Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Novel Central Nervous System Drug Delivery Systems

For decades, biomedical and pharmaceutical researchers have worked to devise new and more effective therapeutics to treat diseases affecting the central nervous system. The blood–brain barrier effectively protects the brain, but poses a profound challenge to drug delivery across this barrier. Many traditional drugs cannot cross the blood–brain barrier in appreciable concentrations, with less than 1% of most drugs reaching the central nervous system, leading to a lack of available treatments for many central nervous system diseases, such as stroke, neurodegenerative disorders, and brain tumors. Due to the ineffective nature of most treatments for central nervous system disorders, the development of novel drug delivery systems is an area of great interest and active research. Multiple novel strategies show promise for effective central nervous system drug delivery, giving potential for more effective and safer therapies in the future. This review outlines several novel drug delivery techniques, including intranasal drug delivery, nanoparticles, drug modifications, convection‐enhanced infusion, and ultrasound‐mediated drug delivery. It also assesses possible clinical applications, limitations, and examples of current clinical and preclinical research for each of these drug delivery approaches. Improved central nervous system drug delivery is extremely important and will allow for improved treatment of central nervous system diseases, causing improved therapies for those who are affected by central nervous system diseases.
CLAD: A Complex and Long Activities Dataset with Rich Crowdsourced Annotations

This paper introduces a novel activity dataset which exhibits real-life and diverse scenarios of complex, temporally-extended human activities and actions. The dataset presents a set of videos of actors performing everyday activities in a natural and unscripted manner. The dataset was recorded using a static Kinect 2 sensor which is commonly used on many robotic platforms. The dataset comprises of RGB-D images, point cloud data, automatically generated skeleton tracks in addition to crowdsourced annotations. Furthermore, we also describe the methodology used to acquire annotations through crowdsourcing. Finally some activity recognition benchmarks are presented using current state-of-the-art techniques. We believe that this dataset is particularly suitable as a testbed for activity recognition research but it can also be applicable for other common tasks in robotics/computer vision research such as object detection and human skeleton tracking.
Data-driven informatics tools targeting patients and providers

The field of biomedical and health informatics is growing at a fast pace, both in breadth and depth. The evolution and dissemination of informatics is evident from the articles that have been published in JAMIA the past few years. In this issue of JAMIA , not only do a large number of articles report on studies that rely on machine learning and data science to build predictive models in a variety of biomedical domains, but there are also a high number of articles describing patient-facing applications in addition to articles about electronic health records (EHRs), and clinical decision …
Mixed H2/H− pitch control of wind turbine generator system based on exact linearization and regional pole placement

When the wind power electricity system working above the rated wind speed, the disturbed wind speed can lead to the output power ripple easily, which causes a significant negative influence on the stability of the power grid. In order to overcome this disadvantage, this paper discusses the mixed H2/H∞ pitch angle control design problem for the nonlinear wind turbine generator system (WTGS), where the turbulence is regarded as the disturbance input. Especially, the traditional exact linearization and the pole placement techniques are also applied to guarantee the desired control performance and expected dynamic characteristics in the situation of a large-scale variety of the system operation points. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Are Credit Unions Too Small?

Abstract U.S. credit unions serve 93 million members, hold 10% of U.S. savings deposits, and make 13.2% of all nonrevolving consumer loans. Since 1985, the share of U.S. depository institution assets held by credit unions has nearly doubled, and the average (inflation-adjusted) size of credit unions has increased over 600%. We use a local-linear estimator, dimesion-reduction techniques, and bootstrap methods to estimate and make inference about ray scale and expansion-path scale economies. We find substantial evidence of increasing returns to scale among credit unions of all sizes, suggesting that further consolidation and growth among credit unions are likely.
Commentary on Zur & Zaric and Shepard et al. (2016): Cost-effectiveness of SBI for alcohol--where are we and where do we want to go?

The analyses by Shepard et al. [1] and Zur & Zaric [2] on the cost-effectiveness of alcohol screening and brief intervention (SBI) add to a relatively limited evidence base and suggest that SBI is a good use of resources. The studies contribute to the field by considering the impacts across a nation’s population, incorporating significant others in the intervention and using a preferred common health outcome, and they prompt several directions for future research, such as accounting for several domains of alcohol-related consequences and including referral to specialist treatment as part of SBI.
Poland. Competitiveness Report 2017. Internationalization and Poland's Competitive Position

