Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How can we achieve better prevention of progression to tuberculosis among contacts?

To the Editor : Strategies for control and elimination of tuberculosis (TB) in low-incidence settings are directed toward treatment of recently acquired latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) in TB contacts [1]. To identify this target population for preventive treatment the development of more specific, in vitro assays for LTBI, the interferon (INF)-γ release assays (IGRAs), has offered an alternative method for LTBI diagnosis. Although IGRAs are increasingly recommended in national guidelines, evidence that positive IGRA results are prognostic for developing TB is still limited [2, 3], especially outside of prospective studies with well-defined inclusion criteria. Therefore, we investigated progression towards active TB among IGRA positive contacts of active TB cases under routine field conditions and calculated the positive predictive value (PPV) for progression and the number needed to treat (NNT) with preventive treatment to prevent one incident TB case. Additionally, we introduced different cut-off values for IGRA positivity and compared the computed progression rates. Among all contacts with a positive tuberculosis-specific IGRA we describe the uptake of preventive treatment. Our study covered a population of 3.2 million with a reported TB incidence of 7.5 cases per 100 000 population in 2008. From 2008 to 2010, we prospectively recruited all IGRA-positive contacts of newly detected sputum smear and/or culture positive notified TB cases at 12 local public health authorities (LPHAs) in Hesse, Germany. Only contacts with a history of TB disease were excluded. The German recommendations for contact investigations, published in 2007 [4], served as the basis for the LPHAs investigations: a dual-step approach in which IGRA is only performed if the tuberculin skin test (TST) is positive. However, LPHAs deviated from this recommendation and performed TST in less than 27% of all IGRA tested contacts. All our study participants, namely all IGRA-positive contacts, were …
Coupled Mesoscopic and Microscopic Simulation of Stochastic Reaction-Diffusion Processes in Mixed Dimensions

We present a new simulation algorithm that allows for dynamic switching between a mesoscopic and a microscopic modeling framework for stochastic reaction-diffusion kinetics. The more expensive and more accurate microscopic model is used only for those species and in those regions in space where there is reason to believe that a microscopic model is needed to capture the dynamics correctly. The microscopic algorithm is extended to simulation on curved surfaces in order to model reaction and diffusion on membranes. The accuracy of the method on and near a spherical membrane is analyzed and evaluated in a numerical experiment. Two biologically motivated examples are simulated in which the need for microscopic simulation of parts of the system arises for different reasons. First, we apply the method to a model of the phosphorylation reactions in a mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling cascade where microscale methods are necessary to resolve fast rebinding events. Then a model is considered for transport.
Pricing Currency Options with a Market Model of Interest Rates under Jump-Diffusion Stochastic Volatility Processes of Spot Exchange Rates

This paper proposes a pricing method of currency options with a market model of interest rates. Using a simple approximation and a Fourier transform method, we derive a formula of the option pricing under jump-diffusion stochastic volatility processes of spot exchange rates. As an application, we apply the formula to the calibration of volatility smiles in the JPY/USD currency option market. Moreover, using the approximate prices as a control variate, we achieve substantial variance reduction in Monte Carlo simulation.
Genome-wide analysis of the specificity and mechanisms of replication infidelity driven by imbalanced dNTP pools

The absolute and relative concentrations of the four dNTPs are key determinants of DNA replication fidelity, yet the consequences of altered dNTP pools on replication fidelity have not previously been investigated on a genome-wide scale. Here, we use deep sequencing to determine the types, rates and locations of uncorrected replication errors that accumulate in the nuclear genome of a mismatch repair-deficient diploid yeast strain with elevated dCTP and dTTP concentrations. These imbalanced dNTP pools promote replication errors in specific DNA sequence motifs suggesting increased misinsertion and increased mismatch extension at the expense of proofreading. Interestingly, substitution rates are similar for leading and lagging strand replication, but are higher in regions replicated late in S phase. Remarkably, the rate of single base deletions is preferentially increased in coding sequences and in short rather than long mononucleotides runs. Based on DNA sequence motifs, we propose two distinct mechanisms for generating single base deletions in vivo. Collectively, the results indicate that elevated dCTP and dTTP pools increase mismatch formation and decrease error correction across the nuclear genome, and most strongly increases mutation rates in coding and late replicating sequences.
The Value of Fish Quality

