Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of weight status in the response to Step-2 maintenance therapies in children with asthma

Introduction Overweight children with asthma may display impaired response to inhaled corticosteroids (ICS), possibly due to non-eosinophilic inflammation or weight-related lung compression; these mechanisms may differentially affect response to ICS and leukotriene receptor antagonists (LTRAs). We assessed whether weight status modified the response to low-dose ICS and LTRA Step-2 monotherapy. Methods A historical cohort study from clinical data linked to administrative databases was conducted among children aged 2–18 years with specialist-diagnosed asthma who were initiating or continuing a Step-2 monotherapy from 2000 to 2007 at the Montreal Children’s Hospital Asthma Centre. The outcome was time-to-management failure defined as any step-up in therapy, acute care visit, hospitalisation or oral corticosteroids for asthma, whichever occurred first. The independent and joint effects of weight status (body mass index [BMI] percentile) and time-varying treatment on time-to-management failure were estimated with marginal structural Cox models. The likelihood ratio test (LRT) and relative excess risk due to interaction (RERI) were computed to assess treatment effect modification by weight status on the multiplicative and additive scales. Results Of the 433 and 85 visits with a low-dose ICS and LTRA prescription, respectively, 388 management failures occurred over 14 529 visit-weeks of follow-up. Children using LTRA compared with low-dose ICS tended to have an overall higher risk of early management failure (HR 1.52; 95% CI 0.72 to 3.22). Irrespective of treatment, the hazard of management failure increased by 5% (HR 1.05; 95% CI 1.01 to 1.10) for every 10-unit increase in BMI percentile. An additional hazard reduction of 17% (HR 0.83; 95% CI 0.70 to 0.99) was observed for every 10-unit increase in BMI percentile among LTRA users, but not for ICS (HR 0.95; 95% CI 0.86 to 1.04). The LRT indicated a departure from exact multiplicativity (p<0.0001), and the RERIs for ICS and LTRA were −0.05 (95% CI −0.14 to 0.05) and −0.52 (95% CI −1.76 to 0.71). Conclusions Weight status was associated with earlier time-to-management failure in children prescribed Step-2 therapy. This hypothesis-generating study suggests that LTRA response increases in children with higher BMI percentiles, although further research is warranted to confirm findings.
GSTM1 polymorphism in Oncotype DX assay is a potential predictive factor for taxane-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy in estrogen receptor-positive Chinese breast cancer patients

Background Investigations of the 21-gene Oncotype DX assay in neoadjuvant settings for breast cancer patients are currently underdeveloped. It is still unclear whether any individual gene of the 16 cancer-related genes can be used to predict response to taxane-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Methods Here, we performed TaqMan RT-PCR reactions to profile the expression patterns of these genes in 66 Chinese ER-positive breast cancer patients’ tumor tissues who underwent taxane-based neoadjuvant chemotherapies. Only GSTM1 has distinct non-expression/expression polymorphism, and we observed an almost 2.5-fold increment in the possibility of achieving pathological complete response (pCR) was defined as no histological evidence of residual invasive cancer both in the breast and in the axilla. in GSTM1 non-expression patients. We then analyzed the expression levels of 4 main GST isozymes (GSTA1, GSTT1, GSTP1 and GSTT1) and docetaxel cytotoxicity in various breast cancer cell lines (MCF7, MDA-MB-231, BT474, and SKBR3). Furthermore, we knocked down 4 GST isozymes with siRNA against each isoform in resistant MDA-MB-231. We then observed the changes of docetaxel sensitivity though WST-1 assay, in addition to apoptosis by Hoechst stain and TUNEL assay. Results Docetaxel IC50 values ranging from 33.0 nM (MDA-MB-231) to 7.20 µM (resistant MDA-MB-231) revealed a close correlation with the expression levels of 4 main GST isozymes. Significantly, depletion of GSTM1 and GSTA1 but not GSTP1 nor GSTT1, suppressed cell viability by 174% and 155% respectively, and was able to induce obvious apoptosis in resistant MDA-MB-132. Conclusions Taken together, our results suggest that GSTM1 polymorphism could be useful in the prediction of taxane-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy in ER-positive Chinese breast cancer patients, and that GSTM1 and GSTA1 expression are linked to docetaxel resistance.
Finite-time formation tracking control for vehicles based on motion planning approach