This book is the latest in a series of annual studies of economic competitiveness, a concept that refers to sustainable economic growth, but also implies an ability to improve quality of life, strengthen a country's position on foreign markets and increase its attractiveness to foreign investment. Competitiveness is closely linked to changes in productivity that influence the use of resources and have an impact on the production of goods and services offered on both the domestic and international markets. However, research studies today highlight some new aspects of competitiveness that go beyond economic performance. Changes in the productivity of material and non-material resources are viewed in the context of a social equilibrium and sustainable use of the environment, a perspective known as sustainable competitiveness. The definition of competitiveness is expanded to include other important elements that increase the well-being of societies.1 This book takes into account some elements of these new dimensions of sustainable competitiveness, especially those related to social sustainability. The main aim of this book is to determine Poland's competitive position and to identify factors that determined its evolution in the period of 2010-2016. One of the factors of competitiveness analyzed in detail here is the internationalization of the Polish economy and its role in shaping the country's competitive advantages. Competitiveness can be viewed from several perspectives: macroeconomic (i.e., of the economy as a whole), meso-economic (that of a region or industry), and microeconomic (that of an enterprise). This book focuses on the macroeconomic perspective and identifies Poland's competitive position in comparison with other European Union member states, especially its peers in Central and Eastern Europe. All these countries became part of the EU after a period of transition from a centrally planned to a market economy, as a result of successive rounds of enlargement in 2004, 2007 and 2013.
Data management for the Internet of Things: Green directions

The technology pertaining to connecting objects together in the Internet of Things is already the focus of intensive research efforts. However, the mechanisms managing and utilizing the resulting significant volume of data from these objects has yet to match the maturity of the technology itself. The traditional approach of migrating raw data to centralized points for data storage and analysis may incur debilitating communication and energy costs, which will negatively affect the environment in the future. In this paper, we will discuss the life cycle of data within the Internet of Things and survey the current research in the data management field for the Internet of Things. The discussion will focus on the research pertaining to the optimization of communication overhead and storage mechanisms as they have the most significant impact on energy consumption. We prove the need for further analysis and addressing of issues concerning "green" data management systems designs for the Internet of Things.
Transesophageal Echocardiography in Myocardial Revascularization: II. Influence on Intraoperative Decision Making

This study was conducted to determine how transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) guides intraoperative decision making during myocardial revascularization.Although its usefulness in influencing clinical decision making during cardiac valvular surgery is well documented, the clinical utility of TEE in patients undergoing myocardial revascularization is less clear. We studied the performance of five community-based, full-time cardiac anesthesiologists during 75 surgical procedures. All patients were monitored with radial artery and pulmonary artery catheters as well as biplane TEE. Immediately after each clinical intervention, the anesthesiologist was asked to determine how real-time TEE influenced the therapy, which single monitor was most influential, and why each therapy was initiated. Of the 584 interventions, TEE was the single most important guiding factor in 98 instances (17%). Interventions involving fluid administration contributed to 277 of 584 (47%) of the total clinical decisions. TEE was the most important monitor influencing fluid administration in 82 of 277 instances (30%), versus the pulmonary artery catheter in 20 of 277 instances (7%). TEE was the single most important monitor in guiding other therapies as follows: antiischemic therapy, 8 of 38 = 21%; vasopressor or inotrope administration, 4 of 115 = 3%; vasodilator therapy, 1 of 38 = 3%; antiarrhythmic medications, 0 of 16 = 0%; and depth of anesthesia, 1 of 72 = 1%. In 2 of 75 patients (3%), critical surgical interventions were made solely on the basis of TEE. Also, TEE was found to act in concert with other monitors in 254 of 584 interventions (43%). TEE is often influential in guiding decision making in myocardial revascularization when incorporated as a routine monitor in the intraoperative setting. Information from TEE has been most commonly used to guide the management of fluid administration and institution of antiischemic therapy. In a small subset of patients, TEE appears to be useful in guiding critical surgical interventions. (Anesth Analg 1996;82:1139-45)
A unidirectional snubber less partially soft-switched high frequency link three phase inverter

This paper presents a unidirectional three phase inverter with a high frequency link. This topology can be used for the grid integration of renewable energy sources like photovoltaic, fuel cell etc, where power flow is unidirectional. The use of high frequency transformer (HFT) results in reduction of cost with improved power density. The switches in the proposed converter are either zero voltage switched or switched only at line frequency leading to negligible switching loss. Use of additional snubber circuits are also avoided for commutation of leakage energy of the HFT. The proposed converter with small shunt active filter ensures unity power factor operation. The operation of the proposed converter is analysed in detail. Key simulation results are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed topology.
Comparison of Plaque- and Flow Cytometry-Based Methods for Measuring Dengue Virus Neutralization

