Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The ability of four genotypic interpretation systems to predict virological response to ritonavir-boosted protease inhibitors

Background:Limited information exists on the prognostic value of genotypic interpretation systems (GISs) for ritonavir-boosted protease inhibitors (PI/rs). We compared PI/r resistance levels ascribed by four GIS and examined their abilities to predict HIV-RNA reductions after starting a PI/r-based regimen (baseline). Methods:Data on viraemic (HIV-RNA > 500 copies/ml) patients starting a PI/r with a baseline resistance test were combined from an observational cohort study (EuroSIDA) and three randomized trials (MaxCmin1; MaxCmin2 and COLATE). The GIS surveyed were ANRS, DMC, REGA and Stanford. Factors associated with HIV-RNA change were identified through censored regression analysis. Results:We included 744 patients, of whom 67% were PI experienced. At baseline 12–28% (depending on the GIS) patients had a virus with predicted resistance/intermediate resistance to the PI/r initiated. Concordance between GISs on ascribed PI/r resistance levels was moderate: kappa values ranged from 0.01 to 1.00, with the lowest kappas seen for amprenavir. The median (interquartile range) baseline HIV-RNA was 4.4 (3.5–5.1) log10 and was reduced by 2.2 (2.1–2.3) log10 12 (9–13) weeks after baseline. GIS consistently showed greater HIV-RNA reductions as the ascribed level of sensitivity to the PI/r increased. Conversely, the number of other active drugs in the rest of the regimen, according to each GIS did not predict HIV-RNA reductions consistently. Conclusion:Despite large variations in how GIS classify HIV susceptibility to PI/r, all GIS predicted HIV-RNA reductions of a similar magnitude. The ascribed level of susceptibility to other drugs in the regimen did not predict HIV-RNA decline.
Electrospun polyvinyl alcohol/carbon dioxide modified polyethyleneimine composite nanofiber scaffolds

A novel biocompatible polyvinyl alcohol/carbon dioxide modified polyethyleneimine (PVA/PEI-CO2) composite nanofiber was fabricated by a green and facile protocol, which reduces the cytotoxicity of PEI through the surface modification of the PEI with CO2. The 13C NMR spectrum, elemental analysis, and TGA show that CO2 has been incorporated in the PEI surface resulting in a relatively stable structure. The resulting PVA/PEI-CO2 composite nanofibers have been characterized by attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), contact angle, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results show that the average diameters of the nanofibers range from 265 ± 53 nm to 423 ± 80 nm. The cytotoxicity of PVA/PEI-CO2 composite nanofibers was assessed by cytotoxicity evaluation using the growth and cell proliferation of normal mice Schwann cells. SEM and the MTT assay demonstrated the promotion of cell growth and proliferation on the PVA/PEI-CO2 composite scaffold. It suggests that PEI-CO2 can have tremendous potential applications in biological material research.
New developments in bone-conduction hearing implants: a review

The different kinds of bone-conduction devices (BCDs) available for hearing rehabilitation are growing. In this paper, all BCDs currently available or in clinical trials will be described in categories according to their principles. BCDs that vibrate the bone via the skin are referred to as skin-drive devices, and are divided into conventional devices, which are attached with softbands, for example, and passive transcutaneous devices, which have implanted magnets. BCDs that directly stimulate the bone are referred to as direct-drive devices, and are further divided into percutaneous and active transcutaneous devices; the latter have implanted transducers directly stimulating the bone under intact skin. The percutaneous direct-drive device is known as a bone-anchored hearing aid, which is the BCD that has the largest part of the market today. Because of some issues associated with the percutaneous implant, and to some extent because of esthetics, more transcutaneous solutions with intact skin are being developed today, both in the skin-drive and in the direct-drive category. Challenges in developing transcutaneous BCDs are mostly to do with power, attachment, invasiveness, and magnetic resonance imaging compatibility. In the future, the authors assume that the existing percutaneous direct-drive BCD will be retained as an important rehabilitation alternative, while the transcutaneous solutions will increase their part of the market, especially for patients with bone-conduction thresholds better than 35 dB HL (hearing level). Furthermore, the active transcutaneous direct-drive BCDs appear to be the most promising systems, but to establish more detailed inclusion criteria, and potential benefits and drawbacks, more extensive clinical studies are needed.
Entering the adult world : the experiences of young adults with learning disabilities of social support during the transition into adult services

