Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
National Plan recommended guidelines for initial antiretroviral therapy in HIV-infected adults

Introduction: GESIDA and the AIDS National Plan panel of experts suggest a preferred (PR), alternative (AR) and other regimens (OR) for antiretroviral treatment (ART) as initial therapy in HIV-infected patients for 2015. The objective of this study is to evaluate the costs and the effectiveness of initiating treatment with these regimens. Methods: Economic assessment of costs and effectiveness (cost/effectiveness) based on decision tree analyses. Effectiveness was defined as the probability of reporting a viral load <50 copies/mL at week 48, in an intention-to-treat analysis. Cost of initiating treatment with an ART regimen was defined as the costs of ART and its consequences (adverse effects, changes of ART regimen, and drug resistance studies) during the first 48 weeks. The payer perspective (National Health System) was applied, only taking into account differential direct costs: ART (official prices), management of adverse effects, studies of resistance, and HLA B*5701 testing. The setting is Spain and the costs correspond to those of 2015. A deterministic sensitivity analysis was conducted, building three scenarios for each regimen: base case, most favourable and least favourable. Results: In the base case scenario, the cost of initiating treatment ranges from 4663 Euros for 3TC + LPV/r (OR) to 10,902 Euros for TDF/FTC + RAL (PR). The effectiveness varies from 0.66 for ABC/3TC + ATV/r (AR) and ABC/3TC + LPV/r (OR), to 0.89 for TDF/FTC + DTG (PR) and TDF/FTC/EVG/COBI (AR). The efficiency, in terms of cost/effectiveness, ranges from 5280 to 12,836 Euros per responder at 48 weeks, for 3TC + LPV/r (OR) and RAL + DRV/r (OR), respectively. ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: antoniojblasco@hotmail.com (A. Rivero). http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.eimc. 2015.07. 012 0213-005X/© 2015 Elsevier España, S.L. U. and Sociedad Española de Enfermedades Infecciosas y Microbiologı́a Clı́nica. All rights reserved. Documento descargado de http://www.elsevier. es el 13/04/2017. Copia para uso personal, se prohíbe la transmisión de este documento por cualquier medio o formato.
INSPIRATIonAL – INSPIRAtory muscle training in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Respiratory impairment, due to respiratory muscle weakness, is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/motor neuron disease (ALS/MND). Threshold loading may strengthen the inspiratory muscles and thereby improve patient prognosis. A phase II, double-blind, randomized-controlled trial was undertaken to determine whether a 12-week inspiratory muscle training programme attenuated the decline in respiratory function and inspiratory muscle strength in patients with ALS/MND. Nine patients were randomized to inspiratory muscle training and 10 to sham training. Primary endpoints were respiratory function (forced vital capacity, vital capacity), lung volumes and inspiratory muscle strength. Patients were assessed before, during and immediately after a 12-week training period, and at eight weeks follow-up. While improvements in inspiratory muscle strength were observed in both treatment arms, there was a non-significant increase in maximum inspiratory pressure of 6.1% in the experimental group compared to controls (standard error of mean, 6.93%; 95% confidence interval −8.58 −20.79; p=0.39). The gains in inspiratory muscle strength were partially reversed during a period of training cessation. In conclusion, inspiratory muscle training may potentially strengthen the inspiratory muscles and slow the decline in respiratory function in patients with ALS/MND.
Mutations within the proteolytic cleavage site of the Rous sarcoma virus glycoprotein define a requirement for dibasic residues for intracellular cleavage

We investigated the amino acid sequence requirements for intracellular cleavage of the Rous sarcoma virus glycoprotein precursor by introducing mutations into the region encoding the cleavage recognition site (Arg-Arg-Lys-Arg). In addition to mutants G1 (Arg-Arg-Glu-Arg) and Dr1 (deletion of all four codons) that we have reported on previously (L. G. Perez and E. Hunter, J. Virol. 61:1609-1614, 1987), we constructed two additional mutants, AR1 (Arg-Arg-Arg-Arg), in which the highly conserved lysine is replaced by an arginine, and S19 (Ser-Arg-Glu-Arg), in which no dibasic pairs remain. The results of these studies demonstrate that when the cleavage sequence is deleted (Dr1) or modified to contain unpaired basic residues (S19), intracellular cleavage of the glycoprotein precursor is completely blocked. This demonstrates that the cellular endopeptidase responsible for cleavage has a stringent requirement for the presence of a pair of basic residues (Arg-Arg or Lys-Arg). Furthermore, it implies that the cleavage enzyme is not trypsinlike, since it is unable to recognize arginine residues that are sensitive to trypsin action. Substitution of the mutated genes into a replication-competent avian retrovirus genome showed that cleavage of the glycoprotein precursor was not required for incorporation into virions but was necessary for infectivity. Treatment of BH-RCAN-S19-transfected turkey cells with low levels of trypsin resulted in the release of infectious virus, demonstrating that exogenous cleavage could generate a biologically active glycoprotein molecule.
Managing Multiple Disadvantages: The Regulation of Complex Needs in Emergency Shelters for the Homeless