This paper addresses the finite-time formation tracking problem for vehicles with dynamics model on SE(3) (the specific Euclidean group of rigid body motions), under the condition that the tracking time is given according to task requirements in advance. By using Pontryagin's maximum principle (PMP) on Lie groups, a finite-time optimal tracking control law is designed for vehicles to track a desired trajectory at the given time. Simultaneously, the corresponding cost function is guaranteed to be optimal. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control law, an illustrative example is provided.
Transcriptional and posttranscriptional control of c-myc during myogenesis: its mRNA remains inducible in differentiated cells and does not suppress the differentiated phenotype

It is widely accepted that the cellular oncogene c-myc plays an important role in the control of cell proliferation and that its expression diminishes in differentiated cells. We examined whether there is a correlation between c-myc expression and cell proliferation or differentiation by using a subclone of a rat skeletal muscle cell line L6E9. Myoblasts irreversibly withdraw from the cell cycle, fuse to form multinucleated myotubes, and express muscle-specific genes (terminal differentiation). Muscle-specific genes can also be expressed in the absence of fusion (biochemical differentiation). Such mononucleated but biochemically differentiated cells can be stimulated to reenter the cell cycle. c-myc was induced by insulin, insulin-like growth factor, or serum factors in G0-arrested cells, whereas induction by protein synthesis inhibitors or superinduction by protein synthesis inhibitors in combination with serum factors occurred in all physiological states tested. We found that c-myc expression was reduced in biochemically and terminally differentiated cells as well as in quiescent undifferentiated cells but that it remained inducible by growth factors in all three physiological states. Results of nuclear runoff transcription assays suggested that the induction of c-myc mRNA by growth factors and its deinduction in these physiological states were regulated mainly at the transcriptional level. In contrast, induction and superinduction of c-myc mRNA by protein synthesis inhibitors alone and in combination with growth factors, respectively, were regulated posttranscriptionally mainly by stabilization of c-myc mRNA. Moreover, c-myc and muscle-specific genes could be simultaneously transcribed in both biochemically and terminally differentiated cells. These results indicate that irreversible repression of c-myc is not required for terminal myogenic differentiation and that its expression is insufficient by itself to suppress the differentiated phenotype.
Assessment of Glomerular Filtration Rate Measurement with Plasma Sampling: A Technical Review*

This article reviews available radionuclide-based techniques for glomerular filtration rate (GFR) measurement, focusing on clinical indications for GFR measurement, ideal GFR radiopharmaceutical tracer properties, and the 2 most common tracers in clinical use. Methods for full, 1-compartment, and single-sample renal clearance characterization are discussed. GFR normalization and the role of GFR measurement in chemotherapy dosing are also considered.
Text feature selection approach by means of class difference

Feature selection aims to seek some relevant features from the whole feature space to construct a feature subset and it can help us to handle clustering, classification and retrieval. This paper considers feature selection for text categorization. We put forward a filter feature selection scheme based on class difference measure. The key idea of our proposed algorithm is difference between the frequencies of document of class in which a term occurs. We compared the suggested approach with information gain and chi-square statistic that are usually utilized in text feature selection. The experimental results demonstrated that the new criterion was simpler and produced better performance in most of the cases.
A note on efficient zero-knowledge proofs and arguments (extended abstract)

