Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Presentation and course of AIDS dementia complex: 10 years of follow‐up in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

ObjectiveTo assess the clinical presentation and course of the AIDS dementia complex (ADC). DesignRetrospective study of a consecutive series of symptomatic HIV-1 -infected patients [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stages IVA, B, C and D] evaluated for neurological symptoms between 1982 and 1992. SettingAn academic referral centre for AIDS. PatientsA total of 536 symptomatic HIV-1-infected patients evaluated for neurological symptoms between 1982 and 1992. InterventionsZidovudine treatment, which was introduced in The Netherlands on 1 May 1987 for patients with severe symptoms of HIV infection (CDC stages IVA, B, C and D). Main outcome measuresDiagnosis of ADC and CD4 cell count, clinical features, neuropsychological abnormalities, computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) abnormalities, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) findings and course in patients with ADC. ResultsADC was diagnosed in 40 out of 536 (7.5%) immunosuppressed, neuroiogically symptomatic HIV-1-infected patients in CDC stage IV, and was the AIDS-defining illness in six. The mean CD4 cell count of the 40 patients with ADC was 109 χ 106/1. Neuropsychological abnormalities in 15 out of 17 patients tested were in accordance with subcortical dementia. On CT scan of the brain, 70% showed no or only mild cortical atrophy. MRI was more sensitive than CT scan for detecting white matter abnormalities (73 versus 35%; P = 0.02). CSF examination showed mononuclear pleocytosis in 25%, protein level increase in 55%, and HIV-1 p24 core protein in 38% (13 out of 34). The mean survival was 6.7 months in the 40 ADC patients, but 4 months in 20 patients who had never used zidovudine, compared with 14.8 months in 10 patients who started zidovudine after they were classified as having ADC (P < 0.001). Three of these 10 patients improved remarkably, and two slightly, after starting zidovudine. ADC developed after discontinuation of zidovudine in nine patients. Only one patient developed ADC while receiving 600 mg zidovudine. ConclusionsMRI is more sensitive than CT for detecting white matter abnormalities. To date, there is no specific or sensitive CSF marker for ADC. Zidovudine may improve symptoms and prolong survival in patients with ADC, which rarely developed with continued zidovudine use in our study.
Evaluating the Usability of a Mobile Collaborative System:: Exploring Two Different Laboratory Approaches

Several years of research in industry and academia has shown that usability issues influence users’ interactions and perceptions of the software products. High usability may prove critical in the success and survival of a product. The diffusion of new advanced technologies seems to challenge established ways of conducting usability evaluations. E.g. several mobile collaborative systems are difficult to evaluate in their natural inhabitant since the use situation is very complex involving distributed work tasks and actions while other mobile collaborative systems deal with safety-critical issues involving risks for people and equipment. This paper describes an exploratory study of two different approaches to usability evaluation of the same mobile collaborative system for coordinating work tasks on a large container ship. The two evaluations are based on an expert evaluation (heuristic inspection) and a user-based evaluation (usability testing with the think-aloud protocol). The two evaluations were conducted in laboratory settings in order to identify potential strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches. The primary result of the study is that from the heuristic inspection it is difficult to identify usability problems related to the support for collaborative work. The reason for this is that heuristic inspection is conducted centralized. The problems identified in the heuristic inspection more concern general interaction issues. In the think-aloud evaluation on the other hand, a large number of collaboration related usability problems were revealed.
Hypoxia-inducible factor-1alpha induces the coronary collaterals for coronary artery disease.

BACKGROUND Marked variability exists in coronary artery collaterals in patients with ischemic heart disease. Multiple factors are thought to play a role in collateral development; however, the contribution of hypoxia inducible factor-1alpha (HIF-1alpha), which is a transcriptional activator that functions as a master regulator of oxygen homeostasis, is not completely clear. It could play an important role in modulating collateral development. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study is to investigate the changes and significance of expression of HIF-1alpha in patients with coronary artery collaterals. METHODS Collateral vessels were determined in 98 patients with >or=70% narrowing of at least one coronary artery without earlier revascularization, 42 patients with coronary artery collaterals and 56 patients with no coronary artery collaterals. Extent of collaterals was expressed as scores according to the Rentrop scoring system. Another 50 cases with normal coronary arteries were selected as control. The levels of HIF-1alpha protein expression in monocyte and lymphocyte in the participants were tested by immunohistochemistry (IHC) and western blot; mRNA levels were measured using reverse transcriptase PCR technique. RESULTS Compared with the control with normal coronary artery, the patients had higher expression of HIF-1alpha protein tested by IHC and western blot (52.6+/-10.2 vs. 13.7+/-6.2 by IHC, 50.8+/-4.5 vs. 6.5+/-1.8 by western blot); furthermore, significantly higher HIF-1alpha expression was observed in patients with collaterals compared with patients with no collaterals (81.5+/-11.8 vs. 20.7+/-9.4 by IHC; 87.2+/-6.5 vs. 9.5+/-1.4 by western blot). On the transcriptional levels of HIF-1alpha, the result was the same as the protein, there was significant difference of HIF-1alpha between the three groups. The patients with collaterals were the highest (127.3+/-23.9), followed by patients with no collaterals (35.7+/-12.3), and the control were the lowest (23.5+/-9.3). A highly positive correlation was observed between the expression/transcription of HIF-1alpha and collateral score (P<0.01, IHC: r1=0.78, reverse transcriptase PCR: r2=0.69, western blot: r3=0.84). CONCLUSION These data suggest that higher inductions of HIF-1alpha are associated with coronary collaterals, thus implying that HIF-1alpha may promote coronary collateral formation. Detection of HIF-1alpha expression might be helpful to predict prognosis of patients with coronary artery disease.
Similarity-based LSTMs for Time Series Representation Learning in the Presence of Structured Covariates