ABSTRACT People who face multiple disadvantages (re: poverty, criminalization, discrimination, addiction, health/mental health, disabilities) make up the majority of the homeless shelter population on a daily basis. This group challenges practitioners and existing service structures, and the author shows how these challenges shape (1) collaboration with “complex-need” clients, (2) triage and case prioritization, and (3) assessments of housing readiness. Pulling from policy and organizational document analysis as well as 20 in-depth interviews with emergency shelter practitioners, the author argues that institutional recognition of people’s “complicated” needs translates into tighter regulation and/or decreased support.
Pasteurella multocida Peritonitis with Bacteremia on Initiation of Peritoneal Dialysis

Eight weeks later, the patient again presented with abdominal pain and purulent discharge from the exit site. Pus culture grew a. xylosoxidans, which was identified using the VITEK 2 system (bioMerieux–Vitek, Hazelwood, MO, USA). This automated identification system was able to provide definitive culture results for a. xylosoxidans and a. dentrificans (1). Based on sensitivity testing, the previously used therapy was again administered for 14 days with a similar good clinical response. no further exit-site infection recurred. a. denitrificans and a. xylosoxidans are part of the normal human flora. Clinically, achromobacter species have been reported to cause endocarditis (in patients with pacemakers), bacteremia, pneumonia, intraabdominal infection, and meningitis, especially when host immunity is compromised (2,3). In only rare cases is CAPD-related peritonitis induced by achromobacter species, and CAPD-related exit-site infection caused by these micro-organisms has never been reported (4–8). The clinical outcomes of CAPD-related peritonitis caused by this organism vary with its generalized resistance to most antimicrobial agents. In some cases, removal of catheter is necessary to prevent mortality (5,6,8). In our case, the micro-organisms were sensitive to ceftazidime, cefepime, sulfonamides, quinolone, carbapenems, and piperacillin–tazobactam. This is the first reported case of CAPD-related exitsite infection to be caused by achromobacter species. Early diagnosis and use of appropriate antibiotics usually prevent removal of the PD catheter.
Inequality at the Intersection of the Defense of Marriage Act and the Voting Rights Act

Two important decisions were made by the Supreme Court of the United States in the summer of 2013. Reactions to the decisions were polarized: Some rejoiced, while others rejected the justices’ rulings. Whereas the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community and its allies found satisfaction in the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) decision, communities of color and those sympathetic to the civil rights movement of the 1960s saw an inevitable return to the Jim Crow era in the Voting Rights Act decision. The intention of each decision was to recognize equality, but inequality continues to exist where race, class, and sexuality intersect in the two decisions. Using critical race theory (CRT), this essay explores the inequalities at the intersection of the Supreme Court decisions on DOMA and the Voting Rights Act. Using two of the core tenets of critical race theory, intersectionality and interest convergence, the essay highlights how these civil rights decisions inevitably perpetuated the inequality that they sought to address.
Transition into the Canadian labour force: the experience of Chinese immigrant women

This study, guided by a feminist framework, aims to disclose aspects of the lived experience of Chinese immigrant women in the Canadian labour market, to explore the factors affecting their job search and employment opportunities, and to identify the gaps between the experience of women and the existing policies and programs, so as to increase our knowledge in this area and to help inform the development of more effective and meaningful intervention strategies to improve their situation. Recognizing the importance of the words of women, this study adopts a qualitative design to generate rich information from the interviews held with eight Chinese immigrant women from Hong Kong, with different occupational backgrounds. The women's narratives reflect the disadvantaged position of Chinese immigrant women: their exclusion from the mainstream labour market and concentration in Chinatown. The findings refute what traditional theories and authorities have said: that racial minority immigrant women's personal shortcomings account for their employment problems; their unfulfilled high expectations, culture shock, lack of confidence, lack of language and job skills. Instead, the research findings reveal what has been omitted in most literature: that Chinese immigrant women have been historically discriminated against, that there are structural and systemic barriers perpetuating their employment difficulties. The findings reveal that employment inequality is rooted in unequal power relations and Chinese immigrant women are triply disadvantaged due to their multiple roles as women, as immigrants, and as racial minorities.
Long-term risk of complications after mid-urethral sling IVS implantation.