The transition into adulthood has been identified as a key life event for people with learning disabilities, entailing the departure of services which are well known and entry into unfamiliar systems. Social support has been conceived as having a stress buffering role. It has also been contended that social support is itself important to the mental health of people. It was hypothesised that the role of social support in the transition period would be important, particularly as the transition process itself may change the structure of the support network around the individual. Traditional concepts of social support have been criticised as lacking conceptual clarity and of being of limited ecological value. They do not take into account the context of relationships which are entailed and the ambiguous nature of support. Moreover, no studies have examined the views of people with learning disabilities about their experiences of social support. This study aimed to use in-depth interviews to explore the views of people with learning disabilities about their experiences of social support. Six young adults with mild to moderate learning disabilities wee interviewed about their experiences of leaving school and the support that they received at that time. A grounded theory methodology was used to code the transcripts. The analysis identified various challenges that occur during the transition years. It also delineated the interplay between self-reliant coping responses and social support coping strategies which participants used to respond to these challenges, with particular attention
Regulation of CYP2C19 Expression by Estrogen Receptor α: Implications for Estrogen-Dependent Inhibition of Drug Metabolism

Cytochrome P4502C19 (CYP2C19) is an important drug-metabolizing enzyme involved in the biotransformation of, for example, proton pump inhibitors and antidepressants. Several in vivo studies have shown that the CYP2C19 activity is inhibited by oral contraceptives, which can cause important drug interactions. The underlying molecular mechanism has been suggested to be competitive inhibition. However, the results presented here indicate that estradiol derivatives down-regulate CYP2C19 expression via estrogen receptor (ER) α, which interacts with the newly identified ER-binding half site [estrogen response element (ERE)] at the position −151/−147 in the CYP2C19 promoter. In gene reporter experiments in Huh-7 hepatoma cells, the activity of the luciferase construct carrying a 1.6-kb long CYP2C19 promoter fragment cotransfected with ERα was down-regulated upon treatment with 17β-estradiol (EE) or 17α-ethinylestradiol (ETE) at half-maximum concentrations of 10−7 and 10−8 M, respectively. Mutations introduced into the ERE half site −151/−147 significantly inhibited these ligand-dependent effects. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays and quantitative chromatin immunoprecipitation experiments revealed that estrogen receptor α binds to this element. A significant suppression of CYP2C19 transcription by female sex steroids was confirmed by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction after hormonal treatment of human hepatocytes. Inhibition experiments using a stable human embryonic kidney 293 CYP2C19 cell line revealed competitive inhibition at much higher concentrations of EE and ETE compared with those required for transcriptional inhibition. These results indicate that both EE and ETE inhibit CYP2C19 expression via an ERα-dependent regulatory pathway, thus providing a new insight into the molecular mechanism behind the inhibitory effect of oral contraceptives on CYP2C19 activity.
Design and Fabrication of a Differential Electrostatic Accelerometer for Space-Station Testing of the Equivalence Principle

