Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Frailty in older adults: evidence for a phenotype.

BACKGROUND Frailty is considered highly prevalent in old age and to confer high risk for falls, disability, hospitalization, and mortality. Frailty has been considered synonymous with disability, comorbidity, and other characteristics, but it is recognized that it may have a biologic basis and be a distinct clinical syndrome. A standardized definition has not yet been established. METHODS To develop and operationalize a phenotype of frailty in older adults and assess concurrent and predictive validity, the study used data from the Cardiovascular Health Study. Participants were 5,317 men and women 65 years and older (4,735 from an original cohort recruited in 1989-90 and 582 from an African American cohort recruited in 1992-93). Both cohorts received almost identical baseline evaluations and 7 and 4 years of follow-up, respectively, with annual examinations and surveillance for outcomes including incident disease, hospitalization, falls, disability, and mortality. RESULTS Frailty was defined as a clinical syndrome in which three or more of the following criteria were present: unintentional weight loss (10 lbs in past year), self-reported exhaustion, weakness (grip strength), slow walking speed, and low physical activity. The overall prevalence of frailty in this community-dwelling population was 6.9%; it increased with age and was greater in women than men. Four-year incidence was 7.2%. Frailty was associated with being African American, having lower education and income, poorer health, and having higher rates of comorbid chronic diseases and disability. There was overlap, but not concordance, in the cooccurrence of frailty, comorbidity, and disability. This frailty phenotype was independently predictive (over 3 years) of incident falls, worsening mobility or ADL disability, hospitalization, and death, with hazard ratios ranging from 1.82 to 4.46, unadjusted, and 1.29-2.24, adjusted for a number of health, disease, and social characteristics predictive of 5-year mortality. Intermediate frailty status, as indicated by the presence of one or two criteria, showed intermediate risk of these outcomes as well as increased risk of becoming frail over 3-4 years of follow-up (odds ratios for incident frailty = 4.51 unadjusted and 2.63 adjusted for covariates, compared to those with no frailty criteria at baseline). CONCLUSIONS This study provides a potential standardized definition for frailty in community-dwelling older adults and offers concurrent and predictive validity for the definition. It also finds that there is an intermediate stage identifying those at high risk of frailty. Finally, it provides evidence that frailty is not synonymous with either comorbidity or disability, but comorbidity is an etiologic risk factor for, and disability is an outcome of, frailty. This provides a potential basis for clinical assessment for those who are frail or at risk, and for future research to develop interventions for frailty based on a standardized ascertainment of frailty.
Intonation and Discourse: Biased Questions

This paper surveys a range of constructions in which prosody affects discourse function and discourse structure. We discuss English tag questions, negative polar questions, and what we call “focus” questions. We postulate that these question types are complex speech acts and outline an analysis in Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) to account for the interactions between prosody and discourse.
Risk of venous thromboembolism associated with a G to A transition at position 20210 in the 3′‐untranslated region of the prothrombin gene

The odds ratio for the FII 20210G/A mutation in 504 patients with venous thromboembolism compared to controls was 2.0 (95% CI 1.0–4.0) and, for factor V Leiden, 5.8 (95% CI 3.3–10.3). 3/504 patients were heterozygous for both mutations. None of the patients had combined natural anticoagulant deficiency and the FII 20210G/A mutation. We conclude that the FII 20210G/A mutation is present in 2.6% of the population and the relative risk of venous thromboembolism in carriers is 2.0.
Skeletons , Homomorphisms , and Shapes : Characterizing Protocol Executions 1

In this paper we develop a framework, based on strand spaces, for reasoning about cryptographic protocols and characterizing their executions. We define skeletons, homomorphisms, and shapes. Skeletons model partial information about regular (honest) behavior in an execution of a cryptographic protocol. A homomorphism between skeletons is an information-preserving map. Much protocol analysis may be regarded as an exploration of the properties of the category of skeletons and homomorphisms. A set of skeletons can characterize all runs of the protocol; the smallest such set is the set of shapes. This approach is a foundation for mechanizing protocol analysis.
ELECTRICAL IMPEDANCE SPECTROSCOPY AND TOMOGRAPHY: APPLICATIONS ON PLANT CHARACTERIZATION

