Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of short-course low-dose oral prednisolone in pityriasis rosea

Abstract Purpose: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of short-course low-dose oral prednisolone in symptomatic pityriasis rosea (PR) of onset <5 days and compare it with placebo. Material and methods: Placebo-controlled randomized double-blind study design with the treatment group receiving tapering doses of oral prednisolone over 2 weeks and the control group receiving a placebo. Outcome measures evaluated were subsidence of patient-perceived pruritus, improvement in rash quantified by a specific score, adverse effects and relapse at 12 weeks. Results: The improvement in the pruritus score as well as objective rash score were much better in the prednisolone-treated group. No adverse effects reported in either group. The relapse rate at 12 weeks was much higher in the prednisolone treated group. Conclusions: Oral corticosteroids, even if used in low-dose and for a short tapering course should not be the first line of therapy for PR. The only justified indication may be extensive and highly symptomatic lesions of PR.
Endoscopic indications for endoscopic mucosal resection of laterally spreading tumours in the colorectum

Background: Laterally spreading tumours (LSTs) in the colorectum are usually removed by endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR) even when large in size. LSTs with deeper submucosal (sm) invasion, however, should not be treated by EMR because of the higher risk of lymph node metastasis. Aims: To determine which endoscopic criteria, including high magnification pit pattern analysis, are associated with sm invasion in LSTs and clarify indications for EMR. Methods: Eight endoscopic criteria from 511 colorectal LSTs (granular type (LST-G type); non-granular type (LST-NG type)) were evaluated retrospectively for association with sm invasion, and compared with histopathological findings. Results: LST-NG type had a significantly higher frequency of sm invasion than LST-G type (14% v 7%; p<0.01). Presence of a large nodule in LST-G type was associated with higher sm invasion while pit pattern (invasive pattern), sclerous wall change, and larger tumour size were significantly associated with higher sm invasion in LST-NG type. In 19 LST-G type with sm invasion, sm penetration determined histopathologically occurred under the largest nodules (84%; 16/19) and depressed areas (16%; 3/19). Deepest sm penetration in 32 LST-NG type was either under depressed areas (72%; 23/32) or lymph follicular or multifocal sm invasion (28%; 1/32 and 8/32, respectively). Conclusions: When considering the most suitable therapeutic strategy for LST-G type, we recommend endoscopic piecemeal resection with the area including the large nodule resected first. In contrast, LST-NG type should be removed en bloc because of the higher potential for malignancy and greater difficulty in diagnosing sm depth and extent of invasion compared with LST-G type.
Vaginally Delivered Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate Provides Greater Protection than Tenofovir against Genital Herpes in a Murine Model of Efficacy and Safety

ABSTRACT Increased susceptibility to genital herpes in medroxyprogesterone-treated mice may provide a surrogate of increased HIV risk and a preclinical biomarker of topical preexposure prophylaxis safety. We evaluated tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) in this murine model because an intravaginal ring eluting this drug is being advanced into clinical trials. To avoid the complications of surgically inserting a ring, hydroxyethylcellulose (HEC)-stable formulations of TDF were prepared. One week of twice-daily 0.3% TDF gel was well tolerated and did not result in any increase in HSV-2 susceptibility but protected mice from herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV-2) disease compared to mice treated with the HEC placebo gel. No significant increase in inflammatory cytokines or chemokines in vaginal washes or change in cytokine, chemokine, or mitochondrial gene expression in RNA extracted from genital tract tissue was detected. To further evaluate efficacy, mice were treated with gel once daily beginning 12 h prior to high-dose HSV-2 challenge or 2 h before and after viral challenge (BAT24 dosing). The 0.3% TDF gel provided significant protection compared to the HEC gel following either daily (in 9/10 versus 1/10 mice, P < 0.01) or BAT24 (in 14/20 versus 4/20 mice, P < 0.01) dosing. In contrast, 1% tenofovir (TFV) gel protected only 4/10 mice treated with either regimen. Significant protection was also observed with daily 0.03% TDF compared to HEC. Protection was associated with greater murine cellular permeability of radiolabeled TDF than of TFV. Together, these findings suggest that TDF is safe, may provide substantially greater protection against HSV than TFV, and support the further clinical development of a TDF ring.
Efficient Leak Resistant Modular Exponentiation in RNS

