Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Irrational use of antibiotics and role of the pharmacist: an insight from a qualitative study in New Delhi, India

What is known and Objective: The overall volume of antibiotic consumption in the community is one of the foremost causes of antimicrobial resistance. In developing countries like India, pharmacists often dispense ‘prescription‐only’ drugs, like antibiotics, to patients who do not have a prescription. Not much data is available regarding detailed information on behaviour of antibiotic use by community pharmacists which is of particular significance to develop a suitable and sustainable intervention programme to promote rational use of antibiotics. A qualitative study was conducted to understand the dispensing practices and behaviour of community pharmacists to develop policy interventions that would improve the use of antibiotics at the community level.
Deposit-Institution Failures : A Review of Empirical Literature

Turbulence in the U.S. banking and financial system in the 1980s has led to a major government bailout and impending reform of the financial industry. Current literature on the failure of deposit institutions does not seem adequate to engender complete understanding of the problem. This paper reviews previous studies, giving particular emphasis to the various definitions of insolvent and failed institutions. The paper concludes with recommendations to include the regulatory decision-making process into future research.
Laying Community Foundations: For Your Child With a Disability : How to Establish Relationships That Will Support Your Child After You're Gone

This practical guide shows families of children with developmental disabilities how to establish a network of non-paid people that can provide lasting relationships for their son or daughter. Parents discover, step-by-step, how to navigate the human side of estate planning. And, they find out how important it is to begin this process as early as possible in the life of their child. With the help of checklists and charts, parents learn how to assess their child's needs, interests and existing relationships.
A multidimensional approach to postural sway modeling

This paper deals with the investigation of interesting analytical properties of the bidimensional fluctuations of the center of pressure (COP) during static posturographic tests (postural sway), namely their complex-valued and non-circular nature. These properties, ascertained by applying suitable statistical tests to experimental data, are prerequisite to pursue novel multidimensional representations of postural sway. In particular, we discuss a four-dimensional (hypercomplex or quaternion) model that is obtained by joining time series obtained from healthy subjects in open-eyes and closed-eyes conditions. The difference existing between considering the complex and the hypercomplex representations are analyzed and discussed in terms of the predictive performance that can be achieved by multidimensional adaptive filters. The merits of a hypercomplex approach are highlighted.
Exploring large social networks with matrix-based representations

Grâce a la banalisation des outils de communication electroniques, les chercheurs en sciences sociales disposent de nombreuses donnees. Les communautes en ligne telles que Facebook et Flickr par exemple, fournissent de riches informations sur la facon dont les personnes communiquent et l’evolution de leurs reseaux sociaux. Pour analyser ces donnees, les sociologues ont besoin d’outils robustes, pouvant manipuler de grandes quantites de donnees, et flexibles, permettant l’exploration a de multiples niveaux : de la vue d’ensemble a l’analyse detaillee d’une sous partie. Nous proposons de visualiser les donnees car le cerveau humain est tres efficace pour traiter les informations visuelles. La majorite des outils de visualisation de reseaux sont bases sur des diagrammes nœuds-liens. Ces representations ayant d’importants problemes de lisibilites, nous explorons dans cette these des representations alternatives basees sur des matrices d’adjacence. Nous presentons trois systemes interactifs concus avec des chercheurs en sciences sociales : MatrixExplorer, MatLink et NodeTrix. MatrixExplorer combine matrices et nœuds-liens. Les deux representations sont synchronisees et un panel d’outils interactifs permet de les manipuler. MatLink est une matrice augmentee de liens interactifs, qui permettent de mieux percevoir la connectivite du reseau. Enfin NodeTrix represente les reseaux par des diagrammes nœuds-liens et leurs parties denses par des matrices. NodeTrix est particulierement efficace pour des reseaux petit-monde. Cette these presente la conception et l’evaluation de ces trois systemes ainsi qu’une etude de cas analysant 20 ans de publications en Interaction Homme-Machine.
Causeway: Operating System Support for Controlling and Analyzing the Execution of Distributed Programs