In this note, we present new zero-knowledge interactive proofs and arguments for languages in <italic>NP</italic>. To show that <italic>x ε L</italic>, with an error probability of at most 2<supscrpt>-<italic>k</italic></supscrpt>, our zero-knowledge proof system requires <italic>O</italic>(|<italic>x</italic>|<supscrpt><italic>c</italic><subscrpt>1</subscrpt></supscrpt>)+<italic>O</italic>(lg<supscrpt><italic>c</italic><subscrpt>2</subscrpt></supscrpt>|<italic>x</italic>|)<italic>k</italic> ideal bit commitments, where <italic>c</italic><subscrpt>1</subscrpt> and <italic>c</italic><subscrpt>2</subscrpt> depend only on <italic>L</italic>. This construction is the first in the ideal bit commitment model that achieves large values of <italic>k</italic> more efficiently than by running <italic>k</italic> independent iterations of the base interactive proof system. Under suitable complexity assumptions, we exhibit zero knowledge arguments that require <italic>O</italic>(lg<supscrpt>c</supscrpt>|<italic>x</italic>|<italic>kl</italic> bits of communication, where <italic>c</italic> depends only on <italic>L</italic>, and <italic>l</italic> is the security parameter for the prover. This is the first construction in which the total amount of communication can be less than that needed to transmit the <italic>NP</italic> witness. Our protocols are based on efficiently checkable proofs for <italic>NP</italic>[4].
Incorporating TCP Acknowledgements in MAC Layer in IEEE 802.11 Multihop Ad Hoc Networks

The poor performance of TCP in multihop ad hoc networks is mainly attributed to the inefficient interaction among different protocol layers in previous literature, while the heavy load caused by end-to-end TCP acknowledgements (ACKs) with limited information is usually ignored. In this paper, we propose a novel incorporating ACK transfer scheme, IACK, to alleviate its impact. In IACK, TCP acknowledgements are incorporated in the control packets at the MAC layer and are transferred hop by hop from the sink node to the source node. To meet the requirement of IACK, we enhance the packet queuing policy at the routing layer, and propose a new rate-based TCP transfer scheme, TCP-AP+. Then, we implement IACK in ns-2, evaluate it over comprehensive scenarios and compare it with TCP-AP and TCP-Newreno. Simulation results show that IACK improves both the TCP throughput and goodput significantly.
[The Relationship Between Marital Adjustment and Psychological Symptoms in Women: The Mediator Roles of Coping Strategies and Gender Role Attitudes].

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study were to investigate the mediator role of coping strategies and gender roles attitudes on the relationship between women's marital adjustment and psychological symptoms. METHODS 248 married women participated in the study. Participants completed Marital Adjustment Scale, Ways of Coping Questionnaire, Brief Symptom Inventory, Gender Role Attitudes Scale and Demographic Information Form. RESULTS Regression analyses revealed that Submissive (Sobel z= -2.47, p<.01) and Helpless Coping Approach (Sobel z=-2.95, p<.001) have partial mediator role on the relationship between marital relationship score and psychological symptom level. Also, having Egalitarian Gender Role Attitude effects the psychological symptoms in relation with the marital relationship, but it is seen that this effect is not higher enough to play a mediator role (Sobel z =-1.21, p>.05). CONCLUSION Regression analysis showed that there is a statistically significant correlation between women's marital adjustment and their psychological symptoms, indicating that the marital adjustment decreases as the psychological symptoms increases. It is also found out that submissive and helpless coping approach have mediator roles in this relationship. Also, contrary to expectations, having egalitarian gender role attitude effects the psychological symptoms in relation with the marital relationship, but this effect does not seem to play a mediator role. It is thought that the effects of marriage and couple therapy approaches considering coupless problem solving and coping styles should be examined in further studies.
Incidence of scoliosis in cerebral palsy

Background and purpose — Surveillance of scoliosis in individuals with cerebral palsy (CP) is important for ensuring timely diagnosis and identification of curve progression. We analyzed the incidence of scoliosis in relation to age, sex, and gross motor function in a population-based cohort of individuals with CP. Patients and methods — This was a prospective register study of all 1,025 individuals born 1990–2012 in southern Sweden (1.4 million inhabitants) in the Swedish surveillance program for CP, which included >95% of the total population of people with CP in the area. Annual clinical examinations and radiographic measurement of the Cobb angle of those with a moderate or severe scoliosis were registered. We determined the incidence of scoliosis related to age, sex, and the Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) level. Results — The inclusion criteria were fulfilled by 962 individuals. The number of people (140/962) with scoliosis increased up to 20–25 years of age. The incidence of scoliosis was related to age and GMFCS level. In individuals at the lowest level of gross motor function (GMFCS V) scoliosis was seen in 10/131 before 5 years of age and at the age of 20 years 75% of these individuals had a Cobb angle ≥40°. No one in the highest level of motor function (GMFCS I) developed a Cobb angle ≥40° Interpretation — Surveillance programs for scoliosis in CP should be based on age and GMFCS level and should be initiated at a young age and continued into adulthood.
An Entropy Weighting k-Means Algorithm for Subspace Clustering of High-Dimensional Sparse Data