The differential electrostatic space accelerometer is an equivalence principle (EP) experiment instrument proposed to operate onboard China’s space station in the 2020s. It is designed to compare the spin-spin interaction between two rotating extended bodies and the Earth to a precision of 10−12, which is five orders of magnitude better than terrestrial experiment results to date. To achieve the targeted test accuracy, the sensitive space accelerometer will use the very soft space environment provided by a quasi-drag-free floating capsule and long-time observation of the free-fall mass motion for integration of the measurements over 20 orbits. In this work, we describe the design and capability of the differential accelerometer to test weak space acceleration. Modeling and simulation results of the electrostatic suspension and electrostatic motor are presented based on attainable space microgravity condition. Noise evaluation shows that the electrostatic actuation and residual non-gravitational acceleration are two major noise sources. The evaluated differential acceleration noise is 1.01 × 10−9 m/s2/Hz1/2 at the NEP signal frequency of 0.182 mHz, by neglecting small acceleration disturbances. The preliminary work on development of the first instrument prototype is introduced for on-ground technological assessments. This development has already confirmed several crucial fabrication processes and measurement techniques and it will open the way to the construction of the final differential space accelerometer.
An Equiry Concerning Human Understanding

between the perceptions of the mind when a man feels the pain of excessive heat or the pleasure of moderate warmth, and when he afterwards recalls to his memory this sensation or anticipates it by his imagination. These faculties may mimic or copy the perceptions of the senses, but they never can entirely reach the force and vivacity of the original sentiment. We may observe a like distinction to run through all the other perceptions of the mind. A man in a fit of anger is actuated in a very different manner from one who only thinks of that emotion. If you tell me that any person is in love, I easily understand your meaning and form a just conception of his situation, but never can mistake that conception for the real disorders and agitations of the passion. Here, therefore, we may divide all the perceptions of the mind into two classes or species, which are distinguished by their different degrees of force and vivacity. The less forcible and lively are commonly denominated “thoughts” or “ideas. ” The other species want a name in our language, and in most others. Let us, therefore, use a little freedom and call them “impressions,” employing that word in a sense somewhat different from the usual. By the term “impression,” then, I mean all our more lively perceptions, when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will. AN INQUIRY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
Nonbinary LDPC-coded differential modulation with reduced-complexity decoding

In this paper, we apply q-ary LDPC codes to differential modulation systems, and study the design and performance of the resultant coded modulation systems. Two low-complexity joint detection-decoding methods for noncoherent demodulation are proposed, in which the hard-message-passing strategy is used for a joint factor graph. The first method is based on the joint detection-decoding algorithm introduced in [1]; and the second one is developed by combining trellis-based differential detection and the hard-decision-based decoding of nonbinary LDPC codes. The Max-Log-MAP algorithm with soft-in hard-out is used for the differential detection. Simulation results show that both methods offer acceptable performances with greatly reduced complexities.
Designing Truthful Spectrum Auctions for Multi-hop Secondary Networks

Opportunistic wireless channel access granted to non-licensed users through auctions represents a promising approach for effectively distributing and utilizing the scarce wireless spectrum. A limitation of existing spectrum auction designs lies in the over-simplifying assumption that every non-licensed secondary user is a single node or single-hop network. For the first time in the literature, we propose to model non-licensed users as secondary networks (SNs), each of which comprises of a multihop network with end-to-end routing demands. We use simple examples to show that such auctions among SNs differ drastically from simple auctions among single-hop users, and previous solutions suffer from local, per-hop decision making. We first design a simple, heuristic auction that takes inter-SN interference into consideration and is truthful. We then design a randomized auction framework based on primal-dual linear optimization, which is automatically truthful and achieves a social welfare approximation ratio that matches one achieved by cooperative optimization assuming truthful bids for free. The framework relieves a spectrum auction designer from worrying about truthfulness of the auction, so that he or she can focus on social welfare maximization while assuming truthful bids for free.
The Association of Quality-of-Life Measures With Malignancy and Survival in Patients With Pancreatic Pathology

