Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Applying STAAR interventions in incremental bundles: improving post-CABG surgical patient care.

BACKGROUND Rehospitalization within 30 days of discharge after coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) is a contributing factor to higher-than-acceptable overall hospital readmission rates throughout the United States. CABG rehospitalizations are of such concern that they are specifically targeted for action in 2015 under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010). The phenomenon of increasing readmission rates has prompted the Institute for Healthcare Improvement to devise the Triple Aim initiative and the STate Action on Avoidable Rehospitalizations (STAAR) initiative to reduce 30-day readmission rates nationally. AIMS This study explored the impact of implementing STAAR interventions delivered as part of a quality improvement project in incremental bundles on 30-day readmission rates and the experience of care in CABG patients. Specifically, the use of the teach-back patient education method and the scheduling of follow-up cardiology appointments prior to discharge using existing staff were examined. METHODS A quantitative comparative study was conducted with 189 post-CABG patients at a tertiary care facility in the United States over a 2-year period, comparing outcomes between the group of patients prior to implementation of the STAAR interventions and those who later received them. Outcome variables included 30-day readmission rate and patient perception of experience of care. RESULTS The overall 30-day readmission rate for CABG patients in the postintervention group was decreased to 12.0%, compared to 25.8% in the preintervention group. Of the demographic and health characteristics explored, only chronic lung disease was significantly related to 30-day readmission rates, and only in the postintervention group. LINKING EVIDENCE TO ACTION Thirty-day readmission rates among CABG patients can be reduced and the experience of care can be enhanced through the use of targeted interventions utilizing existing staff and resources. The deliberate incremental implementation of bundled initiatives is an effective strategy in reducing 30-day readmissions in post-CABG patients.
Lasso and Sparsity in Statistics

In this chapter, I discuss the lasso and sparsity, in the area of supervised learning that has been the focus of my research and that of many other statisticians. This area can be described as follows. Many statistical problems involve modeling important variables or outcomes as functions of predictor variables. One objective is to produce models that allow predictions of outcomes that are as accurate as possible. Another is to develop an understanding of which variables in a set of potential predictors are strongly related to the outcome variable. For example, the outcome of interest might be the price of a company’s stock in a week’s time, and potential predictor variables might include information about the company, the sector of the economy it operates in, recent fluctuations in the stock’s price, and other economic factors. With technological development and the advent of huge amounts of data, we are frequently faced with very large numbers of potential predictor variables.
Family Life Cycle,Land Fragmentation and Peasant Household Agricultural Productive Input——Data from Laohekou City in Hubei Province

The key of the development of modern agriculture lies in reasonable guiding the peasant household to improve the input of modern agriculture and improving the agriculture input structure.The paper takes the hilly region in central agricultural province,Hubei province as an example,and using questionnaire to collect micro-data of agricultural productive input in Laohekou City.An empirical analysis is made on the influence of peasant family life cycle and land fragmentation etc.on their agricultural productive input and some political measures on how to increase agricultural input are proposed.
Orange juice (poly)phenols are highly bioavailable in humans.

