Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chronic Hepatitis C Virus Infection and the Proinflammatory Effects of Injection Drug Use.

BACKGROUND Chronic inflammation, as defined by persistent immune activation, is associated with adverse clinical outcomes. People who inject drugs (PWID) have evidence of persistent immune activation. Here, in a cohort of PWID with or without hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, we sought to dissect out the contribution of chronic HCV infection (common in PWID) from the effects of injection drug use itself. METHODS Four groups of study volunteers were recruited: group 1 comprised active PWID; group 2, individuals who ceased injecting drugs 1-2 months before recruitment; group 3, individuals who ceased injecting drugs 3-4 months before recruitment; and group 4, healthy volunteers. Soluble and cell-associated markers of immune activation were quantified. RESULTS HCV-viremic PWID have elevated levels of immune activation when compared to healthy volunteers. Cessation of injection drug use results in a decline in immune activation in the absence of HCV viremia, while HCV-viremic individuals who previously were PWID continue to harbor elevated levels of immune activation, as defined by increased levels of soluble CD14 and tumor necrosis factor α and by the presence of CD38+HLA-DR+ CD4+ and CD8+ T cells. CONCLUSIONS Immune activation, a well-defined surrogate of poor clinical outcome that is elevated in PWID, can regress to normal levels in former injection drug users who are HCV aviremic. Therefore, enhanced harm-reduction efforts should incorporate aggressive treatment of HCV infection. CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRATION NCT01831284.
Atypical Processing of Novel Distracters in a Visual Oddball Task in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Several studies have shown that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show abnormalities in P3b to targets in standard oddball tasks. The present study employed a three-stimulus visual oddball task with novel distracters that analyzed event-related potentials (ERP) to both target and non-target items at frontal and parietal sites. The task tested the hypothesis that children with autism are abnormally orienting attention to distracters probably due to impaired habituation to novelty. We predicted a lower selectivity in early ERPs to target, frequent non-target, and rare distracters. We also expected delayed late ERPs in autism. The study enrolled 32 ASD and 24 typically developing (TD) children. Reaction time (RT) and accuracy were analyzed as behavioral measures, while ERPs were recorded with a dense-array EEG system. Children with ASD showed higher error rate without normative post-error RT slowing and had lower error-related negativity. Parietal P1, frontal N1, as well as P3a and P3b components were higher to novels in ASD. Augmented exogenous ERPs suggest low selectivity in pre-processing of stimuli resulting in their excessive processing at later stages. The results suggest an impaired habituation to unattended stimuli that incurs a high load at the later stages of perceptual and cognitive processing and response selection when novel distracter stimuli are differentiated from targets.
The three desulfoglucosinolate sulfotransferase proteins in Arabidopsis have different substrate specificities and are differentially expressed

Sulfotransferases (SOTs) catalyse the transfer of a sulfate group from 3′‐phosphoadenosine 5′‐phosphosulfate (PAPS) to an appropriate hydroxy group of various substrates with the parallel formation of 3′‐phosphoadenosine 5′‐phosphate. In Arabidopsis thaliana, 18 SOT proteins (AtSOT) have been identified. Three of them, AtSOT16, AtSOT17 and AtSOT18, catalyse the sulfation of desulfoglucosinolates. The proteins were expressed in Escherichia coli, purified by affinity chromatography and used for enzyme kinetic studies. By establishing two types of enzyme assay using both 35S‐labelled and unlabelled PAPS, separation of the products by HPLC, and detection of the products by monitoring radioactivity or UV absorption, the substrate specificities of the three AtSOT proteins were determined. They show different maximum velocities with several desulfoglucosinolates as substrates and differ in their affinity for desulfobenzylglucosinolate and PAPS. The sequences encoding AtSOT18 were amplified from Arabidopsis ecotypes C24 and Col0; the two expressed proteins differ in two out of 350 amino acids. These amino‐acid variations led to different substrate specificities. Exchange of one of the two amino acids in AtSOT18 from C24 to the respective amino acid in AtSOT18 from Col0 gave the C24 protein the same substrate specificity as the wild‐type AtSOT18 protein from Col0. All three desulfoglucosinolate AtSOT proteins are localized in the cytoplasm, as demonstrated by transient expression of fusion constructs with the green fluorescent protein in Arabidopsis protoplasts. Northern blot analysis indicated differential expression of the three AtSOT genes in plant organs and tissues at different developmental stages and during a light/darkness cycle. High (500 µm) and low (50 µm) sulfate concentrations in the medium did not influence the levels of expression.
Real‐time generation of smoothed‐particle hydrodynamics‐based special effects in character animation