This paper aims to reveal consumers’ preferences for quality graded fish products based upon existing data on first-hand sales in Denmark. The data represents the value of fish for consumption as a non-differentiated private good. The objective is to measure the welfare gains to society of an increase in “quality” for major fish species. The demand for Quality Extra and quality A-fish is estimated using an Inverse Almost Ideal Demand System (IAIDS-model) as the functional form of demand on first-hand sales data following the European Union established trade norms for quality-grading and sizecategories. Secondly the possibility of estimating changes in consumer surplus as the welfare gained by society of a general increase in quality of landed fish is discussed. However, the estimates on consumer surplus are not yet completed. The model adopted is a pricing model for the implicit price of the characteristic “quality” which necessarily is part of the product i.e. fish for consumption. Today the Danish market for fish does not explicitly state the “quality” of fish in the consumers market. This is generally a credence parameter. There are no objective verifiable standards available to the consumer and this is an element of trust in the word of the fish retailer. This paper shows the first results of adopting a revealed preference model for indirect benefit estimation on existing quality differentiated fish at first-hand sales. We explicitly discuss the assumptions of “weak complementarity” and “derived demand” necessary to run the model.
Porcine Rotaviruses: Epidemiology, Immune Responses and Control Strategies

Rotaviruses (RVs) are a major cause of acute viral gastroenteritis in young animals and children worldwide. Immunocompetent adults of different species become resistant to clinical disease due to post-infection immunity, immune system maturation and gut physiological changes. Of the 9 RV genogroups (A–I), RV A, B, and C (RVA, RVB, and RVC, respectively) are associated with diarrhea in piglets. Although discovered decades ago, porcine genogroup E RVs (RVE) are uncommon and their pathogenesis is not studied well. The presence of porcine RV H (RVH), a newly defined distinct genogroup, was recently confirmed in diarrheic pigs in Japan, Brazil, and the US. The complex epidemiology, pathogenicity and high genetic diversity of porcine RVAs are widely recognized and well-studied. More recent data show a significant genetic diversity based on the VP7 gene analysis of RVB and C strains in pigs. In this review, we will summarize previous and recent research to provide insights on historic and current prevalence and genetic diversity of porcine RVs in different geographic regions and production systems. We will also provide a brief overview of immune responses to porcine RVs, available control strategies and zoonotic potential of different RV genotypes. An improved understanding of the above parameters may lead to the development of more optimal strategies to manage RV diarrheal disease in swine and humans.
Mobile health platform for diabetes management based on the Internet-of-Things

This paper presents a new Internet of Thing (IoT)-based platform to support self-management of diabetes. This mobile health (mHealth) approach allows for multiple care dimensions of diabetes by means of remote collection and monitoring of patient data and provision of personalized and customized feedback on a smartphone platform. Such support to self-management of diabetes enables real-time clinical interaction and feedback tailored to the personal needs of the patient, utilizing current and historical patient data. The platform understands to what extent the patient's activities comply with their individual treatment plans, deriving rule-based health indicators, and generating appropriate warnings and support in terms of feedback advices. The physical layer of the platform incorporates wireless nodes; each of which encompasses a set of medical sensors linked wirelessly to a mobile device. The physical layer nodes are linked to a Web-based application layer through an existing telecommunication infrastructure. A fully functional prototype system is designed, implemented, and its end-to-end functionality is tested successfully, with high patient acceptability levels demonstrated by means of a clinician-led pilot study.
Motivational Interviewing and Injured Workers: Facilitating Behaviour Change in Work Rehabilitation

Background: Standards of best practice significantly challenge occupational therapists (OTs) in vocational rehabilitation, as current practice is not strongly grounded in theory, occupation, or evidence. In addition, a conceptual framework is needed to understand injured worker’s decision making and inform evidence-based interventions to address behaviour change regarding RTW. The Model of Human Occupation (MOHO) is an occupation-based model used to guide occupational therapy (OT) practice. The model integrates concepts related to the person’s characteristics with their environment to explain participation in occupation. It has the potential to assist in understanding how an injured worker’s internal characteristics can generate behaviour change. Motivational Interviewing (MI) is an evidence-based, client-centered approach that has been efficacious in reducing maladaptive behaviours and promoting adaptive behaviours in a broad range of situations where behaviour change is the focus. If integrated, MOHO and MI could provide the means to understand and facilitate RTW change processes in vocational rehabilitation. Objective: This paper provides an overview of MOHO and MI in vocational rehabilitation without structured methodology. The objectives of this paper are to: (1) Evaluate MOHO as a framework for supporting OTs in vocational rehabilitation; (2) Assess MI as a suitable approach for OTs in vocational rehabilitation; and (3) Compare and integrate MOHO and MI.
The Neural Correlates of Decisions About Sadness in Facial Expressions