BACKGROUND We assessed the bioavailability of orange juice (poly)phenols by monitoring urinary flavanone metabolites and ring fission catabolites produced by the action of the colonic microbiota. OBJECTIVE Our objective was to identify and quantify metabolites and catabolites excreted in urine 0-24 h after the acute ingestion of a (poly)phenol-rich orange juice by 12 volunteers. DESIGN Twelve volunteers [6 men and 6 women; body mass index (in kg/m(2)): 23.9-37.2] consumed a low (poly)phenol diet for 2 d before first drinking 250 mL pulp-enriched orange juice, which contained 584 μmol (poly)phenols of which 537 μmol were flavanones, and after a 2-wk washout, the procedure was repeated, and a placebo drink was consumed. Urine collected for a 24-h period was analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively by using high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). RESULTS A total of 14 metabolites were identified and quantified in urine by using HPLC-MS after orange juice intake. Hesperetin-O-glucuronides, naringenin-O-glucuronides, and hesperetin-3'-O-sulfate were the main metabolites. The overall urinary excretion of flavanone metabolites corresponded to 16% of the intake of 584 μmol (poly)phenols. The GC-MS analysis revealed that 8 urinary catabolites were also excreted in significantly higher quantities after orange juice consumption. These catabolites were 3-(3'-methoxy-4'-hydroxyphenyl)propionic acid, 3-(3'-hydroxy-4'-methoxyphenyl)propionic acid, 3-(3'-hydroxy-4'-methoxyphenyl)hydracrylic acid, 3-(3'-hydroxyphenyl)hydracrylic acid, 3'-methoxy-4'-hydroxyphenylacetic acid, hippuric acid, 3'-hydroxyhippuric acid, and 4'-hydroxyhippuric acid. These aromatic acids originated from the colonic microbiota-mediated breakdown of orange juice (poly)phenols and were excreted in amounts equivalent to 88% of (poly)phenol intake. When combined with the 16% excretion of metabolites, this percentage raised the overall urinary excretion to ∼ 100% of intake. CONCLUSIONS When colon-derived phenolic catabolites are included with flavanone glucuronide and sulfate metabolites, orange juice (poly)phenols are much-more bioavailable than previously envisaged. In vitro and ex vivo studies on mechanisms underlying the potential protective effects of orange juice consumption should use in vivo metabolites and catabolites detected in this investigation at physiologic concentrations. The trial was registered at BioMed Central Ltd (www.controlledtrials.com) as ISRCTN04271658.
Therapeutics , Targets , and Chemical Biology CD 22 Antigen IsBroadlyExpressedonLungCancerCells and Is a Target for Antibody-Based Therapy

Most patients with lung cancer still die from their disease, necessitating additional options to improve treatment. Here, we provide evidence for targeting CD22, a cell adhesion protein known to influence B-cell survival that we found is also widely expressed in lung cancer cells. In characterizing the antitumor activity of an established anti-CD22 monoclonal antibody (mAb), HB22.7, we showed CD22 expression by multiple approaches in various lung cancer subtypes, including 7 of 8 cell lines and a panel of primary patient specimens. HB22.7 displayed in vitro and in vivo cytotoxicity against CD22-positive human lung cancer cells and tumor xenografts. In a model of metastatic lung cancer, HB22.7 inhibited the development of pulmonary metastasis and extended overall survival. The finding that CD22 is expressed on lung cancer cells is significant in revealing a heretofore unknown mechanism of tumorigenesis and metastasis. Our work suggests that antiCD22 mAbs may be useful for targeted therapy of lung cancer, a malignancy that has few tumor-specific targets. Cancer Res; 72(21); 5556–65. 2012 AACR.
Epstein-Barr virus modulates de novo protein synthesis in human neutrophils.