INTRODUCTION Results of short-term evaluation of multifilament microporous midurethral tape IVS differ a great deal. During the first year of implantation, erosions have been observed in 0%-26% of operated women. Long-term observations are rare. They suggest high risk of extrusion and infection even after years of implantation. OBJECTIVE The purpose of the study was to evaluate long-term risk of complications after IVS implantation. MATERIAL AND METHODS Between 2001-2005, 72 women were operated on with the use of IVS mid-urethral tape. RESULTS Two women had vaginal erosions during the first 3 months after the operation. Twelve women had vaginal erosions, purulent vaginal discharge, with IVS tape sticking out of the abdominal wall or vagina, and abdominal abscess. These complications were diagnosed between 9 months and 6 years after IVS implantation. The patients were operated on vaginally and open abdominally, 1-5 times because of complications after IVS implantation. CONCLUSIONS In the case of post-IVS complication, as much tape as possible should be excised. Long-term follow up on patients with IVS implantation should be recommended to the centres where IVS tape was used, even to patients after removal of the tape. Risk of erosion, extrusion and infection after midurethral multifilament microporous IVS tape implantation is too high - which is the reason it should no longer be used.
Transcriptome profiling revealed novel transcriptional regulators in maize responses to Ostrinia furnacalis and jasmonic acid

Chewing insects cause severe yield losses in crop production worldwide. Crop plants counteract chewing insects by transcriptionally promoting a repertoire of defense gene products that are either toxic to, or attractive to the natural enemies of, pest insects. However, the complexity of the transcriptional reprogramming in plant defense response against chewing insects is still not well understood. In this study, the genome-wide early responses in maize seedlings to Asian corn borer (ACB, Ostrinia furnacalis) and also to jasmonic acid(JA), the pivotal phytohormone controlling plant defense response against herbivory, were transcriptionally profiled by RNA-Seq. Clustering of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) along with functional enrichment analysis revealed important biological processes regulated in response to ACB infestation and/or jasmonic acid. Moreover, DEGs with distinct expression patterns were differentially enriched with diverse families of cis-elements on their promoters. Multiple inventories of differentially expressed transcription factors (DETFs) in each DEG group were also analyzed. A transient expression assay using transfected maize protoplastswas established to examine the potential roles of DETFs in maize defense response and JA signaling, and this was used to show that ZmNAC60, an ACB- and JA-inducible DETF, represented a novel positive regulator of JA and defense pathway genes. This study provided a comprehensive transcriptional picture for the early dynamics of maize defense responses and JA signaling, and the identification of DETFs offered potential targets for further functional genomics investigation of master regulators in maize defense responses against herbivory.
Sthira: A Formal Approach to Minimize Voltage Guardbands under Variation in Networks-on-Chip for Energy Efficiency

Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) in chip multiprocessors are prone to within-die process variation as they span the whole chip. To tolerate variation, their voltages (Vdd) carry over-provisioned guardbands. As a result, prior work has proposed to save energy by operating at reduced Vdd while occasionally suffering and fixing errors. Unfortunately, these proposals use heuristic controller designs that provide no error bounds guarantees.In this work, we develop a scheme that dynamically minimizes the Vdd of groups of routers in a variation-prone NoC using formal control-theoretic methods. The scheme, called Sthira, saves substantial energy while guaranteeing the stability and convergence of error rates. We also enhance the scheme with a low-cost secondary network that retransmits erroneous packets for higher energy efficiency. The enhanced scheme is called Sthira+. We evaluate Sthira and Sthira+ with simulations of NoCs with 64-100 routers. In an NoC with 8 routers per Vdd domain, our schemes reduce the average energy consumptionof the NoC by 27%; in a futuristic NoC with one router per Vdd domain, Sthira+ and Sthira reduce the average energy consumption by 36% and 32%, respectively. The performance impact is negligible. These are significant savings over the state-of-the-art. We conclude that formal control is essential, and that the cheaper Sthira is more cost-effective than Sthira+.
Further assessment of the dietary lysine requirement of finishing gilts.

A cooperative research study involving 635 gilts was conducted at eight research stations to further estimate the lysine requirement of finishing gilts. Dietary crude protein levels of the five dietary treatments ranged from 16.0 to 24.4% with calculated lysine levels of . 80, . 95, 1.10, 1.25, or 1.40%. Each station contributed a minimum of two replicate pens of pigs per treatment. Average initial and final weights were 53.6 and 116.4 kg, respectively. At the end of the experimental period, pigs were killed and hot carcass weight, 10th-rib fat depth, and longissimus muscle area were measured. Carcass fat-free lean percentage and fat-free lean gain were estimated from these data. Daily lysine intakes averaged 21.8, 25.9, 30.5, 34.3, and 37.8 g/d for the five treatment groups, respectively. Increasing the dietary lysine from . 80 to . 95% numerically increased weight gain and gain:feed, but these increases were not maintained at higher levels of dietary lysine. Overall, rate and efficiency of gain decreased (cubic, P < .01) with increasing dietary lysine. Carcasses were leaner at the two higher levels of dietary lysine as evidenced by reduced 10th rib backfat (linear, P < .01), increased longissimus area (quadratic, P < .04), and increased percentage of estimated fat-free lean (linear, P < .01). Carcass fat-free lean gain was not influenced by dietary lysine except for a small numerical improvement (P < .11) at the . 95% level of dietary lysine that paralleled the improvement in body weight gain. The results indicate that the dietary lysine requirement of finishing gilts with a mean carcass fat-free lean growth rate of 306 g/d from 54 to 116 kg body weight is probably no higher than . 80% of the diet to achieve maximum rate and efficiency of body weight gain and carcass lean growth rate. The results also indicate that higher dietary lysine levels may increase carcass leanness in finishing gilts, possibly due to reduced intake of NE. Whether this response is due to the effects of lysine alone, protein (i.e., other amino acids), or soybean meal is unknown.
Economic and organizational sustainability of a negative-pressure portable device for the prevention of surgical-site complications