Objectives: This study assessed whether pretreatment quality-of-life (QoL) scores could predict the presence of pancreatic malignancy and survival. Methods: Patients with pancreatic lesions completed the SF-36, containing 8 domains: physical functioning, role-physical, role-emotional, bodily pain, vitality, mental health, social functioning, and general health. Data obtained included age, sex, resectability, additional antineoplastic therapy, stage, pathology, and survival. Patients were categorized by pathology (benign vs malignant), stage (local, regional, or distant), resectability (resected vs not), survival (<1 vs >1 year), and their pretreatment QoL scores. Results: Of the 323 patients assessed, 210 had malignancies. In 6 of the 8 domains, patients with malignancies had lower median QoL scores compared with patients with benign lesions. Of the patients with malignancies, patients surviving at 1 year or less had lower pretreatment scores in all domains. Stage, resection, adjuvant therapy, and vitality score were independent predictors of survival. Conclusions: Patients with pancreatic malignancies had lower QoL scores than patients with benign pancreatic disease. Patients with malignancies surviving at 1 year or less had lower scores, even after controlling for stage. This suggests that pretreatment QoL scores are associated with pancreatic malignancy and survival.
The Influence of Artificial Ventilation on Heart Rate Variability in Very Preterm Infants

ABSTRACT: To study the influence of artificial ventilation rate on neonatal heart rate variability (HRV), ECG and respiratory impedance curves were recorded four times a day in 20 preterm infants (<33 wk) during the first 3 d after birth while the infants were ventilated at a wide range of ventilator rates. The contents of selected frequency bands within the R-R interval power spectrum were calculated for 3-min periods. Respiratory distress syndrome severity was assessed at each measurement. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) induced by the ventilator appeared to mimic spontaneous RSA. As in spontaneous respiration, the amount of RSA (power in a frequency band around the respiratory rate) increases as the ventilation rate decreases. This phenomenon is most probably due to entrainment with baroreflex-related fluctuations in the heart rate. Although the artificial ventilation rate influences RSA and thus high-frequency HRV, an increase in respiratory distress syndrome severity results in a decrease in low-frequency HRV. Thus, the attenuation of low-frequency HRV by respiratory distress syndrome is not likely to be due to artificial ventilation.
The Effect of Nodes With Asymmetric Bandwidth on Network Performance in

We present a series of experiments designed to test the effect of low bandwidth and asymmetrical bandwidth nodes on the performance of the Tor routing network. A simulation is designed to perform the tests, with a number of features that will make it useful for any further research into the performance of the Tor network. The experiments show that lower bandwidth does affect performance, and that there is a huge performance gap between having mostly and all slow nodes. We also find that asymmetrical connections perform no worse than symmetrical connections of equivalent upstream bandwidth.
Invariant Delineation of Nuclear Architecture in Glioblastoma Multiforme for Clinical and Molecular Association

Automated analysis of whole mount tissue sections can provide insights into tumor subtypes and the underlying molecular basis of neoplasm. However, since tumor sections are collected from different laboratories, inherent technical and biological variations impede analysis for very large datasets such as The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Our objective is to characterize tumor histopathology, through the delineation of the nuclear regions, from hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) stained tissue sections. Such a representation can then be mined for intrinsic subtypes across a large dataset for prediction and molecular association. Furthermore, nuclear segmentation is formulated within a multi-reference graph framework with geodesic constraints, which enables computation of multidimensional representations, on a cell-by-cell basis, for functional enrichment and bioinformatics analysis. Here, we present a novel method, multi-reference graph cut (MRGC), for nuclear segmentation that overcomes technical variations associated with sample preparation by incorporating prior knowledge from manually annotated reference images and local image features. The proposed approach has been validated on manually annotated samples and then applied to a dataset of 377 Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) whole slide images from 146 patients. For the GBM cohort, multidimensional representation of the nuclear features and their organization have identified 1) statistically significant subtypes based on several morphometric indexes, 2) whether each subtype can be predictive or not, and 3) that the molecular correlates of predictive subtypes are consistent with the literature. Data and intermediaries for a number of tumor types (GBM, low grade glial, and kidney renal clear carcinoma) are available at: http://tcga.lbl. gov for correlation with TCGA molecular data. The website also provides an interface for panning and zooming of whole mount tissue sections with/without overlaid segmentation results for quality control.
Simultaneous tracking and data association in an extended maneuvering target using the IMM methodology