In this paper we introduce Causeway, operating system support facilitating the development of meta-applications, like priority scheduling and performance debugging, that control and analyze the execution of distributed programs. Meta-applications use Causeway to inject and access metadata on application execution paths to implement their specific goals. Causeway has two components: (1) interfaces to inject and access metadata and (2) mechanisms to automate propagation of meta-data. Using Causeway we could rapidly implement a distributed priority scheduling system where priority of a task is injected and propagated as metadata, and accessed to implement global priority scheduling. This required writing only about 150 lines of code on top of Causeway. With this system we demonstrate global priority scheduling on an implementation of the TPC-W benchmark.
Environmental Modeling by means of Genetic Fuzzy Systems

In this work four genetic fuzzy system are applied to an environmental problem, i.e. modeling ozone concentrations in Mexico City metropolitan area. These hybrid systems are composed by the Fuzzy Inductive Reasoning (FIR) methodology and different genetic algorithms (GAs) that takes charge of determining, in an automatic way, the fuzzification parameters. Mexico is the second country in the world with high air pollution levels. The main air pollution problem that has been identified in Mexico City metropolitan area is the formation of photochemical smog, primarily ozone. This toxic gas can produce harmful effects on the population's health. The study and development of modeling methodologies that allow the capturing of ozone behavior becomes an important task when it is intended to predict contingencies before they are produced.
Arcsine Laws and Interval Partitions Derived from a Stable Subordinator

Levy discovered that the fraction of time a standard one-dimensional Brownian motion B spends positive before time t has arcsine distribution, both for a fixed time when B t ¬=;0 almost surely, and for t an inverse local time, when B t =0 almost surely. This identity in distribution is extended from the fraction of time spent positive to a large collection of functionals derived from the lengths and signs of excursions of B away from 0. Similar identities in distribution are associated with any process whose zero set is the range of a stable subordinator, for instance a Bessel process of dimension d for 0
Attention Induced Gain Stabilization in Broad and Narrow-Spiking Cells in the Frontal Eye-Field of Macaque Monkeys

Top-down attention increases coding abilities by altering firing rates and rate variability. In the frontal eye field (FEF), a key area enabling top-down attention, attention induced firing rate changes are profound, but its effect on different cell types is unknown. Moreover, FEF is the only cortical area investigated in which attention does not affect rate variability, as assessed by the Fano factor, suggesting that task engagement affects cortical state nonuniformly. We show that putative interneurons in FEF of Macaca mulatta show stronger attentional rate modulation than putative pyramidal cells. Partitioning rate variability reveals that both cell types reduce rate variability with attention, but more strongly so in narrow-spiking cells. The effects are captured by a model in which attention stabilizes neuronal excitability, thereby reducing the expansive nonlinearity that links firing rate and variance. These results show that the effect of attention on different cell classes and different coding properties are consistent across the cortical hierarchy, acting through increased and stabilized neuronal excitability. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Cortical processing is critically modulated by attention. A key feature of this influence is a modulation of “cortical state,” resulting in increased neuronal excitability and resilience of the network against perturbations, lower rate variability, and an increased signal-to-noise ratio. In the frontal eye field (FEF), an area assumed to control spatial attention in human and nonhuman primates, firing rate changes with attention occur, but rate variability, quantified by the Fano factor, appears to be unaffected by attention. Using recently developed analysis tools and models to quantify attention effects on narrow- and broad-spiking cell activity, we show that attention alters cortical state strongly in the FEF, demonstrating that its effect on the neuronal network is consistent across the cortical hierarchy.
Can reduced predation offset negative effects of sea louse parasites on chum salmon?