Models of decision processes postulate the action of a similar mechanism when computing responses across very different domains, such as decisions made on the intensity of a stimulus or according to subjective preferences. However, the neural substrates of decision-making in domains such as those involving emotion processing in social interactions have as yet remained largely unexplored. In this functional neuroimaging study, we used a paradigm developed in neuroeconomical studies of subjective preferences to uncover the neural substrates involved in deciding the degree of sadness in facial expressions, which convey information on sufferance in conspecifics. Because of the possible association of facial expressions with stimulus properties such as the capacity to be emotionally arousing, we used a procedure designed to control for this possible confound. The contrast representing differences in attributed sadness activated the precuneus and posterior cingular cortex, areas often implicated in studies of subjective preference. Also, the somatosensory cortex was active, an area associated with both sensory discrimination tasks in the visual domain and whose lesion is known to result in deficits in emotion recognition. In the same contrast, no activation of the amygdala, the substrate of emotional arousal, was detected (or of any other area associated with the sensory processing of faces, such as the fusiform gyrus). These results suggest that specific networks beyond those sensitive to the arousing properties of emotional stimuli are active when making choices in a social–cognitive domain.
An Education-Support PSE System: TSUNA-TASTE

Network-based learning or e-Learning has been taking an important role in education as helpful education tools. However, it is difficult for teachers to retrieve education data from students or to obtain data from the student activities. Therefore, we have developed a problem solving environment (PSE) for the education and learning support: TSUNA-TASTE. The TSUNA-TASTE system collects the system-usage date, the information for softwares used and operation data of mouse and key board of all students. The data, which the system TSUNA-TASTE collects, are stored in a database on the TSUNA-TASTE system server. In this paper we present the structure of the TSUNA-TASTE system and detailed structure of the network in the TSUNA-TASTE. The TSUNA-TASTE supports teachers and students in computer-based education. The TSUNA-TASTE may open a new helpful e-Learning world.
Zinc restriction promotes β-cell hyper-hormonemia and endocrine pancreas degeneration in mice

Zinc is a key component of proteins, including interaction with varying pancreatic hormones, including insulin and amylin. Zinc is key in insulin crystallinity in ZnT8 knock-out mice models, although the dietary role of zinc restriction over both energetic metabolism and ß-pancreatic hormonemia and morphology remained unexplored. We aimed to test whether dietary zinc restriction on swiss male mice would impact over endocrine pancreas and metabolic phenotype. We evaluated the role of dietary zinc restriction on ß-pancreatic hormonemia on non-transgenic Swiss male mice weaned onto a control or low-zinc diet for 4 weeks. Growth, glycemia, insulinemia, amylinemia and pancreatic islet were smaller in intervention group despite insulin crystallinity in secretory granules. We have found overlabelling for insulin, amylin and toxic oligomers in apoptotic pancreatic islet. High production of β-pancreatic hormones in zinc-restricted animals counteract the decreasing islet size due to their apoptotic cells. We conclude that zinc deficiency is sufficient to promote islet β-cell hormonal disruption and degeneration.
Discovering Recurrent Image Semantics from Class Discrimination

Supervised statistical learning has become a critical means to design and learn visual concepts (e.g., faces, foliage, buildings, etc.) in content-based indexing systems. The drawback of this approach is the need of manual labeling of regions. While several automatic image annotation methods proposed recently are very promising, they usually rely on the availability and analysis of associated text descriptions. In this paper, we propose a hybrid learning framework to discover local semantic regions and generate their samples for training of local detectors with minimal human intervention. A multiscale segmentation-free framework is proposed to embed the soft presence of discovered semantic regions and local class patterns in an image independently for indexing and matching. Based on 2400 heterogeneous consumer images with 16 semantic queries, both similarity matching based on individual index and integrated similarity matching have outperformed a feature fusion approach by 26% and 37% in average precisions, respectively.
SL qZSI with PMSG wind conversion system

