Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High-dose methadone and QTc prolongation: strategies to optimize safety.

Methadone is an effective treatment for opioid dependence and chronic pain and, until recently, was viewed as a medication without cardiac properties. However, high-dose methadone has been linked to prolongation of the rate-corrected QT interval (QTc) and torsade de pointes (TdP). TdP is a form of polymorphic ventricular tachycardia that requires the presence of underlying QTc prolongation. QTc changes in the electrocardiogram (ECG) are often subtle and may be difficult to discern when U-waves are present. The risk of arrhythmia is related to the magnitude of the QTc change from baseline. Clinicians should be cognizant of methadone’s potential cardiovascular effects and weigh the benefit-to-risk ratio for each patient, given the individual predisposition for arrhythmia. This manuscript describes a case of presyncope in a patient receiving methadone and highlights cardiac considerations surrounding methadone therapy.
SERS-based hydrogel sensors for pH and enzymatic substrates

A sensing hydrogel for potential implantation was demonstrated using pH-sensitive surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) reporters. The gold nanoparticle-based pH probes were encapsulated within polyelectrolyte multilayer microcapsules and embedded in a hydrogel matrix. These sensors were fully characterized for pH sensitivity and reproducibility. They were further combined with glucose oxidase (co-encapsulated with the nanoparticles) to generate a glucose-sensitive response, and the Raman signals of the system were recorded in the physiological glucose range (0-400 mg/dL). The results demonstrate SERS based sensing via pH sensitive Raman molecule modified gold nanoparticles (MBA-AuNPs) encapsulated within hydrogels. Further, upon incorporation of GOx, a pH decrease was observed due to glucose oxidization. However, the diffusion-reaction system will need to be better balanced to achieve a more glucose-proportional change for steady-state pH.
Issues in path toward integrated acoustic sensor system on chip

Size and power minimization requirements from portable consumer applications are driving integration of MEMS sensors with integrated circuits. For performance maximization, designers require MEMS device models MEMS that can be co-simulation with interface circuits for system optimization. Efficient simulation of both mechanical and electrical characteristics simultaneously is required for optimal design and to enable the design of more complex systems. In this paper, we use a co-simulation platform to design acoustic sensor system. A Verilog-A hardware description language model of a condenser MEMS microphone structure is co-simulated with interface circuits for optimal co-design. Measured result of the acoustic system achieved 69 dB SNR and -35 dBV/Pa sensitivity using 26 muW power. A sigma-delta modulator to transfer sound pressure wave to digital signal has been subsequently designed using this co-simulation platform. Simulation predicts an acoustic sensor system SNDR of 58 dB when the input signal is 10 kHz/1 Pa, and power consumption of 6.7 mW with a 3 V power supply.
Violence and the perceived risks of taking antiretroviral therapy in US jails and prisons.

PURPOSE About one in five men living with HIV in the USA passes through a correctional center annually. Jails and prisons are seen therefore as key intervention sites to promote HIV treatment as prevention. Almost no research, however, has examined inmates' perspectives on HIV treatment or their strategies for retaining access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) during incarceration. The purpose of this paper is to describe the results of an exploratory study examining men's perceptions of and experiences with HIV care and ART during incarceration. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 42 HIV positive male and male-to-female transgendered persons recently released from male correctional centers in Illinois, USA. FINDINGS Interpersonal violence, a lack of safety, and perceived threats to privacy were frequently cited barriers to one's willingness and ability to access and adhere to treatment. Over 60 percent of study participants reported missed doses or sustained treatment interruption (greater than two weeks) because of failure to disclose their HIV status, delayed prescribing, intermittent dosing and out-of-stock medications, confiscation of medications, and medication strikes. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS Substantial improvements in ART access and adherence are likely to follow organizational changes that make incarcerated men feel safer, facilitate HIV status disclosure, and better protect the confidentiality of inmates receiving ART. ORIGINALITY/VALUE This study identified novel causes of ART non-adherence among prisoners and provides first-hand information about how violence, stigma, and the pursuit of social support influence prisoner's decisions to disclose their HIV status or accept ART during incarceration.
Acceptability of alternative treatments for problematic gambling.

Background & objective Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Motivational Interviewing (MI) have been the treatment of choice for problem or pathological gambling in the field in Western countries, and their efficacy has been supported by a considerable empirical research. Alternative treatments are little known; and such treatments for minority ethnic populations have been scarce. This study adopted Kazdin‘s procedures for assessing the acceptability of treatments (Kazdin, 1980a, 1980b, 1981) to test alternative treatments of problem or pathological gambling as a part of the broadening of treatment choices. This thesis presented 2009 survey results from counselling service providers in New Zealand on the acceptability of alternative treatments to problem or pathological gambling. The thesis, therefore, reports the responses of counsellors to counselling vignette case examples, not the views of actual clients viewing counselling.
A Method of Transformation from Symbolic Transfer Function to Active-RC Circuit by Admittance Matrix Expansion

Active-RC circuits containing 2-terminal linear passive elements and ideal transistors or operational amplifiers are derived from symbolic voltage or current transfer functions by admittance matrix transformations without any prior assumption concerning circuit architecture or topology. Since the method is a reversal of symbolic circuit analysis by Gaussian elimination applied to a circuit nodal admittance matrix, it can generate all circuits using the specified elements that possess a given symbolic transfer function. The method is useful for synthesis of low-order circuits, such as those used for cascade implementation, for deriving alternative circuits with the same transfer function as an existing circuit or for realizing unusual transfer functions, as may arise, for example, where a transfer function is required that contains specific tuning parameters
Fuzzy Fusion of Eyelid Activity Indicators for Hypovigilance-Related Accident Prediction

In this paper, a fuzzy expert system (FES) for the detection of the physiological manifestations of extreme hypovigilance is presented. A large number of features that describe the eyelid activity of drivers is examined, and fuzzy logic is used for the fusion of the most prominent features to not only increase the accident prediction accuracy but also provide a reliable system that generates a small number of false warnings. For the development and testing of the system, driving simulator data from 35 drowsy subjects were used. In addition, a secondary control group of 13 alert drivers was used for the estimation of the trained system's false alarm ratio. The results show that a fuzzy combination of eyelid activity parameters may lead to a system with high sensitivity and specificity in predicting sleep onset and related accidents.
Evaluation of a Fault-tolerant Model for Tactic Operations of Mobile Robotic Groups Using Genetic Algorithms

This paper addresses the evaluation of a fault-tolerant model for tactic operations of mobile robotic groups. The coordinated action of the group is planned with Genetic Algorithms (GA) and aims to act on an environmental disaster scenario, simulated as a forest fire. The robotic squad should surround the fire and avoid fire's propagation. Initially, we evaluate several parameters in the GA, seeking to obtain the set of parameters that would accomplish the more efficient evolution. Then, we simulate failures in robots operations in order to evaluate strategies of reorganization. The simulation's results 1 showed that with an adequate set of parameters it is possible to get satisfactory strategic positions to coordinate and to reorganize the robotic group in case of robot failures.
Luandri: A Clean Lua Interface to the Indri Search Engine

In recent years, the information retrieval (IR) community has witnessed the first successful applications of deep neural network models to short-text matching and ad-hoc retrieval tasks. However, the two communities - focused on deep neural networks and on IR - have less in common when it comes to the choice of programming languages. Indri, an indexing framework popularly used by the IR community, is written in C++, while Torch, a popular machine learning library for deep learning, is written in the light-weight scripting language Lua. To bridge this gap, we introduce Luandri (pronounced "laundry"), a simple interface for exposing the search capabilities of Indri to Torch models implemented in Lua.
A randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled exploratory study to evaluate the potential of pycnogenol® for improving allergic rhinitis symptoms

The potential of Pycnogenol® for relieving allergic rhinitis (birch pollen) symptoms was explored in a double‐blind, placebo‐controlled trial. In 2008 19 subjects started treatment 3 weeks prior to the onset of birch pollen season in Ontario, Canada. While there was an improvement of eye and nasal symptoms with Pycnogenol, there was no significance versus placebo. It was postulated that Pycnogenol may require a lag‐time between the start of therapy and the onset of action. Therefore 39 subjects were treated 5–8 weeks prior to the 2009 birch allergy season. The evaluation of subjects in 2009 showed much lower scores for eye (−35%) and nasal (−20.5%) symptoms with Pycnogenol compared with placebo. In succession of the allergy season birch specific IgE increased by 31.9% in the placebo group compared with only 19.4% in the Pycnogenol group. Detailed analysis suggested that symptom‐relief was better the longer subjects were on Pycnogenol prior to the allergen exposure. The best results were found with subjects who took Pycnogenol 7–8 weeks ahead of the allergy season. With the limited number of 39 patients statistical predications were unattainable. In conclusion, Pycnogenol improved allergic rhinitis symptoms when supplementation was started at least 5 weeks before the onset of the allergy season. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Threshold Estimation with Continuously Trained Models in Speaker Verification

A-priori speaker-dependent threshold setting has been revealed as a key issue for field applications in speaker verification (SV). Threshold estimation methods have to deal with the scarcity of training data and the difficulty of obtaining data from impostors in commercial applications. The lack of client data can be faced with the implementation of a continuous training procedure. In this context, the distribution of the speaker's scores varies with the amount of training data, resulting in an increase of verification scores for clients and impostors when more speaker data is added to the speaker model. To preserve false acceptance rate (FAR) in an acceptable margin for the application, we explore in this paper how to introduce in the threshold estimation method the observed relation between the amount of training data and the new set score distribution. Experiments are carried out over a database collected by the authors from a field application
Design of energy efficient low power PV refrigeration system

Stand-alone PV systems have shown to be reliable and cost effective for cooling & refrigeration and have attracted the users. For a specific application with an estimated requirement of cooling, low power refrigeration system using PV modules (2 modules each of 36 solar cells) has been designed, fabricated and developed. In this paper, results of the I-V characteristics for the solar panels used have been presented and discussed. Charging and discharging processes for the battery including the voltage as a function of specific gravity and time have been carried out. All the results are significantly encouraging and hence test results of our system using the charge controller and DC powered refrigerator are presented. The paper also deals with our experiences encountered including the successful operation of the refrigeration system during off the sunshine hours continuously for 6 hours. The calculations of the specific cooling costs show the promising economic effectiveness and reliability of the designed PV refrigeration system. Keeping in view of the technical performance and economic parameter, it demonstrates that this small-scale technology can contribute to solving problems of cooling like small area refrigeration including the transportable and small cold storage container with integrated PV energy supply systems. These systems can be erected on or around a vehicle to obtain the cooling needs while on drives including picnics or especially in remote desert areas.
Drosophila ORB protein in two mushroom body output neurons is necessary for long-term memory formation

Memory is initially labile and gradually consolidated over time through new protein synthesis into a long-lasting stable form. Studies of odor-shock associative learning in Drosophila have established the mushroom body (MB) as a key brain structure involved in olfactory long-term memory (LTM) formation. Exactly how early neural activity encoded in thousands of MB neurons is consolidated into protein-synthesis–dependent LTM remains unclear. Here, several independent lines of evidence indicate that changes in two MB vertical lobe V3 (MB-V3) extrinsic neurons are required and contribute to an extended neural network involved in olfactory LTM: (i) inhibiting protein synthesis in MB-V3 neurons impairs LTM; (ii) MB-V3 neurons show enhanced neural activity after spaced but not massed training; (iii) MB-V3 dendrites, synapsing with hundreds of MB α/β neurons, exhibit dramatic structural plasticity after removal of olfactory inputs; (iv) neurotransmission from MB-V3 neurons is necessary for LTM retrieval; and (v) RNAi-mediated down-regulation of oo18 RNA-binding protein (involved in local regulation of protein translation) in MB-V3 neurons impairs LTM. Our results suggest a model of long-term memory formation that includes a systems-level consolidation process, wherein an early, labile olfactory memory represented by neural activity in a sparse subset of MB neurons is converted into a stable LTM through protein synthesis in dendrites of MB-V3 neurons synapsed onto MB α lobes.
Coordination and Control of Forces during Multifingered Grasping in Parkinson's Disease

In this study, we focused on how subjects with Parkinson's disease (PD) grasp and lift with five-digits of the hand. This task provided the opportunity to simultaneously examine (a) the coordination of multiple segments (i.e., digits), (b) the sequencing of multiple tasks (i.e., force development, object lift, and hold), and (c) the control of force output. We found that PD patients coordinated and controlled five-digit forces comparable to that of age-matched controls. Specifically, these groups developed and maintained similar force amplitudes and force sharing patterns across all grasping phases. In addition, PD patients demonstrated similar levels of variability both within and across trials. In the frequency domain, however, some differences were observed across groups, especially in PD patients exhibiting obvious action tremor (AT) at a single modal frequency. In these subjects (four of nine PD patients), there was a systematic disruption, i.e., a phase-shifting away from approximately 0 degrees, in-phase force synchronization patterns normally observed between digits. This disruption typically occurred at and around the AT frequency, while at many other frequencies synchronization patterns were maintained. The composite of these findings implies that although global features observed in five-digit grasping in PD patients are preserved, more subtle aspects of the coordination between digits, as revealed by frequency domain analysis, are not. These results are discussed in relation to the neural mechanisms that might underlie physiological synchronization of forces and its pathological disruption.
What matters for ideation? A cross-level investigation of individual, group, and network factors

Paper I: The power of star ideators: Does star ideator alone drive the success of ideas? The virtues and limits of star ideator presence in groups. Paper II: (with Magnusson, M.) The effect of diversity and group familiarity on performance in ideation groups. Paper III: (with Bjork, J.) Temporary Network Structure and Group ideation performance - the effect of centrality and structural holes.
Do Sound Public Finances Require Fiscal Rules Or Is Market Pressure Enough

This paper discusses the balance between market pressure and fiscal rules in order to keep public finances on a sustainable path. We provide empirical evidence on market assessments of sovereign default risk to economic news, announcements of national austerity programs, EU programs designed to support government finances, and banking fragility emanating from several countries in the euro area affected by the European sovereign debt crisis. We find that, in general, the quality of market signals is an insufficient indicator alone to accurately guide the conduct of fiscal policy, particularly during the crisis period. Therefore, market signals should be used to complement fiscal rules rather than serving as a substitute.
Correction: Shot and Patronin polarise microtubules to direct membrane traffic and biogenesis of microvilli in epithelia

In abstract this paper, a typographical error in the protein name CAMSAP3. The correct sentence read: Core apical-basal polarity determinants polarise the spectrin cytoskeleton to recruit the microtubule-binding proteins Patronin (CAMSAP1, CAMSAP2 and CAMSAP3 in humans) and Shortstop [Shot; MACF1 and BPAG1 (also known as DST) in humans] to the apical membrane domain. ABSTRACT In epithelial tissues, polarisation of microtubules and actin microvilli occurs along the apical-basal axis of each cell, yet how these cytoskeletal polarisation events are coordinated remains unclear. Here, we examine the hierarchy of events during cytoskeletal polarisation in Drosophila melanogaster epithelia. Core apical-basal polarity determinants polarise the spectrin cytoskeleton to recruit the microtubule-binding proteins Patronin (CAMSAP1, CAMSAP2 and CAMSAP3 in humans) and Shortstop [Shot; MACF1 and BPAG1 (also known as DST) in humans] to the apical membrane domain. Patronin and Shot then act to polarise microtubules along the apical-basal axis to enable apical transport of Rab11 endosomes by the Nuf – Dynein microtubule motor complex. Finally, Rab11 endosomes are transferred to the MyoV (also known as Didum in Drosophila ) actin motor to deliver the key microvillar determinant Cadherin 99C to the apical membrane to organise the biogenesis of actin microvilli. which in turn is dependent of determinants of cell polarity. Cad99C is transported apically inside Rab11 endosomes, which are linked to the Dynein microtubule motor protein through its adaptor protein nuclear fallout (Nuf). Once at the apical cortex, Rab11 endosomes are transferred to the MyoV (known as Didum in Drosophila ) actin motor complex to enable delivery of Cad99C to the apical plasma membrane. Our findings reveal a new mechanism linking epithelial cell polarity with the polarisation of the spectrin and microtubule cytoskeleton to direct apical membrane trafficking and biogenesis of microvilli.
Architecture of a network monitor

This paper describes a system for simultaneously monitoring multiple protocols. It performs full linerate capture and implements on-line analysis and compression to record interesting data without loss of information. We accept that the balance must be maintained in such a system between disk-bandwidth, CPU-capacity and datareduction in order to perform monitoring at full line-rate. We present the architecture in detail and measure the performance of our sample implementation, Nprobe.
Meta-Analytic Methods for Health Services Research

The authors recently published a meta-analysis of controlled trials of comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA). The results supported the view that efficacy of CGA is strongly related to the patients, objectives, and basic design of CGA programs, and that particular program models and design features are associated with important health outcome improvements (e.g., survival, living at home, and functional improvement atfollow-up). Present objectives include the outline of methods and how they were developed given the condition of the trial database and scientific context. Aspects of the approach, such as (a) survey of primary trialists to recover unpublished information and standardize data, (b) development of a program typology to guide the principal analysis, and (c) incorporation of program design features as covariates where statistical heterogeneity was detected4 proved extremely useful, and have implications for other systematic reviews ofsimilarly complexprnary trials ofnew health care technologies, healthservices, and organizational interventions.
The impact of host immune status on the within-host and population dynamics of antigenic immune escape

Antigenically evolving pathogens such as influenza viruses are difficult to control owing to their ability to evade host immunity by producing immune escape variants. Experimental studies have repeatedly demonstrated that viral immune escape variants emerge more often from immunized hosts than from naive hosts. This empirical relationship between host immune status and within-host immune escape is not fully understood theoretically, nor has its impact on antigenic evolution at the population level been evaluated. Here, we show that this relationship can be understood as a trade-off between the probability that a new antigenic variant is produced and the level of viraemia it reaches within a host. Scaling up this intra-host level trade-off to a simple population level model, we obtain a distribution for variant persistence times that is consistent with influenza A/H3N2 antigenic variant data. At the within-host level, our results show that target cell limitation, or a functional equivalent, provides a parsimonious explanation for how host immune status drives the generation of immune escape mutants. At the population level, our analysis also offers an alternative explanation for the observed tempo of antigenic evolution, namely that the production rate of immune escape variants is driven by the accumulation of herd immunity. Overall, our results suggest that disease control strategies should be further assessed by considering the impact that increased immunity—through vaccination—has on the production of new antigenic variants.
A minimal, rotation-based FRLS lattice algorithm

We propose an alternate Givens rotation-based least-squares lattice algorithm. Based on spherical trigonometry principles, this algorithm turns out to be a normalized version of the fast QRD-based least-squares lattice filter, introduced independently by Ling (1991) and by Proudler et al. (1990, 1991). In contrast with that algorithm, the storage requirements of the new algorithm are minimal (in the system theory sense). From this, we show that the new algorithm satisfies the backward consistency property and, hence, enjoys stable error propagation.