The impact of parasites on hosts is invariably negative when considered in isolation, but may be complex and unexpected in nature. For example, if parasites make hosts less desirable to predators then gains from reduced predation may offset direct costs of being parasitized. We explore these ideas in the context of sea louse infestations on salmon. In Pacific Canada, sea lice can spread from farmed salmon to migrating juvenile wild salmon. Low numbers of sea lice can cause mortality of juvenile pink and chum salmon. For pink salmon, this has resulted in reduced productivity of river populations exposed to salmon farming. However, for chum salmon, we did not find an effect of sea louse infestations on productivity, despite high statistical power. Motivated by this unexpected result, we used a mathematical model to show how a parasite-induced shift in predation pressure from chum salmon to pink salmon could offset negative direct impacts of sea lice on chum salmon. This shift in predation is proposed to occur because predators show an innate preference for pink salmon prey. This preference may be more easily expressed when sea lice compromise juvenile salmon hosts, making them easier to catch. Our results indicate how the ecological context of host–parasite interactions may dampen, or even reverse, the expected impact of parasites on host populations.
Mutant Prourokinase with Adjunctive C1-Inhibitor Is an Effective and Safer Alternative to tPA in Rat Stroke

A single-site mutant (M5) of native urokinase plasminogen activator (prouPA) induces effective thrombolysis in dogs with venous or arterial thrombosis with a reduction in bleeding complications compared to tPA. This effect, related to inhibition of two-chain M5 (tcM5) by plasma C1-inhibitor (C1I), thereby preventing non-specific plasmin generation, was augmented by the addition of exogenous C1I to plasma in vitro. In the present study, tPA, M5 or placebo +/− C1I were administered in two rat stroke models. In Part-I, permanent MCA occlusion was used to evaluate intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) by the thrombolytic regimens. In Part II, thromboembolic occlusion was used with thrombolysis administered 2 h later. Infarct and edema volumes, and ICH were determined at 24 h, and neuroscore pre (2 h) and post (24 h) treatment. In Part I, fatal ICH occurred in 57% of tPA and 75% of M5 rats. Adjunctive C1I reduced this to 25% and 17% respectively. Similarly, semiquantitation of ICH by neuropathological examination showed significantly less ICH in rats given adjunctive C1I compared with tPA or M5 alone. In Part-II, tPA, M5, and M5+C1I induced comparable ischemic volume reductions (>55%) compared with the saline or C1I controls, indicating the three treatments had a similar fibrinolytic effect. ICH was seen in 40% of tPA and 50% of M5 rats, with 1 death in the latter. Only 17% of the M5+C1I rats showed ICH, and the bleeding score in this group was significantly less than that in either the tPA or M5 group. The M5+C1I group had the best Benefit Index, calculated by dividing percent brain salvaged by the ICH visual score in each group. In conclusion, adjunctive C1I inhibited bleeding by M5, induced significant neuroscore improvement and had the best Benefit Index. The C1I did not compromise fibrinolysis by M5 in contrast with tPA, consistent with previous in vitro findings.
An Adaptive Job Scheduling with efficient Fault Tolerance Strategy in Computational Grid

—Grid computing is an emerging technology which has the potential to solve large scale scientific problems in an integrated heterogeneous environment. However, in the grid computing environment there are certain aspects which reduces efficiency of the system. Scheduling the jobs to the best suited resources, achieving the load balancing and fault tolerance are the key aspects to improve the efficiency and to exploit the capabilities of emergent computational systems. Because of dynamic and distributed nature of the grid, the traditional methodologies of scheduling are inefficient for the effective utilization of the available resources. In this paper, an efficient adaptive job scheduling algorithm is proposed to improve the efficiency of the grid system for a large number of tasks. Moreover, the proposed adaptive job scheduling in addition to the fault tolerance strategy with check pointing approach shows the improvement in performance of the overall computation time even in worst scenario under the heterogeneous grid environment. The simulation results illustrates that the proposed strategy effectively schedules the grid jobs with more than 10% increase in overall performance thus resulting in minimization of overall execution time.
Percutaneous mechanical thrombectomy in patients with submassive pulmonary embolism

