (P=0·022); nevertheless, inter-quintile differences in fracture risk were found for both sexes. Analysis of plasma carotenoid data (mean follow-up time 11·9 years) showed lower hip fracture risk in men across higher plasma α-carotene (P=0·026) and β-carotene (P=0·027) quintiles. This study provides novel evidence that dietary carotenoid intake is relevant to bone health in men and women, demonstrating that associations with bone density status and fracture risk exist for dietary intake of specific carotenoids and their plasma concentrations.
Spatiotemporal Analysis of Multichannel EEG: CARTOOL

This paper describes methods to analyze the brain's electric fields recorded with multichannel Electroencephalogram (EEG) and demonstrates their implementation in the software CARTOOL. It focuses on the analysis of the spatial properties of these fields and on quantitative assessment of changes of field topographies across time, experimental conditions, or populations. Topographic analyses are advantageous because they are reference independents and thus render statistically unambiguous results. Neurophysiologically, differences in topography directly indicate changes in the configuration of the active neuronal sources in the brain. We describe global measures of field strength and field similarities, temporal segmentation based on topographic variations, topographic analysis in the frequency domain, topographic statistical analysis, and source imaging based on distributed inverse solutions. All analysis methods are implemented in a freely available academic software package called CARTOOL. Besides providing these analysis tools, CARTOOL is particularly designed to visualize the data and the analysis results using 3-dimensional display routines that allow rapid manipulation and animation of 3D images. CARTOOL therefore is a helpful tool for researchers as well as for clinicians to interpret multichannel EEG and evoked potentials in a global, comprehensive, and unambiguous way.
FPGA technology mapping: a study of optimality

This paper attempts to quantify the optimality of FPGA technology mapping algorithms. The authors developed an algorithm, based on Boolean satisfiability (SAT), that is able to map a small subcircuit into the smallest possible number of lookup tables (LUTs) needed to realize its functionality. This technique was applied iteratively to small portions of circuits that have already been technology mapped by the best available mapping algorithms for FPGAs. In many cases, the optimal mapping of the subcircuit uses fewer LUTs than is obtained by the technology mapping algorithm. It is shown that for some circuits the total area improvement could be up to 67%.
An Extensive Study, Design and Simulation of Mems Guided Media: Microstrip Line

Abstract In this paper, some design issues of one of the planar-guided media known as Microstrip line has been presented. The main purpose of this paper is to study the fundamental transmission properties of the microstrip line in view of varying the length, materials used for device formation/fabrication and highest frequency of operation. The paper is mainly divided in to two portions; first portion deals with theoretical portion because, it is necessary to know how the characteristic impedance, phase velocity, and attenuation constant of the dominant mode of microstrip depend on geometrical factors, on the electronic properties of substrate and conductors used, and on the frequency. Since this is a “mixed” dielectric system, the TEM mode can not be supported [2] and the second portion of the investigation was devoted to the effect of variation of length and frequency on the RF performance of the line. Although many papers are available on this topic, but the issues described in this paper have somewhat different point of view.
Neuropathologic basis of white matter hyperintensity accumulation with advanced age

Objective: To determine which vascular pathology measure most strongly correlates with white matter hyperintensity (WMH) accumulation over time, and whether Alzheimer disease (AD) neuropathology correlates with WMH accumulation. Methods: Sixty-six older persons longitudinally followed as part of an aging study were included for having an autopsy and >1 MRI scan, with last MRI scan within 36 months of death. Mixed-effects models were used to examine the associations between longitudinal WMH accumulation and the following neuropathologic measures: myelin pallor, arteriolosclerosis, microvascular disease, microinfarcts, lacunar infarcts, large-vessel infarcts, atherosclerosis, neurofibrillary tangle rating, and neuritic plaque score. Each measure was included one at a time in the model, adjusted for duration of follow-up and age at death. A final model included measures showing an association with p < 0.1. Results: Mean age at death was 94.5 years (5.5 SD). In the final mixed-effects models, arteriolosclerosis, myelin pallor, and Braak score remained significantly associated with increased WMH accumulation over time. In post hoc analysis, we found that those with Braak score 5 or 6 were more likely to also have high atherosclerosis present compared with those with Braak score 1 or 2 (p = 0.003). Conclusion: Accumulating white matter changes in advanced age are likely driven by small-vessel ischemic disease. Additionally, these results suggest a link between AD pathology and white matter integrity disruption. This may be due to wallerian degeneration secondary to neurodegenerative changes. Alternatively, a shared mechanism, for example ischemia, may lead to both vascular brain injury and neurodegenerative changes of AD. The observed correlation between atherosclerosis and AD pathology supports the latter.
Prolonged conservative care versus early surgery in patients with sciatica caused by lumbar disc herniation: two year results of a randomised controlled trial