Neutrophils and macrophages represent the first line of defense against microbial invaders. However, the role of phagocytes in host response to viral infection is poorly understood. We have previously shown that Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) interacts with human monocytes and modulates cytokine production in this cell type, but its effects on neutrophils are still unknown. In the present study, we investigated the presence of EBV receptor (CR2 or CD21) on neutrophils by cytofluorometry using five different anti-CD21 monoclonal antibodies (MoAbs), as well as fluoroscein isothiocyanate-EBV (FITC-EBV). Whereas no significant amount of neutrophils reacted with anti-CD21 MoAbs, studies with FITC-EBV indicated that viral particles bind to 30% of cells (in some individuals, EBV binds to more than 50% of neutrophils). This interaction is specific as it was completely inhibited by nonconjugated virus or with labeled virus preincubated with neutralizing MoAbs. After EBV treatment, cellular aggregation was observed in neutrophil cultures, an indication that neutrophils were activated. Although EBV did not induce respiratory burst activity in neutrophils, pretreatment with infectious particles enhanced (priming effect) the fMLP-induced O2- release in neutrophils. Instead of restricting our analysis to specific cytokine genes, we investigated the effects of EBV on neutrophil transcriptional events in general. The effect of this virus on de novo synthesis of total cellular RNA was first investigated by measuring the incorporation of [5-3H] uridine into total RNA. The results showed that RNA synthesis in neutrophils was significantly increased (2.3- to 21.3-fold) by EBV compared with the unstimulated controls. Live and UV-inactivated virus markedly induced RNA synthesis, whereas heat-inactivated virus lost this ability. Induction of RNA transcription was EBV specific, as an EBV-neutralizing antiserum abolished this effect. Induction of protein synthesis was also studied by measuring the incorporation of [35S] methionine and [35S] cysteine into secreted and intracellular proteins in neutrophils incubated with EBV. The synthesis of both secreted and cytoplasmic proteins was induced by EBV. One- and two-dimensional gel electrophoresis analysis showed that EBV modulates protein synthesis, because activation of the synthesis of certain proteins was accompanied by the inhibition of others. Interleukin-1 beta (IL-1 beta) and IL-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra) synthesis was found to be induced by EBV. Therefore, modulation of host-response proteins such as IL-1Ra could be one of the many mechanisms by which this virus avoids rejection. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Model Management and Schema Mappings: Theory and Practice

We present an overview of a tutorial on model management---an approach to solving data integration problems, such as data warehousing, e-commerce, object-to-relational mapping, schema evolution and enterprise information integration. Model management defines a small set of operations for manipulating schemas and mappings, such as Match, Compose, Inverse, and Merge. The long-term goal is to build generic implementations of the operations that can be applied to a wide variety of data integration problems.
The Program of Sex Chromosome Pairing in Meiosis Is Highly Conserved Across Marsupial Species

Marsupials present a series of genetic and chromosomal features that are highly conserved in very distant species. One of these features is the absence of a homologous region between X and Y chromosomes. According to this genetic differentiation, sex chromosomes do not synapse during the first meiotic prophase in males, and a special structure, the dense plate, maintains sex chromosome association. In this report we present results on the process of meiotic sex chromosome pairing obtained from three different species, Thylamys elegans, Dromiciops gliroides, and Rhyncholestes raphanurus, representing the three orders of American marsupials. We have investigated the relationships between the axial structures organized along sex chromosomes and the formation of the dense plate. We found that in the three species the dense plate arises as a modification of sex chromosomal axial elements, but without the involvement of other meiotic axial structures, such as the cohesin axes. Considering the phylogenetic relationships among the marsupials studied here, our data reinforce the idea that the dense plate emerged early in marsupial evolution as an efficient mechanism to ensure the association of the nonhomologous sex chromosomes. This situation could have influenced the further evolution of sex chromosomes in marsupials.
Prognostic factors for survival following emergency Hartmann's procedure

Introduction Patients presenting with peritonitis require rapid treatment initiation including laparotomy. In the older population, this often leads to Hartmann's procedure being performed. The decision to perform surgery may be a difficult, multidisciplinary decision balancing premorbid comorbidity and quality of life with knowledge of the postoperative outcome. However, the evidence for survival outcome of emergency surgery based on age is lacking. The aim of this study was therefore to assess the survival implication of age and other prognostic factors on the outcome after Hartmann's procedure. Methods A retrospective review of prospectively collected data of all patients undergoing emergency (National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death category 1–3) Hartmann's procedure in one NHS Health Board over a 5-year period. Results 129 patients underwent Hartmann's procedure between November 2004 and November 2009. The largest group, 61 patients (47.3%) had the procedure performed for perforated sigmoid diverticular disease. When examined at 5-year stratifications around the median, the most significant survival difference was seen at the age of 75 years (log rank χ2 11.246, p=0.001). Patients over 75 years had median survival significantly lower than those aged <75 years (p<0.001). However, Cox regression analysis showed that preoperative American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) status and haemoglobin were more significant independent predictors of mortality than this age strata (p=0.001 and 0.045 vs 0.660, respectively), adjusting for diagnosis. Discussion ASA grade and common blood abnormalities were more predictive of mortality after Hartmann's procedure than the most significant age stratification. Furthermore, age was not independently associated with survival. It would therefore be unreasonable to refuse Hartmann's procedure based on an age alone.
Collecting Non-Geotagged Local Tweets via Bandit Algorithms