Onion is perishable and thereby subject to drying during unrefrigerated storage. Its moisture content is important to ensure optimum quality in storage. To track and analyze the dynamics of natural dehydration in onion and also to assess its moisture content, noninvasive and nondestructive methods are preferred. One of them is known as Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (or EIS in short). In the first phase of our experiment, we have used EIS, where we apply alternating current with multiple frequency to the object (onion in this case) and generate impedance spectrum which is used to characterize the object. We then develop an equivalent electrical circuit representing onion characteristics using a computer assisted optimization technique that allows us to monitor the response of onion undergoing natural drying for a duration of three weeks. The developed electrical model shows better congruence with the impedance data measured experimentally when compared to other conventional models for plant tissue with a mean absolute error of 0.42% and root mean squared error of 0.55%. In the second phase of our experiment, we attempted to find a correlation between the previous impedance data and the actual moisture content of the onions under test (measured by weighing) and developed a mathematical model. This model will provide an alternative tool for assessing the moisture content of onion nondestructively. Our model shows excellent correlation with the ground truth data with a deterministic coefficient of 0.977, root mean square error of 0.030 and sum of squared error of 0.013. Therefore, our two models will offer plant scientists the ability to study the physiological status of onion both qualitatively and quantitatively.
New Insights about Antibiotic Production by Pseudomonas aeruginosa: A Gene Expression Analysis

The bacterial resistance for antibiotics is one of the most important problems in public health and only a small number of new products are in development. Antagonistic microorganisms from soil are a promising source of new candidate molecules. Products of secondary metabolism confer adaptive advantages for their producer, in the competition for nutrients in the microbial community. The biosynthesis process of compounds with antibiotic activity is the key to optimize their production and the transcriptomic study of microorganisms is of great benefit for the discovery of these metabolic pathways. Pseudomonas aeruginosa LV strain growing in the presence of copper chloride produces a bioactive organometallic compound, which has a potent antimicrobial activity against various microorganisms. The objective of this study was to verify overexpressed genes and evaluate their relation to the organometallic biosynthesis in this microorganism. P. aeruginosa LV strain was cultured in presence and absence of copper chloride. Two methods were used for transcriptomic analysis, genome reference-guided assembly and de novo assembly. The genome referenced analysis identified nine upregulated genes when bacteria were exposed to copper chloride, while the De Novo Assembly identified 12 upregulated genes. Nineteen genes can be related to an increased microbial metabolism for the extrusion process of exceeding intracellular copper. Two important genes are related to the biosynthesis of phenazine and tetrapyrroles compounds, which can be involved in the bioremediation of intracellular copper and we suggesting that may involve in the biosynthesis of the organometallic compound. Additional studies are being carried out to further prove the function of the described genes and relate them to the biosynthetic pathway of the organometallic compound.
Modeling cooperation and coordination in opportunistic spectrum access as a turn-taking dilemma

This paper presents several fundamental concepts of game theory, and shows how they relate to the game formulation for a small cluster of opportunistic wireless nodes in cognitive radio networks. It is shown that in some resource allocation scenarios, it may be an optimal strategy for the wireless nodes to endure short-term losses for longer-term gains. In such scenarios, maximum total payoff may be achieved not by simultaneous mutual cooperation, but by taking turns defecting. The paper presents a novel idea of modeling cooperation and coordination for the opportunistic spectrum access as a turn-taking Prisoners dilemma. In our model, a small cluster of cognitive wireless nodes opportunistically access spectrum using spectrum shaped Oppermann sequences. Simulation results show that for the proposed resource allocation game turn-taking memory two strategies outperform traditional tit-for-tat and grim-trigger strategies.
Automatic Generation of Analogous Problems to Help Resolving Misconceptions in an Intelligent Tutor System for Written Subtraction

In domains involving procedural skills such as mathematics or programming, students often are prone to misconceptions which result in erroneous solutions. We present the ASG algorithm for generation of analogous problems of written subtraction as an extension of an intelligent tutor system (ITS) proposed by Zinn (2014). The student module of this ITS does not rely on an error library but uses algorithmic de-bugging where an erroneous solution is recognized by identifying which expert rules fail when trying to reproduce the student solution. Since the ITS allows students to create their own subtraction problems, feedback generation must be online and automatic. ASG is a constraint-based algorithm for constructing problems which are structurally isomorphic to the current, erroneously solved student problem.
IRIT & MISA at Image CLEF 2017 - Multi Label Classification

In this paper, we describe the participation of the Mami team at ImageCLEF 2017 for the Image Caption task. We participated to the concept detection subtask which aims at assigning a set of concept labels to a medical image. We used transfer learning method with VGG19 model for feature extraction to solve this task, and apply those features as input of a new neural network.
Nickel removal from exhausted electroplatting baths by using vegetable wastes