In the previous works, the real‐time fluid‐character animation could hardly be achieved because of the intensive processing demand on the character's movement and fluid simulation. This paper presents an effective approach to the real‐time generation of the fluid flow driven by the motion of a character in full 3D space, based on smoothed‐particle hydrodynamics method. The novel method of conducting and constraining the fluid particles by the geometric properties of the character motion trajectory is introduced. Furthermore, the optimized algorithms of particle searching and rendering are proposed, by taking advantage of the graphics processing unit parallelization. Consequently, both simulation and rendering of the 3D liquid effects with realistic character interactions can be implemented by our framework and performed in real‐time on a conventional PC. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Effects of Corporate Governance on Performance of Insurance Firms in Ghana

xiv CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION . 1 1.1 Background of Study . 1 1.2 Problem Statement . 2 1.3 Research Objectives . 4 1.4 Research Questions . 5 1.5 Research Contributions . 5 1.6 Limitations of the Study . 6 1.7 The structure of the thesis . 6 CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW . 8 2.0 Introduction . 8 2.1 Theoretical Review . 8 2.1.1 Agency Theory . 8 2.1.2 Resource dependence theory . 10 University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug. edu.gh
Convolutional Recurrent Neural Networks forHyperspectral Data Classification

Deep neural networks, such as convolutional neural networks (CNN) and stackedautoencoders, have recently been successfully used to extract deep features for hyperspectral dataclassification. Recurrent neural networks (RNN) are another type of neural networks, which arewidely used for sequence analysis because they are constructed to extract contextual information fromsequences by modeling the dependencies between different time steps. In this paper, we study theability of RNN for hyperspectral data classification by extracting the contextual information from thedata. Specifically, hyperspectral data are treated as spectral sequences, and an RNN is used to modelthe dependencies between different spectral bands. In addition, we propose to use a convolutionalrecurrent neural network (CRNN) to learn more discriminative features for hyperspectral dataclassification. In CRNN, a few convolutional layers are first learned to extract middle-level andlocally-invariant features from the input data, and the following recurrent layers are then employedto further extract spectrally-contextual information from the features generated by the convolutionallayers. Experimental results on real hyperspectral datasets show that our method provides betterclassification performance compared to traditional methods and other state-of-the-art deep learningmethods for hyperspectral data classification.
The diagnostic and prognostic utility of positron emission tomography/computed tomography‐based follow‐up after radiotherapy for head and neck cancer

The detection of subclinical head and neck cancer recurrence or a second primary tumor may improve survival. In the current study, the authors investigated the clinical value of a follow‐up program incorporating serial 18F‒fluorodeoxyglucose‒positron emission tomography integrated with computed tomography (PET/CT) in the detection of recurrent disease in patients with head and neck cancer.
Comparing Direct Stenting With Conventional Stenting in Patients With Acute Coronary Syndromes

Our aim was to compare direct stenting (DS) with conventional stenting (CS) in patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS). We searched PubMed, EMBASE, and ISI web of science for eligible studies. Primary end point was major adverse cardiac events (MACEs) in short term. Secondary end points were 1-year mortality and after-procedural no-reflow phenomenon. Twelve trials in 8998 patients were included. The odds ratios (ORs) were pooled using the Mantel-Haenszel fixed effect model. Short-term MACEs were significantly reduced in the DS arm in contrast to the CS (5.00% vs 8.08%, DS vs CS, respectively, OR [95% confidence interval] = 0.61 [0.46-0.80], P = .0004). One-year mortality and after-procedural no-reflow phenomenon were significantly lower in the DS group. No heterogeneity was observed through I2 test (Phet = .81, .89, and .77 for each end point, respectively). This meta-analysis demonstrated that in selected patients with ACS, DS is not only safe and feasible but also reduces short-term and 1-year mortality as well as the occurrence of after-procedural no-reflow phenomenon.
Development and testing of the Migraine Disability Assessment (MIDAS) Questionnaire to assess headache-related disability

Article abstract The MIDAS Questionnaire was developed to assess headache-related disability with the aim of improving migraine care. Headache sufferers answer five questions, scoring the number of days, in the past 3 months, of activity limitations due to migraine. The internal consistency, test–retest reliability, and validity (accuracy) of the questionnaire were assessed in separate population-based studies of migraine sufferers. In addition, the face validity, ease of use, and clinical utility of the questionnaire were evaluated in a group of 49 physicians who independently rated disease severity and need for care in a diverse sample of migraine case histories. The test–retest Pearson correlation coefficient for the total MIDAS score was approximately 0.8. The MIDAS score was valid when compared with a reference diary-based measure of disability; the overall correlation between MIDAS and the diary-based measure was 0.63. The MIDAS score was also correlated with physicians’ assessments of need for medical care (r = 0.69). From studies completed to date, the MIDAS Questionnaire has been shown to be internally consistent, highly reliable, valid, and correlates with physicians’ clinical judgment. These features support its suitability for use in clinical practice. Use of the MIDAS Questionnaire may improve physician–patient communication about headache-related disability and may favorably influence health-care delivery for migraine patients.
Implementation Possibilities and Conditionalities of an Internet Platform Designed to Activate Elderly People in the Light of Research Conducted on the Polish Market