This paper presents a new k-means type algorithm for clustering high-dimensional objects in sub-spaces. In high-dimensional data, clusters of objects often exist in subspaces rather than in the entire space. For example, in text clustering, clusters of documents of different topics are categorized by different subsets of terms or keywords. The keywords for one cluster may not occur in the documents of other clusters. This is a data sparsity problem faced in clustering high-dimensional data. In the new algorithm, we extend the k-means clustering process to calculate a weight for each dimension in each cluster and use the weight values to identify the subsets of important dimensions that categorize different clusters. This is achieved by including the weight entropy in the objective function that is minimized in the k-means clustering process. An additional step is added to the k-means clustering process to automatically compute the weights of all dimensions in each cluster. The experiments on both synthetic and real data have shown that the new algorithm can generate better clustering results than other subspace clustering algorithms. The new algorithm is also scalable to large data sets.
18S ribosomal RNA detection on Northern blot employing a specific oligonucleotide.

mation of yeast (Table 1B). An increased number, 43, of the transformants were recombinants. When the DNA linkers were omitted, fewer transformants and no recombinants were obtained (Table 1C). In further cloning experiments using other genes (not shown), we have found that the indirect method of detection of recombinants, by loss of TRP1, is a useful method to help identify yeast transformants that contain exclusively recombinant plasmids. In each case, the DNA sequence of clones was confirmed directly. For cloning of DNA fragments that did not have a phenotype such as fluorescence, this greatly reduced the labor required to obtain recombinant plasmids. This method is particularly applicable when the end product is a yeast expression vector because it eliminates conventional cloning steps in bacteria, minimizes PCR amplification errors in the cloned DNA, and does not require unique restriction sites in the donor plasmid substrate.
Optimum model-based segmentation techniques for multifrequency polarimetric SAR images of urban areas

A new technique, named diagonal polarimetric merge-using-moments (DPOL MUM), is proposed for the segmentation of multifrequency polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images that exploits the characteristic block diagonal structure of their covariance matrix. This technique is based on the newly introduced split-merge test, which has a reduced fluctuation error than the straight extension of the polarimetric test (POL MUM) and is shown to yield a more accurate segmentation on simulated SAR images. DPOL MUM is especially useful in the extraction of information from urban areas that are characterized by the presence of different spectral and polarimetric characteristics. Its effectiveness is demonstrated by applying it to segment a set of SIR-C images of the town of Pavia. The classification of the image segmented with DPOL MUM shows higher probability of correct classification compared to POL MUM and to a similar technique that does not use the correlation properties (MT MUM).
Outer Limits of the Habitable Zones in Terms of Climate Mode and Climate Evolution of Earth-like Planets

We investigate the climate modes and climate evolution of Earth-like planets—specifically planets that receive lower insolation than the present Earth—to discuss the outer limits of the habitable zones (HZs) associated with main-sequence stars. The HZ outer limit is discussed in terms of the insolation above which a planet maintains liquid water on its surface (e.g., warm climate). We call this a “warm start limit. ” However, an alternative outer limit exists above which a planet characterized by a snowball climate transitions to a warm climate, which we call a “cold start limit. ” The cold start limit is determined by two different mechanisms: condensation of CO2 and maximum CO2 greenhouse effect. The threshold insolation is always higher than the warm start limit. We find that for the initial few billion years following the formation of a planetary system, the location of its outer HZ limit does not evolve away from the initial warm start limit. It subsequently moves in accordance with the evolution of the cold start limit. We also find that when the luminosity increase of the central star is slow relative to the decrease in the CO2 degassing rate, the location of the outer limit of the HZ may even move inward. We conclude that the cold start limit should be treated as the outer limit of the HZ given the prevailing uncertainties, including the evolution of the CO2 degassing rate and continental growth.
The Quest for Ground Truth in Musical Artist Tagging in the Social Web Era

