Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Attitudes and Behaviors of Primary Care Physicians Regarding Tight Control of Blood Glucose in IDDM Patients

OBJECTIVE To evaluate attitudes and practices of primary-care physicians toward tight blood glucose control in IDDM. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A mail and telephone questionnaire survey was conducted on a systematic, stratified sample of 1429 family-practice physicians, general practitioners, internists, and pediatricians in active practice in the United States who treated patients with IDDM. Physicians were asked about methods they used for clinical and laboratory assessment of blood glucose control and about their attitudes and beliefs in treating IDDM. They were asked also what they consider to be acceptable ranges for blood glucose and HbA1 in IDDM patients. A score was developed reflecting three criteria for tight blood glucose control: fasting glucose 70–120 mg/dl (3.9–6.7 mM), 2-h postprandial glucose <180 mg/dl (<10 mM), and HbA1 <8% (the nondiabetic value was specified as 5–7%). Physicians were accorded one point when their acceptable range agreed with an intensive treatment criterion (range for score 0–3). RESULTS Only 31% of physicians agreed with all three criteria for tight control of blood glucose; 37% agreed with none or only one of the standards. Pediatricians were particularly low in their agreement with the HbA1 standard. Physicians who agreed with one of the three criteria often did not agree with the other two. With increasing value for the score, there was a greater proportion of physicians whose management practices (e.g., frequent measurement of HbA1 multiple insulin injections, patient SMBG, use of dietitian/educator in care of patients) are conducive toward tight control of blood glucose. However, even among physicians with a score of 3, HbA1 was ordered infrequently, three or more insulin injections/day was prescribed rarely, patient SMBG was less than fully endorsed, and both a dietitian and diabetes educator were used by a minority of physicians. CONCLUSIONS It appears that primary-care physicians are not fully aware of recommended criteria for intensive treatment of blood glucose in IDDM patients or of the importance of multiple insulin injections, use of HbA1; and patient SMBG. Physician practice behaviors are less than optimal for intensive management of IDDM patients, even among physicians who agree with all three standards for intensive treatment of blood glucose in IDDM.
Isolation of a hagfish gene that encodes a complement component.

It has been widely accepted that cyclostomes are the most primitive vertebrates extant with the ability to produce antibodies. We isolated cDNA clones that encode a putative ‘antibody’ from one of the cyclostomes, Eptatretus burgeri. The amino acid sequence predicted from the nucleotide sequences of the cDNA clones indicated that this gene does actually encode the proteins isolated as hagfish ‘antibodies’ by various investigators. However, these proteins are not similar to mammalian immunoglobulins but have some characteristics common to complements C3, C4 and C5 in higher vertebrates. We discuss the relationships of the isolated gene for hagfish complement with the mammalian genes for complements C3, C4 and C5. We also discuss the possibility of the presence of antibodies in cyclostomes.
Evaluation for Darpa Communicator Spoken Dialogue Systems

The overall objective of the DARPA COMMUNICATOR project is to support rapid, cost-effective development of multi-modal speechenabled dialogue systems with advanced conversational capabilities, such as plan optimization, explanation and negotiation. In order to make this a reality, we need to find methods for evaluating the contribution of various techniques to the users’ willingness and ability to use the system. This paper reports on the approach to spoken dialogue system evaluation that we are applying in the COMMUNICATOR program. We describe our overall approach, the experimental design, the logfile standard, and the metrics applied in the experimental evaluation planned for June of 2000.
Gender and volunteer computing: A survey study

Volunteer computing is a form of citizen science that has a significant gender imbalance. Far fewer women than men participate; women are typically less than ten percent of a project's participants. To better understand the experience of women in volunteer computing and seek clues as to methods for using volunteer computing experience as a recruiting tool, we analyze participant survey data from a project that tries to engage new communities with an interactive infrastructure. Our results showed very few gender differences among the responding men and women in volunteer computing. Our findings add to evidence that men and women engaged in computing activities are overwhelmingly similar. The challenge for gender balance seems to be informing and engaging larger networks of diverse women to promote volunteer computing and contribute to achieving its goals.
Deterministic UWB channel modeling using ray tracing approach