—The authors deal with the issues of activating elderly people and improving their quality of life in the context of the possibility of increasing their effectiveness through the use of modern ICT solutions. In particular, the paper is focused on checking the possibilities and conditions for successful implementation of the service e-marketplace platform for occupational activation of elderly people in the context of Polish market conditions. The analysis was conducted on the basis of the results of the survey dedicated to elderly people in Poland and supported with in-depth direct interviews. Thanks to it the socio-economical situation of Polish seniors as well as their attitude towards ICTs could be depicted. The concept of the service e-marketplace platform allowing for offering and requesting different kind of occupational activities (incl. part-time work and volunteering) and its key components were presented. That concept has been verified for compliance with the determined implementation conditionalities.
Active Learning Strategies for Phenotypic Profiling of High-Content Screens

High-content screening is a powerful method to discover new drugs and carry out basic biological research. Increasingly, high-content screens have come to rely on supervised machine learning (SML) to perform automatic phenotypic classification as an essential step of the analysis. However, this comes at a cost, namely, the labeled examples required to train the predictive model. Classification performance increases with the number of labeled examples, and because labeling examples demands time from an expert, the training process represents a significant time investment. Active learning strategies attempt to overcome this bottleneck by presenting the most relevant examples to the annotator, thereby achieving high accuracy while minimizing the cost of obtaining labeled data. In this article, we investigate the impact of active learning on single-cell–based phenotype recognition, using data from three large-scale RNA interference high-content screens representing diverse phenotypic profiling problems. We consider several combinations of active learning strategies and popular SML methods. Our results show that active learning significantly reduces the time cost and can be used to reveal the same phenotypic targets identified using SML. We also identify combinations of active learning strategies and SML methods which perform better than others on the phenotypic profiling problems we studied.
A‐Type potassium currents active at subthreshold potentials in mouse cerebellar purkinje cells

Voltage‐dependent and calcium‐independent K+ currents were whole‐cell recorded from cerebellar Purkinje cells in slices. Tetraethylammonium (TEA, 4 mm) application isolated an A‐type K+ current (Ik(a)) with a peak amplitude, at +20 mV, of about one third of the total voltage‐dependent and calcium‐independent K+ current. The Ik(a) activated at about −60 mV, had a V0.5 of activation of −24.9 mV and a V0.5 of inactivation of −69.2 mV. The deactivation time constant at −70 mV was 3.4 ± 0.4 ms, while the activation time constant at +20 mV was 0.9 ± 0.2 ms. The inactivation kinetics was weakly voltage dependent, with two time constants; those at +20 mV were 19.3 ± 3.1 and 97.6 ± 9.8 ms. The recovery from inactivation had two time constants of 60.8 ms (78.4%) and 962.3 ms (21.6%). The Ik(a) was blocked by 4‐aminopyridine with an IC50 of 67.6 μM. Agitoxin‐2 (2 nm) blocked 17.4 ± 2.1% of the Ik(a). Flecainide completely blocked the Ik(a) with a biphasic effect with IC50 values of 4.4 and 183.2 μM. In current‐clamp recordings the duration of evoked action potentials was affected neither by agitoxin‐2 (2 nm) nor by flecainide (3 μM), but action potentials that were already broadened by TEA were further prolonged by 4‐aminopyridine (100 μM). The amplitude of the hyperpolarisation at the end of depolarising steps was reduced by all these blockers.
SNR-based mask compensation for computational auditory scene analysis applied to speech recognition in a car environment

In this paper, we propose a computational auditory scene analysis (CASA)–based front–end for two–microphone speech recognition in a car environment. One of the important issues associated with CASA is the accurate estimation of mask information for target speech separation within multiple microphone noisy speech. For such a task, the time–frequency mask information is compensated through the signal–to–noise ratio resulted from a beamformer to adjust the noise quantity included in noisy speech. We evaluate the performance of an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system employing a CASA–based front–end with the proposed mask compensation method. In addition, we compare its performance with those employing a CASA–based front–end without mask compensation and the beamforming–based front–end. As a result, the CASA–based front–end achieves an average word error rate (WER) reduction of 8.57% when the proposed mask compensation method is applied. In addition, the CASA–based front–end with the proposed method provides a relative WER reduction of 26.52%, compared with the beamforming–based front–end.
Eighth Millennium Pottery from a Prehistoric Shell Midden in the Brazilian Amazon