Purpose Surgical-site complications (SSCs) affect patients’ clinical pathway, prolonging their hospitalization and incrementing their management costs. The present study aimed to assess the economic and organizational implications of a portable device for negative-pressure wound therapy (NPWT) implementation, compared with the administration of pharmacological therapies alone for preventing surgical complications in patients undergoing general, cardiac, obstetrical–gynecological, or orthopedic surgical procedures. Patients and methods A total of 8,566 hospital procedures, related to the year 2015 from one hospital, were evaluated considering infection risk index, occurrence rates of SSCs, drug therapies, and surgical, diagnostic, and specialist procedures and hematological exams. Activity-based costing and budget impact analyses were implemented for the economic assessment. Results Patients developing an SSC absorbed i) 64.27% more economic resources considering the length of stay (€ 8,269±2,096 versus € 5,034±2,901, p<0.05) and ii) 42.43% more economic resources related to hematological and diagnostic procedures (€ 639±117 versus € 449±72, p<0.05). If the innovative device had been used over the 12-month time period, it would have decreased the risk of developing SSCs; the hospital would have realized an average reduction in health care expenditure equal to −0.69% (−€ 483,787.92) and an organizational saving in terms of length of stay equal to −1.10% (−898 days), thus allowing 95 additional procedures. Conclusion The implementation of a portable device for NPWT would represent an effective and sustainable strategy for reducing the management costs of patients. Economic and organizational savings could be reinvested, thus i) treating a wider population and ii) reducing waiting lists, with a higher effectiveness in terms of a decrease in complications.
Feature Discovery for Sequential Prediction of Monophonic Music

Learning a model for sequential prediction of symbolic music remains an open challenge. An important special case is the prediction of pitch sequences based on a corpus of monophonic music. We contribute to this line of research in two respects: (1) Our models improve the stateof-the-art performance. (2) Our method affords learning interpretable models by discovering an explicit set of relevant features. We discover features using the PULSE learning framework, which repetitively suggests new candidate features using a generative operation and selects features while optimizing the underlying model. Defining a domain-specific generative operation allows to combine multiple music-theoretically motivated features in a unified model and to control their interaction on a fine-grained level. We evaluate our models on a set of benchmark corpora of monophonic chorales and folk songs, outperforming previous work. Finally, we discuss the characteristics of the discovered features from a musicological perspective, giving concrete examples.
A Comparison of Refraction Defects in Childhood Measured Using Plusoptix S09, 2WIN Photorefractometer, Benchtop Autorefractometer, and Cycloplegic Retinoscopy

ABSTRACT Purpose: To compare Plusoptix (Gmbh, Nuremberg, Germany), 2WIN (Adaptica, Padua, Italy), the benchtop refractometer (Auto-Kerato-Refractometer KR-8900; Topcon Co, Tokyo, Japan), and retinoscopy with regard to the consistencies. Materials and Methods: In our prospective study, 200 eyes of 100 patients were included. We analyzed the demographics and characteristics of the patients, the percentage of patients from whom measurements could not be obtained, the measurements from both patients’ eyes of pupil diameter, spherical, cylindrical, axis, and spherical equivalence. Results: The mean age ± SD was 7.8±4.5 years (range, 1–18 years). Pupil diameter measurements were found to be consistent (Cronbach’s alpha value >0.8). The sphere and spherical equivalence measurements for both eyes were found to be consistent with each other in all apparatus (Cronbach’s alpha value >0.8). However, consistency was found to be lower in cylindrical values and the Jackson cross-cylinder measurements at 0° and 45° axis were found to be inconsistent with each other (Cronbach’s alpha value <0.8). Conclusions: While consistency was observed in all methods in terms of sphere and spherical equivalence, consistency dropped in cylindrical values and no consistency was observed in axis values. It is important to take this point into consideration, especially in axis measurements.