During the last years our research group has been studying the use of industrial vegetable wastes as grape stalks and exhausted coffee to remove metals ions such as Ni(II), Cu(II), Pb(II), Zn(II), Cd(II) or Cr(VI) and Cr(III) in aqueous solution from the point of view to use these wastes as biosorbents in a low cost alternative to activated carbon for wastewater treatment. The optimal experimental conditions for the removal of each of these metal ions in synthetic solutions by using both biosorbents were determined in previous studies [Villaescusa et al. 2004; Martinez et al. 2006; Valderrama et al. 2010. ]. In this work, the performance of grape stalks and exhausted coffee for the removal of nickel ions from an exhausted electroplating bath of a metal finishing industry from Barcelona (Spain) has been investigated. Batch and column experiments were carried out at room temperature by using grape stalk wastes (particle size 0.8-1.0 mm), meanwhile in the case of exhausted coffee, two different particle size ranges were used, 0.25-0.50 mm and 0.50-1.00 mm for batch and column experiments, respectively. Kinetics and equilibrium studies were carried out in batch mode to determine the equilibrium contact time and to obtain the sorption capacity of sorbents. The data in both studies have been treated by using different models. Column experiments were designed to establish the optimal condition for the treatment of the industrial wastewater. The experiments were performed in packed bed up flow columns of different internal diameter and bed depth in order to predict the transport and sorption parameters. In all column experiments the flow rate was around 11 mL h -1 . From perspective of process modelling, the dynamic behavior was described in terms of breakthrough curves. The bed depth service time (BDST), Thomas and Yoon Nelson models [Zhe et al. 2013] were used to analyze the experimental data and to determine model parameters. Batch results show that about 1hour was the time needed to reach equilibrium when using grape stalks and around 15 h when using exhausted coffee. In the case of exhausted coffee, the pH solution decreased during the sorption process from initial pH 5,5 to lower pH than the corresponding pHpzc (point zero charge). To avoid this, pH solution was controlled to a constant pH 5,5 and the equilibrium were achieved in 1h. Kinetic data of both sorption processes fit pseudo-second order model, indicating that chemisorption could be rate limiting in the sorption step. Experimental data of nickel sorption kinetic by using exhausted coffee and the model curve calculated from the pseudo-second order model are presented in Figure 1.
Upland Habitat Quality and Historic Landscape Composition Influence Genetic Variation of a Pond-Breeding Salamander

Understanding the temporal and spatial scale at which habitat alteration impacts populations is important for conservation and management. Amphibians have declined more than other vertebrates, and pond-breeding species are particularly susceptible to habitat loss and fragmentation because they have terrestrial and aquatic life stages. One approach to management of pond-breeding species is protection of core upland habitat surrounding the breeding pond. We used genetic variation as an indicator of population status in a common amphibian species, spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum), to determine how amount of suitable upland habitat relates to population status in the greater Charlotte, North Carolina, USA metropolitan area. We developed candidate models to evaluate the relative influence of historical and contemporary forested habitat availability on population genetic variation at two spatial scales of upland area (164 m and 2000 m) at four time intervals over the past seven decades (1938, 1978, 1993, 2005). We found that historical land cover best predicted contemporary allelic richness. Inbreeding coefficient and observed heterozygosity were not effectively predicted by forest cover at either spatial or temporal scales. Allelic richness was best predicted at the smaller spatial scale in the 1993 time interval. Predicting and understanding how future landscape configuration affects genetic variation of common and rare species is imperative for the conservation of amphibian and other wildlife populations.
Hierarchical Power Distribution with 20 Power Domains in 90-nm Low-Power Multi-CPU Processor

Hierarchical power distribution with a power tree has been developed. The key features are power tree management rules and a distributed common power-domain implementation. The hierarchical power distribution supports a fine-grained power gating with dozens of power domains, which is analogous to a fine-grained clock gating. Leakage currents of a 1,000,000-gate power domain were effectively reduced to 1/4,000 in multi-CPU SoCs with minimal area overhead.
Family-Supportive Work Environment and Employee Work Behaviors

This study examined psychological mechanisms that underpin the relationships between perceived organizational family support (POFS) and a family-supportive supervisor (FSS) on employee work behaviors. Based on data from employed parents and their supervisors (N = 230) in 12 South Korean organizations, structural equation modeling results revealed three salient findings: (1) POFS and FSS are indirectly related to contextual performance through control over work time, (2) FSS is indirectly related to both contextual performance and work withdrawal through organization-based self-esteem (OBSE), and (3) control over work time is indirectly related to the two work outcomes through OBSE. The authors interpret these findings as indicating support for the focus on informal workplace family support and the need for research to examine the psychological resources they engender if we are to understand why these forms of support have their demonstrated outcomes.
Adenovirus early region 4 is essential for normal stability of late nuclear RNAs