Extended target tracking arises in situations where the resolution of the sensor is high enough to allow multiple returns from the target of interest corresponding to its different parts. Various formulations and solutions may be found in the literature. We concentrate on the data association aspect involved in the tracking problem and propose utilization of a general framework that allows reformulation of many seemingly unrelated problems in a similar way. Consequently, the extended object tracking problem is stated as a single generalized dynamical system with random coefficients and solved using a standard IMM-like algorithm.
A transiently expressed SK current sustains and modulates action potential activity in immature mouse inner hair cells

From just after birth, mouse inner hair cells (IHCs) expressed a Ca2+‐activated K+ current that was reduced by intracellular BAPTA at concentrations ≥ 1 mm. The block of this current by nifedipine suggests the direct involvement of Cav1.3 Ca2+ channels in its activation. On the basis of its high sensitivity to apamin (KD 360 pm) it was identified as a small‐conductance Ca2+‐activated K+ current (SK), probably SK2. A similar current was also found in outer hair cells (OHCs) from the beginning of the second postnatal week. In both cell types the appearance of the SK current coincided with their becoming responsive to acetylcholine (ACh), the main efferent neurotransmitter in the cochlea. The effect of ACh on IHCs was abolished when they were simultaneously superfused with strychnine, consistent with the presence of nicotinic ACh receptors (nAChRs). Extracellular Ca2+ either potentiated or blocked the nAChR current depending on its concentration, as previously reported for the recombinant α9α10 nAChR. Outward currents activated by ACh were reduced by blocking the SK current with apamin or by preventing SK current activation with intracellular BAPTA (≥ 10 mm). The endogenous mobile Ca2+ buffer concentration was estimated to be equivalent to about 1 mm BAPTA, suggesting that in physiological conditions the SK channel is significantly activated by Ca2+ influx through both Cav1.3 Ca2+ channels and α9α10 nAChRs. Current clamp experiments showed that in IHCs the SK current is required for sustaining a train of action potentials and also modulates their frequency when activated by ACh.
Anchoring Values In Nature: Toward A Theory of Business Values

The dominant values of the business system—economizing and power-aggrandizing—are manifestations of natural evolutionary forces to which sociocultural meaning has been assigned. Economizing tends to slow life-negating entropic processes, while power-aggrandizement enhances them. Both economizing and power-aggrandizing work against a third (non-business) value cluster— ecologizing—which sustains community integrity. The contradictory tensions and conflicts generated among these three value clusters define the central normative issues posed by business operations. While both economizing and ecologizing are antientropic and therefore life-supporting, power augmentation, which negates the other two value clusters, is pro-entropic and therefore life-defeating. Business ethicists, by focusing on the contradictions between personal values, on the one hand, and both economizing and power-aggrandizing, on the other hand, have tended to overlook the normative significance of nature-based value systems. Learning to reconcile economizing and ecologizing values is the most important theoretical task for business ethicists.
Robust automatic video object segmentation with graphcut assisted by SURF features

Video object segmentation is a task to distinguish the foreground from the background in videos. Most previous research on automatic video object segmentation based on graphcut segmentation uses the motion cue and the color cue to separate the background from the foreground. Consequently, the segmentation result deteriorates when the motion and/or the color becomes disordered, which typically occurs when a moving object stops and when a light is switched on/off. This paper proposes a new automatic video segmentation method robust to unstable motion and color. To achieve robustness, the graphcut segmentation is supported by the SURF feature, which is highly invariant to the change of scale, rotation, and luminance. In particular, our method matches the SURF features between two consecutive frames and modifies the segmentation result when the matched SURF features are assigned different labels.