The clinical presentation of acute pulmonary embolism (PE) ranges from shock or sustained hypotension to mild dyspnea or no symptoms at all. PE can cause death from right-heart failure and, among survivors, may lead to disabling chronic thromboembolic pulmonary vascular disease [1]. Depending on the severity of clinical presentation and the degree of right ventricular (RV) dysfunction, mortality from PE ranges from 60% to less than 1% [2]. All patients with PE should receive anticoagulation. Hemodynamically stable patients without evidence of RV dysfunction do not need other pharmacologic or mechanical interventions. Patients with massive PE, presenting with shock or sustained hypotension with RV dysfunction, should be treated with systemic thrombolysis or catheter or surgical embolectomy, if thrombolysis is contraindicated [2]. Management of hemodynamically stable patients with RV dysfunction (submassive PE) remains uncertain. The case report presented by Krichavsky et al. [3] in this issue of Catheterization and Cardiovascular Interventions is particularly relevant to this category of patients. The authors present the case of an 83-year-old male with history of coronary disease, right calf venous thrombosis, and colon cancer status post right colectomy, who presented with 2 days of increasing dyspnea and 5 hr of chest pain at rest. Patient underwent treatment for presumed acute coronary syndrome with heparin, aspirin, clopidogrel, and metoprolol. Cardiac catheterization was performed on hospital day 2 and showed patent LAD stents and no obstructive CAD. The patient continued to have dyspnia and oxygen desaturation, with a resting heart rate of 80 per minute and a blood pressure of 110/70 mm Hg. On hospital day 3, chest computed tomography demonstrated PE in the right and left main pulmonary arteries and RV dilation. Transthoracic echocardiography demonstrated a severely dilated and hypokinetic RV. Patient underwent catheter directed thrombolysis (19 mg of tissue plasminogen activator) and rheolytic thrombectomy. There was significant improvement in thrombus burden, symptoms, and hemodynamic parameters including RV function and pulmonary artery pressures. However, his course was complicated by intracranial hemorrhage and access site hematoma, which subsequently resolved. The authors should be congratulated on sharing a clinical case scenario that demonstrates a therapeutic dilemma which physicians face every day. This case brings several issues into focus.
N eural dynamics underlying brain thalamic oscillations investigated with computational models

This thesis is concerned with normal and pathological oscillations generated in thalamocortical neuronal network. By means of anatomically and physiologically based computational models we attempt to provide insight into phenomena such as event-related dynamics of alpha band rhythms and spontaneous generation of absence seizures. We present novel hypothesis regarding the neurophysiological substrates and functional significance of antagonistic behavior of alpha band rhythms in neighboring cortical areas during performance of attentional tasks. We also identify cellular and network properties that may condition epileptic oscillations and the transition from normal to pathological state. Furthermore we demonstrate annihilation of pathological rhythm by external stimulation, which may contribute to development of seizures suppression.
Reduction of wall degradability of clindamycin-treated staphylococci within macrophages

Clindamycin treatment of Staphylococcus aureus caused a remarkable thickening of the bacterial cell wall and made the bacterial wall much more resistant against lytic enzymes within bone marrow-derived macrophages as revealed by electron microscopy and radiolabeling experiments. This reduced wall degradability resulted from an increased number of O-acetyl groups in the murein. Furthermore, such clindamycin-treated bacteria were ingested by adherent bone marrow-derived macrophages at a higher rate than untreated bacteria. The medical aspects of these results are discussed.
Modulation of Humoral and Cell-Mediated Immunity Against Avian Influenza and Newcastle Disease Vaccines by Oral Administration of Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium Expressing Chicken Interleukin-18