Two major model sets are used to model a radio wave propagation problem. The first is empirical, based on measurements and statistics. Empirical models are easy to implement and fast. They only consider Tx-Rx separation and thus are not accurate enough as different objects of the environment are not taken into account. The second is deterministic exploiting physical laws to simulate signal propagation. Deterministic propagation prediction models based on a combination of Geometrical Optics (GO) and the Uniform Theory of Diffraction (UTD) represent the unique solution for reliable estimations. The most famous of the second approach is the well-known ray tracing like model, based on the computation of the different paths according to the geometrical optical laws. Concerning the transmitted signal bandwidth (BW), the propagation channel appears differently to Ultra Wideband (UWB) wireless systems than it does to Narrow Band (NB) sine wave systems. The main objective of this paper is to develop a ray tracing Matlab code to estimate the power received as a function of frequency in a given environment. The results were experimentally validated according to time domain corporation specifications where the BW was selected to cover the 3.1-5.3 GHz band with center frequency of 4.3 GHz.
Hepatic Stellate Cells Improve Engraftment of Human Primary Hepatocytes: A Preclinical Transplantation Study in an Animal Model

Human hepatocytes are used for liver cell therapy, but the small number of engrafting cells limits the benefit of cell transplantation. We tested whether cotransplantation of hepatocytes with hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) could improve hepatocyte engraftment in vivo. Human primary hepatocytes were transplanted into SCID mice either alone or in a mixture with HSCs (quiescent or after culture activation) or LX-2 cells (ratio 20:1). Four weeks after transplantation into mouse livers, human albumin-positive (huAlb+) hepatocytes were found scattered. When cotransplanted in a mixture with HSCs or LX-2 cells, huAlb+ hepatocytes formed clusters and were more numerous occupying 2- to 5.9-fold more surface on the tissue section than in livers transplanted with hepatocytes alone. Increased huAlb mRNA expression in livers transplanted with the cell mixtures confirmed those results. The presence of HSCs increased the number of hepatocytes entrapped in the host liver at an early time point posttransplantation but not their proliferation in situ as assessed by cumulative incorporation of BrdU. Importantly, 4 weeks posttransplantation, we found no accumulation of αSMA+ -activated HSCs or collagen deposition. To follow the fate of transplanted HSCs, HSCs derived from GFP+ mice were injected into GFP- littermates: 17 h posttransplant, GFP+ HSCs were found in the sinusoids, without proliferating or actively producing ECM; they were undetectable at later time points. Coculture with HSCs improved the number of adherent hepatocytes, with best attachment obtained when hepatocytes were seeded in contact with activated HSCs. In vivo, cotransplantation of hepatocytes with HSCs into a healthy liver recipient does not generate fibrosis, but significantly improves the engraftment of hepatocytes, probably by ameliorating cell homing.
Common Territory? : Comparing the IMP Approach with Economic Geography

The IMP research tradition has always been open to the cross-fertilisation of ideas with other social science disciplines that study similar phenomena. Recent years have seen a growing interest among IMP researchers in phenomena such as regional strategic networks, spatial clusters and innovation and new business development in networks. IMP papers published on these topics are increasingly citing conceptual frameworks and empirical findings from the field of economic geography. This paper discusses the development of IMP thought and the development of thought in economic geography (particularly evolutionary economic geography), and compares their approaches to the analysis of regional phenomena. The goal is to identify key ideas from economic geography that have been under-exploited in IMP research, in order to suggest original new approaches available to IMP researchers interested in these fields. A number of such ideas are explored: proximity as a multi-dimensional and multi-faceted concept; the distinction between, and relative importance of, learning activities arising automatically from being embedded in a community (local or regional buzz) and learning activities arising from positive investment in channels of communication (pipelines); the concept of relational capital developed by economic geographers; and, conceptualisations of externalities commonly used in the study of spatial clusters.
Frank-Wolfe Optimization for Symmetric-NMF under Simplicial Constraint

Symmetric nonnegative matrix factorization has found abundant applications in various domains by providing a symmetric low-rank decomposition of nonnegative matrices. In this paper we propose a Frank-Wolfe (FW) solver to optimize the symmetric nonnegative matrix factorization problem under a simplicial constraint, which has recently been proposed for probabilistic clustering. Compared with existing solutions, this algorithm is simple to implement, and has no hyperparameters to be tuned. Building on the recent advances of FW algorithms in nonconvex optimization, we prove an $O(1/\varepsilon^2)$ convergence rate to $\varepsilon$-approximate KKT points, via a tight bound $\Theta(n^2)$ on the curvature constant, which matches the best known result in unconstrained nonconvex setting using gradient methods. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm. As a side contribution, we construct a simple nonsmooth convex problem where the FW algorithm fails to converge to the optimum. This result raises an interesting question about necessary conditions of the success of the FW algorithm on convex problems.
Reachability-based fault-tolerant routing