ABSTRACT As dengue vaccines enter clinical trials, there is a need for rapid and quantitative assays to measure neutralization. We have developed flow-based neutralization assays which generated results similar to those generated by the established, plaque reduction neutralization test. The flow assays are an improvement, as they use human cells and allow for high-throughput screening.
HIV Type 1 Mother-to-Child Transmission Facilitated by Distinctive Glycosylation Sites in the gp 120 Envelope Glycoprotein

The human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) characteristics associated with mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) are still poorly understood. We studied a cohort of 30 mothers from Rwanda infected with HIV-1 subtype A or C viruses of whom seven infected their children either during gestation or soon after birth. CD4 counts and viral load did not significantly differ between nontransmitting mother (NTM) versus transmitting mother (TM) groups. In contrast to earlier studies we not only analyzed and compared the genotypic characteristics of the V1-V5 region of the gp120 envelope of viruses found in TM and their infected children, but also included data from the NTM. No differences were found with respect to length and number of potential Nglycosylation sites (PNGS) in the V1-V2 and the V1-V5 region. We identified that viruses with a PNGS on positions AA234 and AA339 were preferably transmitted and that viruses with PNGS-N295 showed a disadvantage in transmission. We also showed that the frequency of PNGS-N339 in the viruses of TM and infected children was significantly higher than the frequency in NTM in our cohort and in viruses undergoing sexual transmission while the frequency of PNGS-N295 in children was significantly lower than the frequency in TM and acute horizontal infections. Collectively, our results provide evidence that the presence of the PNGS-N339 site and absence of the PNGS-N295 site in the gp120 envelope confers an advantage to HIV-1 when considering MTCT.
It is all about quality

Interest in quality management has been increasing rapidly. Quality systems help to map the quality of training institutes systematically and to improve them. It is expected that this will enable to produce better medical professionals, ultimately yielding benefits for healthcare. This line of thought has led the Dutch GP training institutes to pay close attention to quality assurance. The first part of this thesis describes qualitative studies of the development, implementation and effect of the activities in this field pursued by the Dutch GP training institutes. These studies are followed by the evaluation of two interventions intended to monitor and improve the performance of clinical trainers at the GP training institute. The thesis concludes with a systematic review of the quality with which interventions in medical education are being described. Three main themes emerged from these studies. First, togetherness would seem to be the leitmotif of this thesis. When developing and implementing interventions to improve medical education, it is important that participants feel involved with one another. Second, a key challenge is to integrate the proposed intervention into day-to-day activities. Third, to be able to exchange good practices, it is of particular importance to get to know one another (national) and, internationally it is of the utmost importance to strive towards a more uniform description of interventions in the literature. We hope that this thesis will make a useful contribution to further improvement of the quality of medical education and hence ultimately of the care provided to patients.
System-Level Design Considerations for Carbon Nanotube Electromechanical Resonators

Despite an evermore complete plethora of complex domain-specific semiempirical models, no succinct recipe for large-scale carbon nanotube electromechanical systems design has been formulated. To combine the benefits of these highly sensitive miniaturized mechanical sensors with the vast functionalities available in electronics, we identify a reduced key parameter set of carbon nanotube properties, nanoelectromechanical system design, and operation that steers the sensor’s performance towards system applications, based on open- and closed-loop topologies. Suspended single-walled carbon nanotubes are reviewed in terms of their electromechanical properties with the objective of evaluating orders of magnitude of the electrical actuation and detection mechanisms. Open-loop time-averaging and 1ω or 2ω mixing methods are completed by a new 4ω actuation and detection technique. A discussion on their extension to closed-loop topologies and system applications concludes the analysis, covering signal-to-noise ratio, and the capability to spectrally isolate the motional information from parasitical feedthrough by contemporary electronic read-out techniques.
Towards New Heterogeneous Data Stream Clustering based on Density

Heterogeneous data stream clustering is an important issue in data stream mining, for the accuracy of the existing heterogeneous clustering algorithm is not high, and don’t have a common distance measure method, a heterogeneous data stream clustering algorithm based on the density with mixed distance measure method is proposed. HDSDen algorithm adopts an online/offline two-stage processing framework. According to the situation of dominant property, the online stage use corresponding distance measure method to define the core points among the arriving points, the purpose of the different distance calculation method is to reduce the influence of the non-dominant property on the whole clustering accuracy.
Citation ranking versus subjective evaluation in the determination of journal hierachies in the social sciences

Considerable interest has been shown in problems associated with ranking journals in accord with their relative importance. With the publication of Journal Citation Reports, regularly updated ranking indicators, based on citation analysis, are made readily available. These indicators have been shown to have significant correlations with scientists' evaluations of the relative importance of journals in the biomedical sciences, but not the physical sciences. This article examines the situation in the social sciences, and finds a strong association between sociologists' evaluations of journal rank and particular citation rank indicators. This suggests that Social Science Journal Citation Reports could prove a valuable aid to journal selection for libraries and information systems.
Energy Access: Pathway to Attaining Sustainable Development in Africa