Research in Web music information retrieval traditionally focuses on the classication, clustering or categorizing of music into genres or other subdivisions. However, current community-based web sites provide richer descriptors (i.e. tags) for all kinds of products. Although tags have no well-dened semantics, they have proven to be an effective mechanism to label and retrieve items. Moreover, these tags are community-based and hence give a description of a product through the eyes of a community rather than an expert opinion. In this work we focus on Last.fm, which is currently the largest music community web service. We investigate whether the tagging of artists is consistent with the artist similarities found with collaborative ltering techniques. As the Last.fm data shows to be both consistent and descriptive, we propose a method to use this community-based data to create a ground truth for artist tagging and artist similarity.
Effects of different UV radiation on photoprotective pigments and antioxidant activity of the hot‐spring cyanobacterium Leptolyngbya cf. fragilis

UV‐induced synthesis/accumulation of photoprotective pigments and antioxidant activity were investigated in the hot‐spring cyanobacterium Leptolyngbya cf. fragilis. The results indicated that UV radiation may induce biosynthesis of carotenoids, allophycocyanin, phycoerythrin, and scytonemin while phycocyanin degrades in response to longtime UV radiation. Moreover, pigment composition of L. cf. fragilis was significantly altered with increasing UV radiation times, probably due to destruction and resynthesis of accessory pigments as an adaptation strategy to UV stress. The in vitro antioxidant analysis of different extracts of UV treated cyanobacteria exhibited concentration‐dependent antioxidant activity. Ethyl acetate extract of 72 h UV treatment showed maximum total antioxidant activity (IC50 = 71.73 ± 5.3 μg mL−1) followed by ethyl acetate control (non‐UV irradiated) extract (IC50 = 109.43 ± 2.76 μg mL−1). This is the first report for the UV‐induced synthesis of photoprotective pigments and their antioxidant activity in L. cf. fragilis.
Cortisol responses of healthy volunteers undergoing magnetic resonance imaging

Self‐reported anxiety is associated with various medical procedures, including structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The present study tested the hypothesis that MRI scanning would be associated with elevated cortisol levels in participants with no prior scanning experience. Baseline and post‐scan cortisol levels, as well as measures of state and trait anxiety, were obtained from scanner‐naive (n = 6) and scanner‐experienced (n = 8) research participants. The anxiety scores and cortisol responses of the scanner‐naive and scanner‐experienced participants were compared. Subjects novel to MRI were no more anxious before the scan than were subjects familiar with the MRI examination, but the scanner‐naive subjects manifested heightened post‐scan cortisol secretion when compared to their pre‐scan level and when compared to the scanner‐experienced participants. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that the scanning environment can induce cortisol elevations and are congruent with the well‐established effects of acute stressors on activity of the hypothalamic‐pituitary‐adrenal (HPA) axis. The implications for neuroimaging studies are discussed. Hum Brain Mapp, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Single-sided approach to discriminative PLDA training for text-independent speaker verification without using expanded i-vector

Probabilistic linear discriminant analysis (PLDA) has shown to be an effective model for disentangling speaker and channel variability in the i-vector space for text-independent speaker verification. The speaker and channel subspaces in the PLDA model are typically trained by optimizing the maximum likelihood (ML) criterion. PLDA assumes that i-vectors are normally distributed, which has shown to be violated in practice. This paper advocates the use of discriminative training, in which both target and non-target classes are taken into account to re-train the parameters. The efficacy of the proposed method is confirmed via experiments conducted on common condition 1 and 5 of the core task as specified in the Speaker Recognition Evaluations (SREs) 2010 conducted by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST).