Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ambulatory Use of Olanzapine and Risperidone: A Population-Based Study on Persistence and the Use of Concomitant Therapy in the Treatment of Schizophrenia

Objective: To assess treatment discontinuation and concomitant use of other antipsychotics among individuals initiated on olanzapine or risperidone for the treatment of schizophrenia. Method: Using data from the Quebec health insurance plan and the Quebec database for hospitalization, we conducted a population-based cohort study of patients for whom a first claim for olanzapine or risperidone was submitted between 1 January 1997 and 31 August 1999. Included were 6405 patients with schizophrenia whom we followed from the date of the first claim for olanzapine or risperidone either to discontinuation date, end of eligibility for the drug plan, 365 days, date of moving out of the province, or date of death. We used Cox regression models to compute hazards ratios (HRs) of having the treatment discontinued and logistic regression models to compute odds ratios (ORs) among persisting patients of having any concomitant antipsychotic prescription. All models were adjusted for age, sex, schizophrenia disorder, comorbidity, region, beneficiary type, substance use disorder, and prior hospitalization for mental illness. Results: Compared with risperidone users (n = 2718), discontinuation rates were lower for olanzapine users (n = 3687; HR = 0.79; 95%CI, 0.74 to 0.84). The odds of receiving any concomitant antipsychotic prescription did not differ statistically between olanzapine and risperidone users (OR 0.85; 95%CI, 0.71 to 1.01). Conclusions: The study results suggest that new users of olanzapine were less likely to discontinue their initial treatment than were new users of risperidone, although discontinuation was high in both groups. Among those who persisted, concomitant use of other antipsychotics did not differ between olanzapine users and risperidone users.
Histological pattern of paediatric renal diseases in northern Pakistan.

OBJECTIVE To determine histological spectrum of renal diseases among the paediatric population in the province Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, and to note any change in histological pattern with age and serum creatinine. METHODS This is a retrospective analysis of 415 paediatric renal biopsies performed at the department of nephrology, Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar from 1998-2005. Children from 3 to 15 years of age, having renal disease and indications for biopsy, underwent ultrasound guided percutaneous renal biopsy. Indications included nephrotic syndrome, nephritic/nephrotic syndrome with renal insufficiency and nephrotic syndrome with steroid resistance. Patients with acute or chronic renal failure were not included. The specimens were examined without immunoflorescence, under light microscopy using different staining techniques, Results were analyzed for different age groups, serum creatinine levels and for both male and females with renal disease. RESULTS The overall male to female ratio in the study was 1.6: 1. Nephrotic syndrome was most common indication for renal biopsy in 50% of the cases, followed by renal insufficiency (26%) and steroid resistance (24%). In children with primary glomerulonephritis, minimal change disease (MCD) was found to be the most common histological pattern (24.09%), followed by focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), 18.30%; mesangioproliferative glomerulonephritis (GN) (MsePGN), 17.83%; mesangiocapillary GN (MPGN), 11.08%; post streptococcal proliferative GN (Post. strep GN), 10.60%; membranous GN (MGN), 4.82%; crescentic GN (Cres.GN), 4.34%. Among children with secondary GN, chronic sclerosing GN was found to be most common (1.93%), followed by chronic tubulo interstitial nephritis (Chr.TIN), 1.69% and hypertensive nephropathy (H.Neph), 1.69%; Renal Amyloidosis, 0.96% and Lupus Nephritis III, 0.96%; acute tubular necrosis (ATN), 0.72%; Alport's Syndrome (0.48%). Overall, MCD was the most common histological pattern in all age groups and among children with serum creatinine < 1.2 mg/dll. However, that with serum creatinine between 1.3 to 3 mg/dl, MsePGN was found to be more common. Age turned out to be significant factor, in contrast to serum creatinine, in determining various histological patterns. CONCLUSION This study highlighted the histological patterns of renal disease among pediatric population from northern part of Pakistan. MCD was on the top followed by FSGS, but frequency of MCD was less than cited in earlier studies.
Unattended home diagnosis and treatment of obstructive sleep apnea without polysomnography.

OBJECTIVE To test the effectiveness of unattended home monitoring along with automatic titrating continuous positive airway pressure (auto-CPAP) as an acceptable method for diagnosing and prescribing proper CPAP pressure for treatment of patients presenting with classic symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). DESIGN Nonrandomized, prospective case study of 63 patients with a presumptive diagnosis of OSA. SETTING University hospital and veterans affairs medical center ambulatory sleep disorders clinics. PARTICIPANTS Fifty-eight men and 5 women were recruited for symptoms of excessive daytime sleepiness, heavy snoring, and witnessed apnea. INTERVENTION Subjects with 10 or more respiratory events per hour were titrated by automatic, unattended home monitoring to an optimal CPAP pressure. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Number of subjects able to be diagnosed by unattended home monitoring, titrated to optimal CPAP pressure, accepted an auto-CPAP machine for home use, and symptoms improved. RESULTS Fifty-four (86%) of 63 patients completed sufficient diagnostic studies, and in 45 (83%) of these, a diagnosis of OSA was established. Nine subjects were unable to adjust to the nasal mask for an adequate diagnostic recording, and 9 had fewer than 10 respiratory events per hour. Ten subjects with OSA could not complete a titration study. Thirty-five of the subjects diagnosed with OSA accepted the auto-CPAP machine into their home, while 30 used it for therapy longer than 3 weeks. The estimated cost of performing in-home studies was less than one fourth of the estimated cost for in-laboratory polysomnographic examinations had they been performed. CONCLUSION Unattended monitoring plus auto-CPAP allows cost-effective diagnosis and CPAP titration of most patients with OSA with straightforward symptoms.
SOUP-N-SALAD: Allocation-Oblivious Access Latency Reduction with Asymmetric DRAM Microarchitectures

Memory access latency has a significant impact on application performance. Unfortunately, the random access latency of DRAM has been scaling relatively slowly, and often directly affects the critical path of execution, especially for applications with insufficient locality or memory-level parallelism. The existing low-latency DRAM organizations either incur significant area overhead or burden the software stack with non-uniform access latency. This paper proposes two microarchitectural techniques to provide uniformly low access time over the entire DRAM chip. The first technique is SALAD, a new DRAM device architecture that provides symmetric access latency with asymmetric DRAM bank organizations. Because local regions have lower data transfer time due to their proximity to the I/O pads, SALAD applies high aspect-ratio (i.e., low-latency) mats only to remote regions to offset the difference in data transfer time, resulting in symmetrically low latency across regions. The second technique is SOUP (skewed organization of µ banks with pipelined accesses), which leverages asymmetry in column access latency within a region due to non-uniform distance to the column decoders. By starting I/O transfers as soon as data from near cells arrive, instead of waiting for the entire column data, SOUP further saves two memory clock cycles for column accesses for all regions. The resulting design, called SOUP-N-SALAD, improves IPC and EDP by 9.6% (11.2%) and 18.2% (21.8%) over the baseline DDR4 device, respectively, for memory-intensive SPEC CPU2006 workloads without any software modifications, while incurring only 3% (6%) area overhead.
Frontal object perception for Intelligent Vehicles based on radar and camera fusion

This paper addresses the issue of frontal object perception in real-world traffic scenarios. Accurate and real-time frontal object perception plays a key role in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Intelligent Vehicles (IV). However, perceiving complex traffic environments, which contain multiple classes of on-road objects with various visual appearances from different viewpoints and partial observations, is still a challenging task. In this paper, a perception system fusing a millimeter-wave (MMW) radar and a monocular camera is proposed. Firstly, the detections of MMW radar are converted to regions of interest (ROIs) on the image. Then, these ROIs are classified by four classifiers using Deformable Part Model (DPM). Finally, a mixer module is used to combine all the classification results and infer the final result for each ROI. The computation intensity of the DPM algorithm can be efficiently reduced through this mechanism. Meanwhile, high detection precision is achievable. Experiment results show that the proposed frontal object perception system can detect and classify on-road objects in complex urban traffic scenarios with 98.4% detection rate at nearly real-time performance (29Hz).
Behavioural and cardiovascular responses of rats to euthanasia using carbon dioxide gas

Our results showed more rapid falls in pulse rate and blood pressure in rats euthanized in a chamber precharged with carbon dioxide (CO2), when compared with rats euthanized more slowly, but death still took over 5 min in the former group. There was no behavioural evidence of pain or distress in either group during euthanasia. Initial ataxia and dyspnoea was punctuated by a lag before death, thus separating euthanasia into three clearly defined phases. All visual signs of death preceded complete vascular collapse by about 1 min in both groups, so we recommend that gas flow be maintained for at least 1 min after apparent death.
High-Gain L-Probe Excited Substrate Integrated Cavity Antenna Array with LTCC-Based Gap Waveguide Feeding Network for W-Band Application

The W-band high-gain L-probe excited substrate integrated cavity (SIC) antenna and its arrays on a low-temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) substrate are presented in this paper. To achieve a high gain, the SIC antenna is excited using L-probe feeding techniques. The SIC of the antenna servers as main radiator and the L-probe is involved in the radiation. A novel low-loss LTCC-based ridge gap waveguide (GWG) is also designed in this work. This GWG forms a compact hybrid two-layer low-loss feeding network with a substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) feeding network for an 8 × 8 antenna array. A high-gain antenna array is achieved by combining the high-gain antenna element and low-loss hybrid feeding network. In addition, a reference antenna array with a feeding network composed solely of SIW is designed for comparison. With the reconfiguration of the radiating element, feeding network, and transition, the proposed antenna array shows a wide measured impedance bandwidth of 14.9% from 87 to 101 GHz for S|11| <; -10 dB and a gain of up to 23.8 dBi. The measured aperture efficiency of the proposed array is 42.3%, which is 8% higher than that of the reference array.
Involvement of Autophagy in Coronavirus Replication

Coronaviruses are single stranded, positive sense RNA viruses, which induce the rearrangement of cellular membranes upon infection of a host cell. This provides the virus with a platform for the assembly of viral replication complexes, improving efficiency of RNA synthesis. The membranes observed in coronavirus infected cells include double membrane vesicles. By nature of their double membrane, these vesicles resemble cellular autophagosomes, generated during the cellular autophagy pathway. In addition, coronavirus infection has been demonstrated to induce autophagy. Here we review current knowledge of coronavirus induced membrane rearrangements and the involvement of autophagy or autophagy protein microtubule associated protein 1B light chain 3 (LC3) in coronavirus replication.
Oral Clonidine Premedication Reduces the Awakening Concentration of Propofol

To investigate the effects of oral clonidine premedication on emergence from propofol/fentanyl anesthesia, we studied 72 healthy male patients who were undergoing elective orthopedic surgery: the Control group, the 2.5 &mgr;g/kg Clonidine group, and the 5.0 &mgr;g/kg Clonidine group (n = 24 each). Nothing was administered to the Control group. Clonidine (2.5 or 5.0 &mgr;g/kg) was orally administered 90 min before the induction of anesthesia in the Clonidine groups. Patients were anesthetized with computer-assisted continuous infusion of propofol and fentanyl, with the three groups receiving the same concentrations of propofol (3 &mgr;g/mL) and fentanyl (1 ng/mL) starting 20 to 30 min before the end of surgery. Propofol infusion was then abruptly discontinued at the end of surgery in all patients. After propofol was discontinued, the response to verbal commands was evaluated every 30 s, and arterial blood samples for propofol and clonidine concentrations were taken when the patients opened their eyes. The time required to respond to a verbal command was 14.9 ± 8.3 min for the 5.0 &mgr;g/kg Clonidine group, and this was significantly longer than the Control (8.2 ± 5.0 min) and the 2.5 &mgr;g/kg Clonidine (9.0 ± 3.7 min) groups (P < 0.01). Serum propofol concentration at awakening in the 5.0 &mgr;g/kg Clonidine group was 1.0 ± 0.4 &mgr;g/mL, which was significantly smaller than the Control (1.6 ± 0.4 &mgr;g/mL) and the 2.5 &mgr;g/kg Clonidine (1.4 ± 0.3 &mgr;g/mL) groups (P < 0.01). The blood clonidine concentration was associated with a decrease in the awakening propofol concentration. In conclusion, 5 &mgr;g/kg oral clonidine premedication decreases the awakening propofol concentration and delays arousal from propofol/fentanyl anesthesia.
High-Speed X-Cut Thin-Sheet $\hbox{LiNbO}_{3}$  Optical Modulator With Folded Structure

We propose a small-footprint X-cut thin-sheet lithium niobate optical modulator with high-speed and low-driving-voltage characteristics. Since an optical waveguide is folded by a mirror placed at one edge of the modulation chip, the chip can be shortened by about half. In addition, a wide modulation bandwidth can be achieved, because the path-length difference between the optical waveguide and the coplanar-waveguide (CPW) electrode is decreased to as short as possible by placing the CPW electrode as far as possible along the optical waveguide in the folded portion, and the microwave effective index is set to realize effective velocity matching between the lightwave and the microwave. A small footprint of 1.78 times 29 mm, a low half-wave voltage of 2.0 V at dc, and a 3-dBe modulation bandwidth of 20 GHz were obtained.
Effects of p38 MAPK Inhibitor on Angiotensin II-Dependent Hypertension, Organ Damage, and Superoxide Anion Production

Angiotensin II (Ang II) activates p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (p38 MAPK) and increases reactive oxygen species (ROS), but the nature of the relationship in vivo is not fully understood. We assess the effect of SB239063AN, a highly selective, orally active, p38 MAPK inhibitor, on Ang II-dependent hypertension, target-organ damage and ROS production. Sprague-Dawley rats and MAPKAP kinase-2 knockout mice were infused with Ang II. Ang II infusion increased the levels of phosphorylated p38 MAPK in the heart and aorta. Production of superoxide anion and expression of NAD(P)H oxidase subunit gp91phox in the aorta were increased 4- and 5-fold, respectively. In addition, Ang II infusion led to endothelial dysfunction, progressive and sustained hypertension, and cardiac hypertrophy. Treatment with SB239063AN (800 ppm in the diet) significantly attenuated the levels of phosphorylated p38 MAPK in the heart and aorta, reduced superoxide anion generation by 57% (P < 0.01), markedly suppressed gp91phox mRNA expression, prevented endothelial dysfunction, and blunted both the hypertension and cardiac hypertrophy. Ang II-dependent hypertension was also significantly attenuated in MAPKAP kinase-2 knockout mice. The results suggest that Ang II induced hypertension, organ damage, and ROS production are possibly mediated by p38 MAPK and inhibition of p38 MAPK may offer a therapeutic approach for cardiovascular disease.
General slowing in language impairment: methodological considerations in testing the hypothesis.

Although the general slowing hypothesis of language impairment (LI) is well established, the conventional method to test the hypothesis is controversial. This paper compares the usual method, ordinary least squares regression (OLS), with another method, hierarchical linear modeling with random coefficients (HLM). The analyses used available response time (RT) data from studies of perceptual-motor, cognitive, and language skills of LI and chronological-age-matched (CA) groups. The data set included RT measures from 25 studies investigating 20 different tasks (e.g., auditory detection, mental rotation, and word recognition tasks). OLS and HLM analyses of the RT data yielded very different results. OLS supported general slowing for the LI groups, and indicated that they were significantly slower than CA groups across studies by an overall estimate of 10%. HLM indicated a larger average extent of LI slowing (18%). However, the variability around this average was much greater than that yielded by OLS, and the extent of slowing was not statistically significant. Importantly, HLM showed a significant difference in the RT relation between LI and CA groups across studies, indicating that study-specific slowing, rather than general slowing across studies, was present. A separate HLM analysis of two types of language tasks, picture naming and word recognition, was performed. Although the extent of slowing was equivalent across these tasks, the slowing was minimal (2%) and not significant. Methodological limitations of each analysis to assess general slowing are highlighted.
RISK MARGIN QUANTILE FUNCTION VIA PARAMETRIC AND NON-PARAMETRIC BAYESIAN APPROACHES

Abstract We develop quantile functions from regression models in order to derive risk margin and to evaluate capital in non-life insurance applications. By utilizing the entire range of conditional quantile functions, especially higher quantile levels, we detail how quantile regression is capable of providing an accurate estimation of risk margin and an overview of implied capital based on the historical volatility of a general insurers loss portfolio. Two modeling frameworks are considered based around parametric and non-parametric regression models which we develop specifically in this insurance setting. In the parametric framework, quantile functions are derived using several distributions including the flexible generalized beta (GB2) distribution family, asymmetric Laplace (AL) distribution and power-Pareto (PP) distribution. In these parametric model based quantile regressions, we detail two basic formulations. The first involves embedding the quantile regression loss function from the nonparameteric setting into the argument of the kernel of a parametric data likelihood model, this is well known to naturally lead to the AL parametric model case. The second formulation we utilize in the parametric setting adopts an alternative quantile regression formulation in which we assume a structural expression for the regression trend and volatility functions which act to modify a base quantile function in order to produce the conditional data quantile function. This second approach allows a range of flexible parametric models to be considered with different tail behaviors. We demonstrate how to perform estimation of the resulting parametric models under a Bayesian regression framework. To achieve this, we design Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling strategies for the resulting Bayesian posterior quantile regression models. In the non-parametric framework, we construct quantile functions by minimizing an asymmetrically weighted loss function and estimate the parameters under the AL proxy distribution to resemble the minimization process. This quantile regression model is contrasted to the parametric AL mean regression model and both are expressed as a scale mixture of uniform distributions to facilitate efficient implementation. The models are extended to adopt dynamic mean, variance and skewness and applied to analyze two real loss reserve data sets to perform inference and discuss interesting features of quantile regression for risk margin calculations.
An initialization method for grammatical evolution assisted by decision trees

Grammatical Evolution (GE) is a genetic programming technique in which the candidate solutions are represented using a binary genotype and the programs can be generated through production rules of a formal grammar. Similarly to other evolutionary computation methods, the GE's performance can be improved when an adequate initial population seeding is adopted. Decision trees are widely used to model classifiers in machine learning and their symbolic form can be mapped back to the GE's binary representation of the candidate individuals. Thus, the use of machine learning techniques to generate decision trees to compose the initial population of GE is investigated here. Computational experiments with a real world data set are carried out and the results show an increase of performance when compared to the traditional seeding approach.
Effects of omalizumab in Aspergillus-associated airway disease

The clinical spectrum of Aspergillus-associated airway diseases (AAAD) includes Aspergillus-induced asthma, allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis (ABPA) and bronchocentric granulomatosis. Corticosteroids are almost always used to suppress the immunological response to the fungal antigens.1 Although there are no evidence-based alternative treatment options besides steroids, the well-known adverse effects of these drugs have prompted clinicians to look beyond this standard practice and several cases of ABPA patients with very positive outcomes after omalizumab therapy have been recently published.2–6 We recruited 18 patients (13 women; mean age 49±17 years) with AAAD (2 of them had been previously diagnosed with cystic fibrosis) from 11 Spanish hospitals. All of them had been treated …
Securely verifiable outsourcing schemes of matrix calculation

Matrix calculation, which has been considered as one of the most expensive operations, plays an important role in most current cryptosystems. In this paper, we propose three new and secure outsourcing schemes of matrix calculation by using one untrusted cloud server. The first one is for matrix multiplication, the second is for the inverse of a matrix, and the third is for the determinant of a matrix. Compared with other proposed schemes, our schemes are superior in efficiency owing to the reduction of user cost. In particular, the user's computation cost in our schemes is at most 1/4, 1/4, 7/16 of the corresponding schemes in the state-of-the-art algorithms, respectively. In addition, the efficiency and security of our schemes are analysed and proved.