The earliest pottery yet found in the Western Hemisphere has been excavated from a prehistoric shell midden near Santar�m in the lower Amazon, Brazil. Calibrated accelerator radiocarbon dates on charcoal, shell, and pottery and a thermoluminescence date on pottery from the site fall from about 8000 to 7000 years before the present. The early fishing village is part of a long prehistoric trajectory that contradicts theories that resource poverty limited cultural evolution in the tropics.
Vitamin B 1-Induced Priming Is Dependent on Hydrogen Peroxide and the NPR 1 Gene in Arabidopsis 1

Thiamine confers systemic acquired resistance (SAR) on susceptible plants through priming, leading to rapid counterattack against pathogen invasion and perturbation of disease progress. Priming reduces the metabolic cost required for constitutive expression of acquired resistance. To investigate the effects of priming by thiamine on defense-related responses, Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) was treated with thiamine and effects of pathogen challenge on the production of active oxygen species, callose deposition, hypersensitive cell death, and pathogenesis-related 1 (PR1)/Phe ammonia-lyase 1 (PAL1) gene expression was analyzed. Thiamine did not induce cellular and molecular defense responses except for transient expression of PR1 per se; however, subsequent Pseudomonas syringae pv tomato challenge triggered pronounced cellular defense responses and advanced activation of PR1/PAL1 gene transcription. Thiamine treatment and subsequent pathogen invasion triggered hydrogen peroxide accumulation, callose induction, and PR1/PAL1 transcription activation in Arabidopsis mutants insensitive to jasmonic acid (jar1), ethylene (etr1), or abscisic acid (abi3-3), but not in plants expressing bacterial NahG and lacking regulation of SAR (npr1 [nonexpressor of PR genes 1]). Moreover, removal of hydrogen peroxide by catalase almost completely nullified cellular and molecular defense responses as well as SAR abolishing bacterial propagation within plants. Our results indicated that priming is an important cellular mechanism in SAR by thiamine and requires hydrogen peroxide and intact NPR1.
Analysis of domoic acid isomers in seafood by capillary electrophoresis

Methods for the analysis of domoic acid (DA) based upon capillary electrophoresis (CE) combined with UV absorbance detection were investigated. DA could be analyzed using bare fused‐silica capillaries in either the cationic or anionic mode with acidic or basic buffer systems, respectively. Highest performance, in terms of both separation efficiency and analysis time, was achieved with phosphate or borate buffers at a pH of approximately 9. The addition of (3‐cyclodextrin to the borate buffer permitted a separation of DA and several of its isomers (isodomoic acids) that was superior to that achieved with liquid chromatography (LC). The optimum background electrolyte for the separation was 22.5 mM sodium tetraborate at pH 9.2 with 20 mM (3‐cyclodextrin. In addition, an extraction and clean‐up procedure was developed and tested with mussels, clams and anchovies. Aqueous methanol extraction of samples followed by a tandem strong anion and strong cation exchange clean‐up provided an extract that was completely compatible with CE analysis. A mass detection limit of 3 pg of DA injected and a method detection limit of 150 ng/g in tissues could be achieved. Comparison with LC showed that comparable precision and accuracy could be attained by the two techniques.
Yield of Stool Culture with Isolate Toxin Testing versus a Two-Step Algorithm Including Stool Toxin Testing for Detection of Toxigenic Clostridium difficile

ABSTRACT We examined the incremental yield of stool culture (with toxin testing on isolates) versus our two-step algorithm for optimal detection of toxigenic Clostridium difficile. Per the two-step algorithm, stools were screened for C. difficile-associated glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) antigen and, if positive, tested for toxin by a direct (stool) cell culture cytotoxicity neutralization assay (CCNA). In parallel, stools were cultured for C. difficile and tested for toxin by both indirect (isolate) CCNA and conventional PCR if the direct CCNA was negative. The “gold standard” for toxigenic C. difficile was detection of C. difficile by the GDH screen or by culture and toxin production by direct or indirect CCNA. We tested 439 specimens from 439 patients. GDH screening detected all culture-positive specimens. The sensitivity of the two-step algorithm was 77% (95% confidence interval [CI], 70 to 84%), and that of culture was 87% (95% CI, 80 to 92%). PCR results correlated completely with those of CCNA testing on isolates (29/29 positive and 32/32 negative, respectively). We conclude that GDH is an excellent screening test and that culture with isolate CCNA testing detects an additional 23% of toxigenic C. difficile missed by direct CCNA. Since culture is tedious and also detects nontoxigenic C. difficile, we conclude that culture is most useful (i) when the direct CCNA is negative but a high clinical suspicion of toxigenic C. difficile remains, (ii) in the evaluation of new diagnostic tests for toxigenic C. difficile (where the best reference standard is essential), and (iii) in epidemiologic studies (where the availability of an isolate allows for strain typing and antimicrobial susceptibility testing).