Interleukin-18 (IL-18) has been known to induce interferon-γ (IFN-γ) production and promote Th1 immunity. Although mammalian IL-18 has been characterized in great detail, the properties and application of chicken IL-18 remain largely uninvestigated as of yet. In this study, we evaluated the immunomodulatory properties of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium expressing chicken interleukin-18 (chIL-18) on immune responses induced by avian influenza (AI) and Newcastle disease (ND) vaccines. After oral administration of S. enterica serovar Typhimurium expressing chIL-18, chickens were vaccinated intramuscularly with the recommended dose of either inactivated AI H9N2 vaccine or ND (B1 strain) vaccine. Chickens receiving a primary vaccination were boosted using the same protocol 7 days later. Humoral and cell-mediated immune responses were evaluated in terms of HI antibody titers and proliferation and mRNA expression of IFN-γ and IL-4 of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) in response to specific antigen stimulation. According to our results, oral administration of S. enterica serovar Typhimurium expressing chIL-18 induced enhanced humoral and Th1-biased cell-mediated immunity against AI and ND vaccines, compared to that of chickens received S. enterica serovar Typhimurium harboring empty vector. Therefore, we conclude that our proposed vaccination regimen using inactivated AI and ND viruses along with oral administration of S. enterica serovar Typhimurium expressing chIL-18 may provide a novel approach in protecting chicken from currently circulating AI and ND virus strains.
Multi-Lingual Speaker-Independent Voice User Interface For Mobile Devices

This paper presents a multi-lingual speaker-independent voice user interface (UI) that has been implemented for Nokia S60 mobile phones. The paper concentrates on discussing the specific approach used for achieving a multi-lingual and configurable speech recognition and speech synthesis system. The main applications are speaker-independent name dialing and voice commands. The novelty of the applications is that the user does not need to train the voice dialing system but the application reads the user's phonebook and generates the required voice tags automatically. The speaker-independent voice dialing has already been introduced in regions where the language diversity is not so great. The system presented in this paper is the first of its kind to support both speech recognition and speech synthesis in more than 40 languages in embedded devices with strict memory and performance requirements
Dichotomy between CD1a+ and CD83+ dendritic cells in lymph nodes during SIV infection of macaques

Abstract: The prevalence and differentiation of dendritic cells (DC) in lymphoid tissue of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)‐infected cynomolgus monkeys was studied during disease progression. Lymph node biopsies were consecutively obtained from clinical rapid and slow progressors until the development of disease consistent with simian acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (sAIDS) occurred. Quantitative evaluation of CD1a+ DC and the expression of DC antigens related to maturation (CD83, DC‐LAMP and S100b) were performed at the single cell level by in situ image analysis. Despite a persistent prevalence of CD1a+ DC in lymphoid tissue during disease progression, there was a subsequent drop of mature CD83+, DC‐LAMP+ and S100b+ DC, correlating with the decline of CD4+ T cells in blood. Thus, disease progression to sAIDS was associated with impaired maturation of DC, and lack of CD83, DC‐LAMP and S100b expression.
AR Identification of Latent-Variable Graphical Models

The paper proposes an identification procedure for autoregressive Gaussian stationary stochastic processes under the assumption that the manifest (or observed) variables are nearly independent when conditioned on a limited number of latent (or hidden) variables. The method exploits the sparse plus low-rank decomposition of the inverse of the manifest spectral density and the efficient convex relaxations recently proposed for such decompositions.
Effects of malate supplementation on acid-base balance and productive performance in growing/finishing bull calves fed a high-grain diet

This study investigated the effects of malate supplementation on blood acid-base balance and serum lactate levels in a 137-day feedlot experiment with bull calves. Animals were allotted to one of two experimental groups: (1) A control group (no supplementation), and (2) a group receiving a salt of DL-malic acid. Blood pH, pCO2, HCO3 −, base excess, serum L-lactate and productivity parameters were evaluated. Our data reveal that under the conditions of the present experiment malate supplementation did not have any significant effect on productivity parameters by comparison with non-supplemented animals. As regards acid-base balance, no significant effects attributable only to malate were observed. In conclusion, the time-course and the overall means of serum L-lactate for both groups in both growing and finishing periods (0.44 ± 0.04 mmol/l and 0.39 ± 0.02 mmol/l, respectively, for control animal; and 0.54 ± 0.03 mmol/l and 0.49 ± 0.01 mmol/l, respectively, for supplemented animals) suggests that malate does not have any beneficial effects in animals fed a diet of similar characteristics to that given in this study.