The study assesses the effect of energy use on social, economic and environmental sustainability in Africa. The energy sources considered in the study comprises four prominent sources in Africa, including: fossil fuel, solid fuel, electricity and natural gas consumption. The finding suggests that fossil fuel consumption and solid fuel constitute about 75 percent of energy use in the region and contributively worsen social and environmental conditions. The predominant consumption of these dirty energies has severely hampered child and adult survival and efficient delivery of services. Also, the time wasted in fetching biomass has constituted an impediment to learning capacities in children and women’s mobility. In the same manner, frequent exposure to fumes from the dirty energy sources had resulted in severe indoor air pollution and rising incidence of pneumonia, lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases in women and children. On the other hand, the empirical and conceptual analysis shows that access to clean and reliable energy sources (such as electricity) reduce time poverty, enhance gender empowerment and reduce environmental degradation. The study recommends structural policy reforms and transformation towards decentralizing energy provisions and adopting off-grid power solution to rural areas. Furthermore, African governments need to develop a sustainable energy financing mechanism through an affordable pricing template; this can be achieved by increasing local contents in energy provision and increasing the share of abundant domestic resource in energy mix.
Gender- and Age-Related Prescription Drug Use Patterns

OBJECTIVE: To report the top 15 prescription drug categories used by males and females of all ages and to compare this information with national prevalence data. METHODS: Data used were pharmacy claim and eligibility information over the period January 1, 1999, through December 31, 1999, for 1 294 295 members of a large pharmacy benefit manager. Participant ages ranged from 1 to more than 100 years. Each participant was assigned to 1 of 9 age categories. Use of a drug category was defined as filling at least 1 prescription for a medication in that category during the study year. The percentage of males and females that used each drug group was established, and the 15 drug groups used most frequently were reported for each age category. RESULTS: Most gender differences in medication use appear after or around the puberty years. Women are more likely to use several classes of medications, including antidepressants and antianxiety and pain medications. Except for diuretics, men use cardiovascular medications at an earlier age than do women. The use of medications for chronic conditions increases with older age categories for both genders. The use of female hormones represents only a small proportion of the difference in medication use between genders. CONCLUSIONS: Analysis of data from the epidemiologic literature suggests that the gender differences in medication use shown in this study generally are to be expected.
Uncertainty analysis: an example of its application to estimating a survey proportion

Uncertainty analysis is a method, established in engineering and policy analysis but relatively new to epidemiology, for the quantitative assessment of biases in the results of epidemiological studies. Each uncertainty analysis is situation specific, but usually involves four main steps: (1) specify the target parameter of interest and an equation for its estimator; (2) specify the equation for random and bias effects on the estimator; (3) specify prior probability distributions for the bias parameters; and (4) use Monte-Carlo or analytic techniques to propagate the uncertainty about the bias parameters through the equation, to obtain an approximate posterior probability distribution for the parameter of interest. A basic example is presented illustrating uncertainty analyses for four proportions estimated from a survey of the epidemiological literature.
Processing of G 4 DNA by Dna 2 Helicase / Nuclease and Replication Protein A ( RPA ) Provides Insights into the Mechanism of Dna 2 / RPA Substrate

The polyguanine-rich DNA sequences commonly found at telomeres and in rDNAarrays have been shown to assemble into structures known as G quadruplexes, or G4 DNA, stabilized by base-stacked G quartets, an arrangement of four hydrogenbonded guanines. G4 DNA structures are resistant to the many helicases and nucleases that process intermediates arising in the course of DNA replication and repair. The lagging strand DNA replication protein, Dna2, has demonstrated a unique localization to telomeres and a role in de novo telomere biogenesis, prompting us to study the activities of Dna2 on G4 DNA-containing substrates. We find that yeast Dna2 binds with 25-fold higher affinity to G4 DNA formed from yeast telomere repeats than to single-stranded DNA of the same sequence. Human Dna2 also binds G4 DNAs. The helicase activities of both yeast and human Dna2 are effective in unwinding G4 DNAs. On the other hand, the nuclease activities of both yeast and human Dna2 are attenuated by the formation of G4 DNA, with the extent of inhibition depending on the topology of the G4 structure. This inhibition can be overcome by replication protein A. Replication protein A is known to stimulate the 5 to 3 -nuclease activity of Dna2; however, we go on to show that this same protein inhibits the 3 to 5 -exo/endonuclease activity of Dna2. These observations are discussed in terms of possible roles for Dna2 in resolving G4 secondary structures that arise during Okazaki fragment processing and telomere lengthening.