Clusters of PCs are being used as cost-effective alternative to large parallel computers. In most of them it is critical to keep the system running even in the presence of faults. As the number of nodes increases in these systems, the interconnection network grows accordingly. Along with the increase in components the probability of faults increases dramatically, and thus, fault-tolerance in the system, in general, and in the interconnection network, in particular, plays a key role. An interesting approach to provide fault-tolerance consists of migrating on fly the paths affected by the failure to new fault-free paths. In this paper, we propose a simple and effective fault-tolerant routing methodology, referred to as reachability based fault tolerant routing (RFTR), that can be applied to any topology. RFTR builds new alternative paths by joining subpaths extracted from the set of already computed paths, thus being time-efficient. In order to avoid deadlocks, RFTR performs, if required, a virtual channel transition on the subpath union. As an example of applicability, in this paper we apply RFTR to InfiniBand. Evaluation results on tori show that RFTR exhibits a low computation cost and does not degrade performance significantly
DISTANCES TO NEARBY GALAXIES : COMBININGFRAGMENTARY DATA USING FOUR

The primary distance indicators are established in our Galaxy and the Local Group. There are at least four diierent methods which give good distances: methods using proper motions, RR Lyraes, Cepheid variables, and Type II supernovae. However the data on independent distances is very fragmentary, due partly to nature and partly to technological limits. As a result the data are rarely put together in a consistent way; instead, the discussion of distance scales is often focused on one or two methods or on individual objects. Hence the question: what is the current situation with our overall knowledge of distances to the nearby galaxies? We try to answer this question by combining the fragmentary data from all four methods for fteen objects: the galactic center, We pay special attention to covariances among the diierent distance estimates. This most complete combination to date shows that all four methods are consistent within their random and systematic uncertainties.
A comparison of calisthenic and cycle exercise training in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients: a randomized controlled trial

Aim: To compare the effects of calisthenic and cycle exercises with no exercise in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients. Method: Forty-seven participants were allocated to either a cycle or calisthenic exercise or control group. Outcome measures, including Saint George Respiratory Questionnaire, pulmonary functions, cardiopulmonary exercise testing, Fitness Testing, and Hospital Anxiety-Depression, Modified Medical Research Council Dyspnea, Fatigue Severity, Fatigue Impact Scales, were performed before and after the intervention. Results: The change in VE/VCO2 significantly differed (p = 0.01) between two exercise groups. Physical fitness, quality of life, anxiety-depression, dyspnea and fatigue changed significantly in exercise groups, with no between-group differences. There were no significant improvements in control group. Conclusion: Calisthenics are as safe and effective as cycle exercise and could be included in comprehensive treatment programs.
Association between CYP2C8 (rs1934951) Polymorphism and Bisphosphonate-Related Osteonecrosis of the Jaws in Patients on Bisphosphonate Therapy: A Meta-Analysis

Aims: Bisphosphonate-related osteonecrosis of the jaws (BONJ) is a severe complication in patients on bisphosphonate therapy. The study was conducted to verify the association between CYP2C8 (rs1934951) polymorphism and BONJ predisposition. Methods: The relative epidemiologic studies were identified in PubMed and Embase to conduct a meta-analysis using STATA. Results: In the pooled analysis with multiple cancer types, patients carrying the CYP2C8 rs1934951 AA or AG genotype showed no significantly increased BONJ susceptibility compared with those carrying the wild GG genotype [dominant: odds ratio (OR) = 2.05, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.67–6.29, p = 0.209; recessive: OR = 1.88, 95% CI = 0.23–15.6, p = 0.560; AG vs. GG: OR = 2.07, 95% CI = 0.80–5.32, p = 0.133, and AA vs. GG: OR = 1.34, 95% CI = 0.48–3.74, p = 0.578]. A significant association between AA and AG genotypes of CYP2C8 (rs1934951) and BONJ risk was found in the subgroup analysis of multiple myeloma (dominant: OR = 5.77, 95% CI = 1.21–27.63, p = 0.028; AG vs. GG: OR = 5.02, 95% CI = 2.06–12.23, p = 0.001, and AA vs. GG: OR = 16.23, 95% CI = 1.72–78.7, p = 0.015). Conclusion: The results indicated that AA and AG genotypes of CYP2C8 (rs1934951) might be predictors for multiple myeloma patients at high risk to develop BONJ.
On the Bootstrap for Persistence Diagrams and Landscapes

Persistent homology probes topological properties from point clouds and functions. By looking at multiple scales simultaneously, one can record the births and deaths of topological features as the scale varies. In this paper we use a statistical technique, the empirical bootstrap, to separate topological signal from topological noise. In particular, we derive confidence sets for persistence diagrams and confidence bands for persistence landscapes.
Analysis of membrane–protein complexes of the marine sulfate reducer Desulfobacula toluolica Tol2 by 1D blue native‐PAGE complexome profiling and 2D blue native‐/SDS‐PAGE

Sulfate‐reducing bacteria (SRB) obtain energy from cytoplasmic reduction of sulfate to sulfide involving APS‐reductase (AprAB) and dissimilatory sulfite reductase (DsrAB). These enzymes are predicted to obtain electrons from membrane redox complexes, i.e. the quinone‐interacting membrane‐bound oxidoreductase (QmoABC) and DsrMKJOP complexes. In addition to these conserved complexes, the genomes of SRB encode a large number of other (predicted) membrane redox complexes, the function and actual formation of which is unknown. This study reports the establishment of 1D Blue Native‐PAGE complexome profiling and 2D BN‐/SDS‐PAGE for analysis of the membrane protein complexome of the marine sulfate reducer Desulfobacula toluolica Tol2. Analysis of normalized score profiles of >800 proteins in combination with hierarchical clustering and identification of 2D BN‐/SDS‐PAGE separated spots demonstrated separation of membrane complexes in their native form, e.g. ATP synthase. In addition to the QmoABC and DsrMKJOP complexes, other complexes were detected that constitute the basic membrane complexome of D. toluolica Tol2, e.g. transport proteins (e.g. sodium/sulfate symporters) or redox complexes involved in Na+‐based bioenergetics (RnfABCDEG). Notably, size estimation indicates dimer and quadruple formation of the DsrMKJOP complex in vivo. Furthermore, cluster analysis suggests interaction of this complex with a rhodanese‐like protein (Tol2_C05230) possibly representing a periplasmic electron transfer partner for DsrMKJOP.
Analysing Wikipedia and Gold-Standard Corpora for NER Training

Named entity recognition (ner) for English typically involves one of three gold standards: muc, conll, or bbn, all created by costly manual annotation. Recent work has used Wikipedia to automatically create a massive corpus of named entity annotated text. We present the first comprehensive cross-corpus evaluation of ner. We identify the causes of poor cross-corpus performance and demonstrate ways of making them more compatible. Using our process, we develop a Wikipedia corpus which outperforms gold standard corpora on cross-corpus evaluation by up to 11%.
Quantitative electroencephalographic analysis of naturally occurring (schizophrenic) and drug‐induced psychotic states in human males

Analysis of the quantified electroencephalogram of the left occipital lead (Drohocki's integrative method) of 21 normal male subjects revealed an average coefficient of variation in electrical energy of 15.4 per cent. In 25 male chronic schizophrenic patients, the mean coefficient of variation was 8 per cent. Placebo administration did not produce any significant change in either group. In the normal men, oral dosage with 0.3 p.g per kilogram of D‐N, N diethyllysergamide (lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD‐25) produced a 33 per cent decrease in variability without significant change in the mean energy content of the electroencephalogram. When the dose of lysergic acid diethylamide was increased to 1 p.g per kilogram, a 25 per cent decrease in variability and 23 per cent reduction of the energy content of the electroencephalogram followed. In schizophrenic patients, lysergic acid diethylamide at 1 μg per kilogram orally did not affect the mean energy content but produced a 47 per cent increase in variability. The findings indicate that the electroencephalogram of male institutionalized chronic schizophrenics tends to be hyperregulated. Similar hyperregulation is produced in normal volunteers by threshold and larger doses of lysergic acid diethylamide.
A modified Delphi exercise to determine the extent of consensus with OMERACT outcome domains for studies of acute and chronic gout

Objectives: To reach consensus with recommendations made by an OMERACT Special Interest Group (SIG). Methods: Rheumatologists and industry representatives interested in gout rated and clarified, in three iterations, the importance of domains proposed by the OMERACT SIG for use in acute and chronic gout intervention studies. Consensus was defined as a value of less than 1 of the UCLA/RAND disagreement index. Results: There were 33 respondents (61% response rate); all agreed the initial items were necessary, except “total body urate pool”. Additional domains were suggested and clarification sought for defining “joint inflammation” and “musculoskeletal function”. Items that demonstrated no clear decision were re-rated in the final iteration. There were six highly rated items (rating 1–2) with four slightly lower rating items (rating 3) for acute gout; and 11 highly rated items with eight slightly lower ratings for chronic gout. Conclusions: Consensus is that the following domains be considered mandatory for acute gout studies: pain, joint swelling, joint tenderness, patient global, physician global, functional disability; and for chronic gout studies: serum urate, gout flares, tophus regression, health-related quality of life, functional disability, pain, patient global, physician global, work disability and joint inflammation. Several additional domains were considered discretionary.
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