How can we collect non-geotagged tweets posted by users in a specific location as many as possible in a limited time span? How can we find such users if we do not have much information about the specified location? Although there are varieties of methods to estimate the locations of users, these methods are not directly applicable to this problem because they require collecting a large amount of random tweets and then filter them to obtain a small amount of tweets from such users. In this paper, we propose a framework that incrementally finds such users and continuously collects tweets from them. Our framework is based on the bandit algorithm that adjusts the trade-off between exploration and exploitation, in other words, it simultaneously finds new users in the specified location and collects tweets from already-found users. The experimental results show that the bandit algorithm works well on this problem and outperforms the carefully-designed baselines.
Motor imagery EEG signal classification scheme based on autoregressive reflection coefficients

In brain-computer interface (BCI) applications, classification of electroencephalogram (EEG) data for different motor imagery (MI) tasks is a major concern. In this paper, an efficient MI task classification scheme is proposed based on autoregressive (AR) modeling of the EEG signal. From given EEG recording, after some basic preprocessing operations, the processed EEG data of each channel is windowed into several frames and AR parameters are extracted using least-square Yule-Walker method. Considering the reflection coefficients from the autoregressive modeling, a set of features is extracted from the average of the coefficients of the specified frames. In order to reduce the dimension of the proposed feature matrix, principal component analysis (PCA) is employed. For the purpose of classification, train and test sets are formed based on leave one out cross validation and then linear discriminant analysis (LDA) based classifier is used. Simulation is carried out on publicly available MI dataset IVa of BCI Competition-III and a very satisfactory performance is obtained in classifying the MI data in two classes, namely right hand and right foot MI tasks. Proposed classification scheme not only offers significant reduction in feature dimensionality but also provides satisfactory classification accuracy.
VNCS: Virtual Network Connectivity as a Service a Software-Defined Networking Approach

This paper presents VNCS (Virtual Network Connectivity as a Service), a network service that connects geographically separated enterprise branches based on the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) infrastructure. The VNCS service creates and manages Virtual SDNs (vSDN) for the tenant's sites that are logically decoupled from the network infrastructure, providing configurable network topology and isolation on the SDN network virtualization platform. VNCS service algorithms ensure the dynamic spawning of the tenant specified vSDN that satisfies its constraints with minimum connection cost based on the SDN providers' offers and tenant's specifications and preferences that are inputs to the VNCS algorithms interface. VNCS enables tenants to specify how their remote sites are to be connected along with a list of network constraints independently from the service provider and the infrastructure provider. The main contribution of this work resides in: (1) dynamically configuring, managing and maintaining interconnecting networks that link tenant's remote sites and (2) preserving tenants' constraints and network specifications by utilizing the SDN infrastructure through SDNbased network providers, thus relieving the tenant from the burden of configuring the network and dynamically meeting its constraints in a resilient approach and minimum cost. A test-bed proof-of-concept is implemented on top of the OpenVirtex (OVX) SDN network virtualization platform.
Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium Strains with Regulated Delayed Attenuation In Vivo