The leak resistant arithmetic in RNS was introduced in 2004 to randomize RSA modular exponentiation. This randomization is meant to protect implementations on embedded device from side channel analysis. We propose in this paper a faster version of the approach of Bajard et al. in the case of right-to-left square-and-multiply exponentiation. We show that this saves roughly 30% of the computation when the randomization is done at each loop iteration. We also show that the level of randomization of the proposed approach is better than the one of Bajard et al. after a few number of loop iterations.
Analog circuit fault diagnosis using Ada Boost and SVM

A fault diagnosis method for analog circuits based on Support Vector Machine (SVM) and AdaBoost algorithm is developed in this paper. Firstly, output voltage signals from the test nodes are obtained from analog circuits test points and the fault feature vectors are extracted from Haar wavelet packet transform coefficients. Then, after training the AdaBoost SVM by faulty feature vectors, the SVM ensemble model of the circuit with tolerances fault diagnosis system is built. Simulation results of diagnosing a two stage four op-amp biquad low-pass filter circuit, compared with several existent fault diagnosis methods, show us the proposed technique has the highest classification accuracy and have confirmed the validity of the method.
Labor Supply and Bequest Taxation : Behavioral Responses of Givers † ( Job Market Paper ) Link to latest version

I study the effects of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, which lowered the unified exemption to the estate tax, on the labor supply of future bequest givers (bequestors). To my knowledge, this is the first paper to empirically document such a response. The hypothesis is straightforward: a tax cut implies a higher net-of-tax estate value, and hence creates a wealth effect, which reduces labor supply, and a price effect, which raises it. Results indicate a clear reduction in participation for a group for which the tax cut represented a pure wealth effect, and a similar reduction for the group which faced opposing wealth and substitution effects, but for which the tax gain as a fraction of total wealth was much higher. I find an approximate reduction in participation of around 10% over the baseline for both groups.
Neural Network Control of a Class of Nonlinear Discrete Time Systems with Asymptotic Stability Guarantees 1

In this paper, a single and multi-layer neural network (NN) controllers are developed for a class of nonlinear discrete time systems. Under a mild assumption on the system uncertainties, which include unmodeled dynamics and bounded disturbances, by using novel weight update laws and a robust term, local asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system is guaranteed in contrast with all other NN controllers where a uniform ultimate boundedness is normally shown. Simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the controller design.
Omega-3/Omega-6 Fatty Acids for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Objective: The aim of the study was to assess omega 3/6 fatty acids (eye q) in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Method: The study included a randomized, 3-month, omega 3/6 placebo-controlled, one-way crossover trial with 75 children and adolescents (8—18 years), followed by 3 months with omega 3/6 for all. Investigator-rated ADHD Rating Scale—IV and Clinical Global Impression (CGI) scale were outcome measures. Results: A majority did not respond to omega 3/6 treatment. However, a subgroup of 26% responded with more than 25% reduction of ADHD symptoms and a drop of CGI scores to the near-normal range. After 6 months, 47% of all showed such improvement. Responders tended to have ADHD inattentive subtype and comorbid neurodevelopmental disorders. Conclusion: A subgroup of children and adolescents with ADHD, characterized by inattention and associated neurodevelopmental disorders, treated with omega 3/6 fatty acids for 6 months responded with meaningful reduction of ADHD symptoms. (J. of Att. Dis. 2009; 12(5) 394-401)
A novel LTPS-TFT-based charge-trapping memory device with field-enhanced nanowire structure

A novel gate-all-around low-temperature poly-Si (LTPS) thin-film transistor (TFT) silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon (SONOS) nonvolatile memory with field-enhanced nanowire (FEN) structure has been proposed to improve the program and erase (P/E) performance. Each nanowire inherently had three sharp corners fabricated simply by sidewall spacer formation to obtain high local electric fields. The field-enhanced carrier tunneling via such a structure led to faster P/E speed and wider memory window for the FEN-TFT SONOS as compared to the conventional planar (CP) counterpart. The improvement was also further verified with the simulation results. Such a high-performance FEN-TFT SONOS memory with process simplicity is very suitable for future system-on-panel (SOP) applications.
OP18/stathmin binds near the C-terminus of tubulin and facilitates GTP binding.