H2dl808 is a deletion mutant of adenovirus type 2 lacking most of transcriptional early region E4. In most normal adenovirus host cells this virus displayed a complex mutant phenotype that included a dramatic reduction in the level of cytoplasmic late RNA, a corresponding defect in late protein synthesis, and a 5- to 10-fold defect in viral DNA accumulation. H5dl1004 is a deletion mutant of adenovirus type 5 that also lacks a portion of E4. It exhibited a reduction in levels of cytoplasmic late RNAs that was somewhat less severe than that of H2dl808 and a corresponding late protein synthetic defect but no defect in the production of viral DNA. In addition to the defect in the accumulation of late cytoplasmic mRNAs, HeLa cells infected by either H2dl808 or H5dl1004 showed substantially reduced levels of viral RNAs in their nuclei at late times after infection. Both mature mRNAs and apparent mRNA precursors were affected. The late transcription rates of the deletion mutant viruses were similar to that of wild-type virus. These results suggest that the underaccumulation of RNA in H2dl808- and H5dl1004-infected cells is caused by a reduction in the stability of viral RNA in the nucleus, and they implicate E4 products in a novel aspect of the regulation of viral gene expression.
The Database Group at TUM

The database group at TUM was established in 1972 by Rudolf Bayer [4] who retired in 2004. The group is reponsible for the foundational and advanced database curriculum of the department's 3500 undergraduate and graduate students. The group consists of two post-docs and around 15 doctoral students. In the following we will overview the research agenda of the last couple of years only; previous projects and publications can be viewed on our web site.
Factors associated with quitting smoking at a tobacco dependence treatment clinic.

OBJECTIVE To identify factors associated with successful quitting at a free tobacco treatment clinic. METHODS A cohort study of the first 1021 patients who made a quit attempt. Baseline and treatment variables were recorded, and logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with abstinence at 4-week and 6-month follow-up. RESULTS Three hundred twenty (31.3%) patients reported tobacco abstinence at 6 months. Several markers of low socioeconomic status and high nicotine dependence were predictive of poorer smoking cessation outcomes. Compliance with evidence-based treatment was associated with improved treatment outcome, as was older age and having more than 2 children. CONCLUSIONS Efforts should be made to enhance treatment compliance among smokers with indicators of high nicotine dependence and low socioeconomic status.
Safety and effectiveness of the Phoenix Atherectomy System in lower extremity arteries: Early and midterm outcomes from the prospective multicenter EASE study

Objectives To evaluate the novel Phoenix Atherectomy System as percutaneous treatment of de novo and restenotic infrainguinal arterial lesions. Methods This prospective, multicenter, nonrandomized investigational device exemption trial was conducted across 16 US and German centers between August 2010 and April 2013. Intention-to-treat enrollment was 128 patients (mean age: 71.8 years, 59% male) with 149 lesions (mean length: 34 mm, mean diameter stenosis: 89.5%), and the primary analysis per-protocol population consisted of 105 patients with 123 lesions. The primary efficacy endpoint, technical success, was the achievement of acute debulking with a post-atherectomy residual diameter stenosis ≤50% (before adjunctive therapy). The primary safety endpoint was the major adverse event (MAE) rate through 30 days. Results For the primary analysis per-protocol population, the rate of lesion technical success was 95.1% (117/123), with the lower limit of the 95% CI 90.6%, meeting the prospectively established target performance goal of ≥86%. After post-atherectomy adjunctive therapy, residual stenosis was ≤30% for 99.2% (122/123) of lesions (mean final diameter stenosis 10.5%). Improvement of ≥1 Rutherford class occurred for 74.5% of patients through 30 days and for 80% through six months. MAEs were experienced by 5.7% (6/105) of patients through 30 days (with the upper limit of the 95% CI 11.0%, meeting the target performance goal of <20%), and 16.8% through six months. Six-month freedom from TLR and TVR was 88.0% and 86.1%, respectively. Conclusions Based on the high rate of technical success and the low rates of MAEs through six months, the Phoenix Atherectomy System is safe and effective for the debulking of lower-extremity arterial lesions. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT01541774
Liver Cancer-Derived Hepatitis C Virus Core Proteins Shift TGF-Beta Responses from Tumor Suppression to Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition

Background Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and associated liver cirrhosis represent a major risk factor for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) development. TGF-β is an important driver of liver fibrogenesis and cancer; however, its actual impact in human cancer progression is still poorly known. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of HCC-derived HCV core natural variants on cancer progression through their impact on TGF-β signaling. Principal Findings We provide evidence that HCC-derived core protein expression in primary human or mouse hepatocyte alleviates TGF-β responses in terms or growth inhibition or apoptosis. Instead, in these hepatocytes TGF-β was still able to induce an epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT), a process that contributes to the promotion of cell invasion and metastasis. Moreover, we demonstrate that different thresholds of Smad3 activation dictate the TGF-β responses in hepatic cells and that HCV core protein, by decreasing Smad3 activation, may switch TGF-β growth inhibitory effects to tumor promoting responses. Conclusion/Significance Our data illustrate the capacity of hepatocytes to develop EMT and plasticity under TGF-β, emphasize the role of HCV core protein in the dynamic of these effects and provide evidence for a paradigm whereby a viral protein implicated in oncogenesis is capable to shift TGF-β responses from cytostatic effects to EMT development.