ABSTRACT Recombinant bacterial vaccines must be fully attenuated for animal or human hosts to avoid inducing disease symptoms while exhibiting a high degree of immunogenicity. Unfortunately, many well-studied means for attenuating Salmonella render strains more susceptible to host defense stresses encountered following oral vaccination than wild-type virulent strains and/or impair their ability to effectively colonize the gut-associated and internal lymphoid tissues. This thus impairs the ability of recombinant vaccines to serve as factories to produce recombinant antigens to induce the desired protective immunity. To address these problems, we designed strains that display features of wild-type virulent strains of Salmonella at the time of immunization to enable strains first to effectively colonize lymphoid tissues and then to exhibit a regulated delayed attenuation in vivo to preclude inducing disease symptoms. We recently described one means to achieve this based on a reversible smooth-rough synthesis of lipopolysaccharide O antigen. We report here a second means to achieve regulated delayed attenuation in vivo that is based on the substitution of a tightly regulated araC PBAD cassette for the promoters of the fur, crp, phoPQ, and rpoS genes such that expression of these genes is dependent on arabinose provided during growth. Thus, following colonization of lymphoid tissues, the Fur, Crp, PhoPQ, and/or RpoS proteins cease to be synthesized due to the absence of arabinose such that attenuation is gradually manifest in vivo to preclude induction of diseases symptoms. Means for achieving regulated delayed attenuation can be combined with other mutations, which together may yield safe efficacious recombinant attenuated Salmonella vaccines.
Dynamic Cell Association for Non-Orthogonal Multiple-Access V2S Networks

To meet the growing demand of mobile data traffic in vehicular communications, the vehicle-to-small-cell (V2S) network has been emerging as a promising vehicle-to-infrastructure technology. Since the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) with successive interference cancellation (SIC) can achieve superior spectral and energy efficiency, massive connectivity and low transmission latency, we introduce the NOMA with SIC to V2S networks in this paper. Due to the fast vehicle mobility and varying communication environment, it is important to dynamically allocate small-cell base stations and transmit power to vehicular users with considering the vehicle mobility in NOMA-enabled V2S networks. To this end, we present the joint optimization of cell association and power control that maximizes the long-term system-wide utility to enhance the long-term system-wide performance and reduce the handover rate. To solve this optimization problem, we first equivalently transform it into a weighted sum rate maximization problem in each time frame based on the standard gradient-scheduling framework. Then, we propose the hierarchical power control algorithm to maximize the equivalent weighted sum rate in each time frame based on the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) optimality conditions and the idea of successive convex approximation. Finally, theoretical analysis and simulation results are provided to demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is guaranteed to converge to the optimal solution satisfying KKT optimality conditions.
Bacillus crescens sp. nov., isolated from soil.

Two bacterial strains (JC247T and JC248) were isolated from soil samples collected from Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India. Colonies of both strains were creamy white. Cells were Gram-stain-positive, rods-to-curved rods (crescent-shaped), and produced centrally located oval-shaped endospores. Major (>5 %) fatty acids of both strains were iso-C16 : 0, iso-C14 : 0, iso-C15 : 0, C16 : 1ω11c and C16 : 0, with minor ( < 5 but >1 %) amounts of anteiso-C15 : 0, anteiso-C17 : 0, iso-C16 : 1 H, iso-C17 : 0, iso-C18 : 0, C14 : 0, C17 : 0, C18 : 0, C18 : 1ω9c, iso-C17 : 1ω10c and anteiso-C17 : 0B/isoI. Diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidylglycerol were the major polar lipids of both strains. Cell-wall amino acids were l-alanine, d-alanine, d-glutamic acid and meso-diaminopimelic acid. The genomic DNA G+C content of strains JC247T and JC248 was 48.2 and 48.1 mol%, respectively. Both strains were closely related with mean DNA-DNA hybridization >90 %. 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis of both strains indicated that they are members of the genus Bacillus within the family Bacillaceae of the phylum Firmicutes. Both strains had a 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity of 96.93 % with Bacillus firmus NCIMB 9366T and < 96.92 % with other members of the genus Bacillus. Sequence similarity between strain JC247T and JC248 was 100 %. Distinct morphological, physiological and genotypic differences from previously described taxa support the classification of strains JC247T and JC248 as representatives of a novel species of the genus Bacillus, for which the name Bacilluscrescens sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is JC247T ( = KCTC 33627T = LMG 28608T).