It is has been previously suggested that the protein Op18/stathmin may interact with tubulin via the alpha-tubulin subunit [Larsson, N. , Marklund, U. , Melander Gradin, H. , Brattsand, G. & Gullberg, M. (1997) Mol. Cell. Biol. 17, 5530-5539]. In this study we have used limited proteolysis and cross-linking analysis to localize further the stathmin-binding site on alpha-tubulin. Our results indicate that such a binding site is in a region close to the C-terminus of the molecule comprising residues 307 to the subtilisin-cleavage site on the alpha-tubulin subunit. Based on a recent model of the structure of tubulin [Nogales, E. , Wolf, S.G. & Dowing, D.H. (1998) Nature (London) 391, 199-203], we found that this region contained the same areas that may be involved in longitudinal contacts of alpha-tubulin subunits within the microtubule. We also observed that the binding of stathmin to tubulin can modulate the binding of GTP to tubulin, as a consequence of a conformational change in the beta-tubulin subunit that occurs upon interaction of stathmin with tubulin.
Identifying Sentiment Words Using an Optimization Model with L1 Regularization

Sentiment word identification is a fundamental work in numerous applications of sentiment analysis and opinion mining, such as review mining, opinion holder finding, and twitter classification. In this paper, we propose an optimization model with L1 regularization, called ISOMER, for identifying the sentiment words from the corpus. Our model can employ both seed words and documents with sentiment labels, different from most existing researches adopting seed words only. The L1 penalty in the objective function yields a sparse solution since most candidate words have no sentiment. The experiments on the real datasets show that ISOMER outperforms the classic approaches, and that the lexicon learned by ISOMER can be effectively adapted to document-level sentiment analysis.
Learning Ecosystems Using the Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT) and the Experience API (xAPI)

Learning ecosystems provide a combination of technologies and sup- port resources available to help individuals learn within an environment (1). The Experience API (xAPI) is an enabling specification for learning ecosys- tems, which provides a method for producing interoperable data that can be shared within a learning ecosystem (2). Version 4.1 of the Generalized Intelli- gent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT) provides support to both produce and con- sume xAPI data. A number of use cases are enabled by this support. This paper will explore the use cases, functionality enabled, setup and design guidance in addition to exploring practical applications for using GIFT and xAPI within learning ecosystems.
The ends of La Crosse virus genome and antigenome RNAs within nucleocapsids are base paired

The three La Crosse virus genomes are found as circular structures in the electron microscope, and the RNA ends of at least the small (S) and medium (M) segments are highly complementary. When examined for psoralen cross-linking, about half of the S, at most 1 to 2% of the M, and none of the large (L) nucleocapsid RNAs could be cross-linked in virions or at late times intracellularly, under conditions in which each free RNA reacted completely. For the S segment, genomes and antigenomes first detected intracellularly could not be cross-linked at all, and their cross-linkability increased gradually with time. Antigenomes behaved similarly to genomes in all respects. It appears that the majority of all three segments are base paired at their ends and that the limited cross-linkability reflects the accessability of the RNA within nucleocapsids to psoralen. The gradual increase in cross-linkability may be important in persistent mosquito cell infection, in which it correlates with decreased S mRNA synthesis rates, and may be part of the mechanism which this infection becomes self-limiting. The implications of double-stranded RNA panhandles within nucleocapsids are discussed.
Model predictive control using affine disturbance feedback for constrained linear system