In this paper, a standalone wind energy conversion system along with switched inductor quasi impedance source inverter is proposed. Wind energy system is chosen because of its sustainability and commercial potential. Permanent magnet synchronous generator is used as there is no need of separate excitation and maintenance. Also Optimum Power technique is incorporated to improve MPPT of wind energy conversion system (WECS). The main objective of this paper is to improve the wind energy conversion system by implementing switched inductor quasi-z-source inverter and battery energy system. Switched inductor quasi-z-source inverter has high efficiency and the input current is continuous, suppresses inrush current and avoids shoot through fault in inverter when compared to Z-source inverter based wind energy conversion system. An effective control technique for the inverter, based on the pulse width modulation (PWM) method, has been developed namely Simple Boost Modulation technique to balance the line voltages. The proper control of battery current through converter has been done to reduce the electrical torque pulsation of the PMSG under an unbalanced load condition.
A traceability management framework for artefacts in self-adaptive systems

We expect software systems to be dependable and sufficiently responsive to the inevitable changes regularly happen in their operational environments. This can be a challenging task to achieve when systems are in enterprise scale and large enough to cater for multiple complex business processes. One approach to address this is by incorporating suitable software process models and managing various artefacts within the process. However, once deployed, only maintenance of the software is viable through the process; it may not be sufficient for the needed changes due to the essential difficulties associated with software engineering. In order to overcome this challenge, self-adaptive systems with dynamically modifying architectures are becoming popular and sufficiently warrant for a mainstream practice in future. In light of these developments, we identified an important yet missing part in self-adaptive system engineering, i.e. artefact traceability management at runtime. This paper presents the research work on developing a generic traceability management toolkit with a traceability interlink visualizer aiding software engineers to explore artefact inconsistencies rapidly. The toolkit was then extended with a widely used self-adaptive system framework. The evaluation of the developed traceability management framework with a case system is presented.
Wake up Radio Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks Using an Ultra Low Power FPGA

In this paper an implementation of a Wake up Radio(WuR) with addressing capabilities based on an ultra low power FPGA for ultra low energy Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is proposed. The main goal is to evaluate the utilization of very low power configurable devices to take advantage of their speed, flexibility and low power consumption instead of the traditional approaches based on ASICs or microcontrollers, for communication frame decoding and communication data control.
P2P streaming media on-demand scheme based on network coding

The paper presents a P2P streaming media transmission scheme based on network coding, analyzes P2P streaming on-demand transmission problems, on the basis, designs a P2P streaming media on-demand protocol based on network coding, introduces network coding to solve problem of node failure, achieves sequential reception by sliding window, optimizes node selection strategy, The above strategies make a useful improvement in reducing the P2P streaming media transmission delay, packet loss rate and reducing server load.
Changing Operational Modes in the Context of Pre Run-Time Scheduling (Special Issue on Responsive Computer Systems)

Typical processes controlled by hard real-time computer systems undergo several, mutually exclusive modes of operation. By deterministically switching among a number of static schedules, a pre run-time scheduled system is able to adapt to changing environmental situations. This paper presents concepts for speci cation of mode changes, construction of static schedules for modes and transitions, and timely run-time execution of mode changes. We propose concepts for mode changes in the context pre run-time scheduled hard real-time systems. While MARS is used to illustrate the concepts' application, they are applicable to a variety of systems. Our methods adhere closely to the ones established for single modes. By decomposing the system into a set of disjoint modes, the design process and its comprehension are facilitated, testing e orts are reduced signi cantly, and solutions are enabled which do not exist if all system activities of all modes are combined into a single schedule.
Do Electoral Quotas 'Work' After They Are Withdrawn? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in India

Do electoral quotas for women alter women's chances of winning elections after they are withdrawn? I answer this question by examining an unusual natural experiment in India in which randomly chosen seats in local legislatures are set aside for women for one election at a time. Using data from Mumbai, I find that the probability of a woman winning office conditional on the constituency being reserved for women in the previous election is approximately five times the probability of a woman winning office if the constituency had not been reserved for women. I also explore tentative evidence on the mechanisms by which reservations affect women's ability to win elections. The data suggest that reservations work in part by introducing into politics women who are able to win elections after reservations are withdrawn and by allowing parties to learn that women can win elections.
Formal Contracts : Enabling Component Composition

Traditional component interaction is based on interface calls and callbacks. Such interaction can introduce integration faults, i.e., side effects at the moment of component integration. Solutions to such problems can be hard to apply, and may require drastic changes in the design of the involved components. This paper introduces Formal Contracts, a software construct that allows side-effect free component interaction, and thereby avoids the introduction of integration faults. Furthermore, via a state machine representing the inter-component contract, Formal Contracts, in addition to the static aspects, formally specify the dynamic aspects of component interaction. Formal Contracts are a pragmatic software mechanism that supports the full development cycle: from the specification and decomposition until the debugging, composition, and test of a system.