Objectives To evaluate the effects of early lumbar disc surgery compared with prolonged conservative care for patients with sciatica over two years of follow-up. Design Randomised controlled trial. Setting Nine Dutch hospitals. Participants 283 patients with 6-12 weeks of sciatica. Interventions Early surgery or an intended six months of continued conservative treatment, with delayed surgery if needed. Main outcome measures Scores from Roland disability questionnaire for sciatica, visual analogue scale for leg pain, and Likert self rating scale of global perceived recovery. Results Of the 141 patients assigned to undergo early surgery, 125 (89%) underwent microdiscectomy. Of the 142 patients assigned to conservative treatment, 62 (44%) eventually required surgery, seven doing so in the second year of follow-up. There was no significant overall difference between treatment arms in disability scores during the first two years (P=0.25). Improvement in leg pain was faster for patients randomised to early surgery, with a significant difference between “areas under the curves” over two years (P=0.05). This short term benefit of early surgery was no longer significant by six months and continued to narrow between six months and 24 months. Patient satisfaction decreased slightly between one and two years for both groups. At two years 20% of all patients reported an unsatisfactory outcome. Conclusions Early surgery achieved more rapid relief of sciatica than conservative care, but outcomes were similar by one year and these did not change during the second year. Trial Registry ISRCT No 26872154.
Coagmento: A system for supporting collaborative information seeking

In this demo we introduce Coagmento , a tool for supporting interactive information seeking process of teams in various collaborative scenarios. Coagmento has been used in several laboratory and field studies to understand issues related to collaborative information seeking (CIS) and deriving lessons and guidelines for providing suita ble support for people working in collaboration for information-intensive projects. From its initial de sign, Coagmento has evolved through the introduction of new features and the support for both web-based as well as mobile systems. Using appropriate research methodologies, Coagmento has proven to be a useful tool for collecting behavioral data of users enabling researchers to be tter understand different dimensions of the collaborativ e process of teams as well as single users while sear ching information online.
Disaster management in libraries: the role of a disaster plan

It is contended that disaster management and planning should be one of the most important aspects of library management, but in practice it has been found to be a neglected field in librarianship, particularly in South Africa. This article explores the main disaster management issues and reports on a study that investigated disaster planning in research, academic and public libraries in the Greater Cape Metropolitan Area. It was found that the majority of the libraries investigated were lacking in formal disaster plans and were generally under-prepared for any potential disasters which may occur. This was attributed to inadequate resources and also to the apathetic attitude of library staff. The authors suggest that it is important that all libraries institute disaster management procedures and a formal disaster plan as this would assist in preventing disasters. Such a plan further provides step-by-step instructions that help to eliminate panic, it ensures that proper decisions are taken, it reduces damage to collections and limits recovery costs should a disaster occur. A framework for a model disaster plan is therefore proposed to serve as a guideline for libraries in the development of disaster plans. Daar word aangevoer dat noodbestuur en sodanige beplanning een van die mees belangrike aspekte van biblioteekbestuur behoort te wees, maar in die praktyk is gevind dat dit in Suid-Afrika 'n verwaarloosde terrein is. Die vernaamste aspek omtrent noodbestuur word ondersoek, en navorsing wat noodbeplanning in akademiese, navorsings- en openbare biblioteke ondersoek het in die groter Kaapse Metrpolitaanse Gebied word bespreek. Die meerderheid biblioteke wat ondersoek is, het tekortkominge getoon in hul formele noodplanne en hulle was oor die algemeen onvoorbereid op potenside rampe. Dit word toegeskryf aan onvoldoende hulpbronne asook die apatiese houding van die biblioteekpersoneel. Die skrywers stel voor dat dit belangrik is dat alle biblioteke noodbestuurprosedures in 'n formele noodplan moet formuleer en daarstel, aangesien dit sal bydra om rampe te voorkom. So 'n noodplan verskaf stap-vir-stap-instruksies om paniek te elimineer en te verseker dat behoorlike besluite geneem word. Dit verminder ook die beskadiging van versamelings en beperk herstelkostes as 'n ramp sou plaasvind. 'n Raamwerk vir 'n modelnoodplan word voorgestel om as voorbeeld te dien vir biblioteke in die ontwikkeling van noodplanne.
Real Wages in the Manufacturing Industry in Macedonia: The Role of Macroeconomic Factors, with Reference to Recession Times

Abstract In this paper we analyze the determinants of real wages in Macedonia’s manufacturing sector. We emphasize the macroeconomic aspects involved, and use econometric panel data techniques to model the behaviour of real wages for the period 2005-2010, using monthly data. We find non-negligible persistence of real wages. We further find a role for overall unemployment, real exchange rate and the tariff index in determining real wages.
On-Line Synchronous Total Purely Functional Data-Flow Programming on the Java Virtual Machine with Sig

Sig is the prototype of a purely declarative programming language and system for the processing of discrete, clocked synchronous, potentially real-time data streams. It aspires to combine good static safety, scalability and platform independence, with semantics that are precise, concise and suitable for domain experts. Its semantical and operational core has been formalized. Here we discuss the general strategy for making Sig programs executable, and describe the current state of a prototype compiler. The compiler is implemented in Java and targets the JVM. By careful cooperation with the JVM just-in-time compiler, it provides immediate executability in a simple and quickly extensible runtime environment, with code performance suitable for moderate real-time applications such as interactive audio synthesis.