This paper proposes a control parametrization under model predictive control framework for constrained linear discrete time systems with bounded additive disturbances. The proposed approach has the same feasible domain as that obtained from parametrization over the family of time-varying state feedback policies. Under the proposed control law, the closed-loop system is stable in the sense that the state converges, in time, to a bounded set that has a characterization determined by a feedback gain.
Screening of Phytochemicals, Antioxidant and Silver Nanoparticles Biosynthesizing Capacities of Some Medicinal Plants of Nepal

In this study, three plants i.e. J. adhatoda, A. vulgaris and P. guajava native to Pashupati area and Jorpati of Nepal were screened to evaluate the phytochemical and antioxidant activities due to their high medicinal value. The dried leaves were extracted with three solvents: hexane, methanol and distill water. The extracts were subjected to various phytochemical tests. The test confirmed the presence of various phytochemicals. The antioxidant activity of the methanol extracts were evaluated by FRAP assay. The antioxidant activity of J. adhatoda was found to be 0.794mM Fe (II)/L, A. vulgaris to be 0.949 mM Fe (II)/L and P. guajava was found to be 2.035 mM Fe (II)/L. Fresh aqueous leaf extracts of A. vulgaris and J. adhatoda were used for synthesis of silver nanoparticles. The biosynthesized AgNPs were characterized by Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM).
Cyclic-nucleotide–gated cation current and Ca2+-activated Cl current elicited by odorant in vertebrate olfactory receptor neurons

Significance The electrical response of vertebrate olfactory receptor neurons to odorants consists of two components: an inward cyclic-nucleotide–gated, nonselective cation current and an inward calcium-activated chloride current. These two currents are causally and tightly coupled, making them difficult to be separated. We have now succeeded in cleanly separating these two currents and found the Cl current to be dominant whether the overall response is at threshold for signaling to the brain or has reached saturation. Thus, the Cl current appears to have an important role in signal amplification in olfaction across the stimulus range. Olfactory transduction in vertebrate olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) involves primarily a cAMP-signaling cascade that leads to the opening of cyclic-nucleotide–gated (CNG), nonselective cation channels. The consequent Ca2+ influx triggers adaptation but also signal amplification, the latter by opening a Ca2+-activated Cl channel (ANO2) to elicit, unusually, an inward Cl current. Hence the olfactory response has inward CNG and Cl components that are in rapid succession and not easily separable. We report here success in quantitatively separating these two currents with respect to amplitude and time course over a broad range of odorant strengths. Importantly, we found that the Cl current is the predominant component throughout the olfactory dose–response relation, down to the threshold of signaling to the brain. This observation is very surprising given a recent report by others that the olfactory-signal amplification effected by the Ca2+-activated Cl current does not influence the behavioral olfactory threshold in mice.
How to Develop Patient-Centered Research: Some Perspectives Based on Surveys Among People With Rheumatic Diseases in Scandinavia

Patient-centered research addresses the research agenda of patients and captures aspects of health and functioning that they consider important. Yet, those who live with a disease or condition have limited influence when it comes to setting the research agenda, and we know little about how they experience being participants in research studies. Furthermore, knowledge is limited concerning factors enhancing or hindering patients' participation in trials and the format that people with rheumatic diseases and their families prefer for dissemination of the results from clinical research. This perspective article describes the research priorities of people with rheumatic diseases in Scandinavia, their experiences and attitudes concerning participation in research projects, and which format for research information they prefer. Based on results from 3 surveys organized by the Scandinavian Rheumatism Associations and on related research literature, the possible implications for future research also are discussed.
A framework for linguistic logic programming

Lawry's label semantics for modeling and computing with linguistic information in natural language provides a clear interpretation of linguistic expressions and thus a transparent model for real-world applications. Meanwhile, annotated logic programs (ALPs) and its fuzzy extension AFLPs have been developed as an extension of classical logic programs offering a powerful computational framework for handling uncertain and imprecise data within logic programs. This paper proposes annotated linguistic logic programs (ALLPs) that embed Lawry's label semantics into the ALP-AFLP syntax, providing a linguistic logic programming formalism for development of automated reasoning systems involving soft data as vague and imprecise concepts occurring frequently in natural language. The syntax of ALLPs is introduced, and their declarative semantics is studied. The ALLP SLD-style proof procedure is then defined and proved to be sound and complete with respect to the declarative semantics of ALLPs. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Softmax Q-Distribution Estimation for Structured Prediction: A Theoretical Interpretation for RAML

Reward augmented maximum likelihood (RAML), a simple and effective learning framework to directly optimize towards the reward function in structured prediction tasks, has led to a number of impressive empirical successes. RAML incorporates task-specific reward by performing maximum-likelihood updates on candidate outputs sampled according to an exponentiated payoff distribution, which gives higher probabilities to candidates that are close to the reference output. While RAML is notable for its simplicity, efficiency, and its impressive empirical successes, the theoretical properties of RAML, especially the behavior of the exponentiated payoff distribution, has not been examined thoroughly. In this work, we introduce softmax Q-distribution estimation, a novel theoretical interpretation of RAML, which reveals the relation between RAML and Bayesian decision theory. The softmax Q-distribution can be regarded as a smooth approximation of the Bayes decision boundary, and the Bayes decision rule is achieved by decoding with this Q-distribution. We further show that RAML is equivalent to approximately estimating the softmax Q-distribution, with the temperature $\tau$ controlling approximation error. We perform two experiments, one on synthetic data of multi-class classification and one on real data of image captioning, to demonstrate the relationship between RAML and the proposed softmax Q-distribution estimation method, verifying our theoretical analysis. Additional experiments on three structured prediction tasks with rewards defined on sequential (named entity recognition), tree-based (dependency parsing) and irregular (machine translation) structures show notable improvements over maximum likelihood baselines.
Partial purification of adeno-associated virus Rep78, Rep52, and Rep40 and their biochemical characterization

We have used differential cell extraction and conventional chromatography to separate and partially purify the four adeno-associated virus (AAV) nonstructural proteins Rep78, Rep68, Rep52, and Rep40. In the cytoplasmic extracts Rep52 and Rep40 were present in greater abundance than Rep68 and Rep78, with Rep78 being the least abundant. In nuclear extracts the four Rep proteins were approximately equal in abundance. Regardless of the subcellular fraction examined, three of the Rep proteins (Rep78, Rep68, and Rep40) consisted of two protein species with slightly different mobilities during polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. In contrast, Rep52 consisted of only one protein species. Both Rep78 and Rep68 were capable of binding efficiently to AAV terminal hairpin DNA substrates, but we could not detect site-specific DNA binding by Rep52 and Rep40. Like Rep68, Rep78 had both an ATP-dependent trs endonuclease and a DNA helicase activity. Both Rep78 and Rep68 cut the terminal AAV sequence at the same site (nucleotide 124). The binding, trs endonuclease, and DNA helicase activities comigrated during sucrose density gradient centrifugation with a mobility expected for a monomer of the protein, suggesting that the three biochemical activities were intrinsic properties of the larger Rep proteins. The chromatographic behavior and the DNA-binding properties of the four Rep proteins identified at least two domains within the rep coding region, an exposed hydrophobic domain within the C-terminal end (amino acids 578 to 621) and a region within the N terminus (amino acids 1 to 214) which was necessary for binding to the terminal repeat sequence. No site-specific nuclease activity was seen in the presence of nucleotide analogs ATP-gamma-S or AMP-PNP, suggesting that ATP hydrolysis was required for the endonuclease reaction. Furthermore, although ATP was the only cofactor which would support the trs endonuclease activity of Rep78, Rep68 nuclease activity was seen in the presence of several other nucleotide cofactors, including CTP, GTP, and UTP.
Shared-use motion vector algorithm for moving objects detection for automobiles

This paper presents a new motion vector based moving object detection system for use in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. By the shared-use of motion vectors with a video encoder, the computational cost for motion estimation using optical flow method can be saved, making the system more cost effective. Moving objects are detected by evaluating the planar parallax residuals of macroblocks in the video. The proposed algorithm involves newly proposed "APD" constraints on hypothesis generation and template matching in hypothesis verification. Test results show that moving objects can be detected effectively in scenarios that pose danger to the ego vehicle.