Time series are prevalent in biomedical data, from high-frequency vital signals and longitudinal health indicators to gait kinematics and activity monitoring. One typical approach for the analysis of this data, frequently encountered in the biomedical literature, is to extract a set of features by applying tools such as PCA. Such general purpose techniques are insufficient to yield a complete view of time series, creating a need for more salient representations, in a setting where, often, only a limited amount of labels and annotations are available for this purpose. To address this issue, we introduce a deep learning framework which takes structured covariates into account when learning time series representations. The lower layers of the deep architecture include an embedding which captures parameters specific to the time series, such as frequency and amplitude, early in the transformation. This allows the rest of the network to operate on a higher-level abstraction. Our experiments show that this modification enables the prediction of osteoarthritis-related pain with an accuracy of 74%, compared to the 67% obtained by the top-performing method used by domain experts. In addition, we also modeled a component that directly encodes sample similarity, which ensures that features relevant to that sample are given more weight in issuing the prediction. This similarity-based LSTM achieved an accuracy of 94% in classifying running injuries based on the gait kinematics, compared to the 86% yielded by the state-of-the-art for this application. Our model is an alternative to painstaking feature engineering and achieves the goal of learning predictive features with a small amount of training samples.
Active removal of biochar by earthworms (Lumbricus terrestris)

The role earthworms play in the cycling of biochar in the soil column is poorly understood. While some studies show that earthworms favor a biochar-rich environment, they are ambiguous as to whether earthworms actively remove it and/or possibly consume it, or whether biochar indirectly provides a more favorable habitat. More importantly, associating the properties of different biochars to habitat preference by earthworms has received almost no attention. Courts were established with eight biochars from different feedstocks with varying in physicochemical properties. Circular piles (1.5 g) of biochar were applied to the surface of mesocosms containing field soil and 25 earthworms. Removal was quantified by digitally photographing the biochar samples and visually estimating disappearance over time. Most biochars were actively removed by the earthworms. The most preferred biochar was an aged biochar (>70 years) harvested from charcoal mounds, whereas the least preferred was a fast-pyrolysis biochar made from hardwood sawdust. There was an inverse relationship between the removal of biochar by earthworms and total carbon and a proportional increase with the contents of ash, Ca, Mn, and Si, although the correlations were not strong and may not explain earthworm preference. Other physicochemical properties of the biochars, such as the % volatile C, % H, porosity, and cumulative surface area, were associated with increased aerobic bacteria and fluorescent pseudomonads in soil, but not associated with biochar removal by earthworms. More research is needed to determine if tailoring specific biochars for surface removal by earthworms could be achieved by supplementing biochar with Ca, Mn, and Si and thus lead to a non-disruptive system for delivery of biochar into lower soil horizons of perennial crops. More importantly, this procedure may be useful in screening biochars for attractiveness to earthworms.
CRA-024781: a novel synthetic inhibitor of histone deacetylase enzymes with antitumor activity in vitro and in vivo

CRA-024781 is a novel, broad spectrum hydroxamic acid–based inhibitor of histone deacetylase (HDAC) that shows antitumor activity in vitro and in vivo preclinically and is under evaluation in phase I clinical trials for cancer. CRA-024781 inhibited pure recombinant HDAC1 with a Ki of 0.007 μmol/L, and also inhibited the other HDAC isozymes HDAC2, HDAC3/SMRT, HDAC6, HDAC8, and HDAC10 in the nanomolar range. Treatment of cultured tumor cell lines grown in vitro with CRA-024781 resulted in the accumulation of acetylated histone and acetylated tubulin, resulting in an inhibition of tumor cell growth and the induction of apoptosis. CRA-024781 parenterally administered to mice harboring HCT116 or DLD-1 colon tumor xenografts resulted in a statistically significant reduction in tumor growth at doses that were well tolerated as measured by body weight. Inhibition of tumor growth was accompanied by an increase in the acetylation of α-tubulin in peripheral blood mononuclear cells, and an alteration in the expression of many genes in the tumors, including several involved in apoptosis and cell growth. These results reveal CRA-024781 to be a novel HDAC inhibitor with potent antitumor activity. [Mol Cancer Ther 2006;5(5):1309–17]
A framework for medical records appraisal as a first gear towards an eventual efficient disposal to support effective healthcare service delivery

The importance of records appraisal in the public healthcare sector is worth prioritising during healthcare business planning. If records are not properly appraised may lead to storage congestions, which lead to untidy filing that results in misfiling or no filing at all, resulting in retrieval difficulties or impossible retrieval during healthcare service delivery. In the healthcare institutions, that may lead to patients receiving poor service or no service at all. This study sought to investigate and recommend a framework for medical records appraisal to eventual disposal as a means to ensure support to effective healthcare service delivery in the public hospitals of the Limpopo province of South Africa. This predominantly quantitative study used the questionnaire supported by documents analysis and observation to collect data in 40 hospitals in Limpopo. The study discovered that retention periods for different categories of medical records in the public healthcare sector of the Limpopo province was conducted and populated into the policy and filing plans but no disposal was implemented. Instead, these appraisal products which are policy, procedure manual and filing plans, are not implemented due to a lack of key resources. Officials are still struggling with the search for medical records required by doctors in a pool of useless records that should have being disposed of many years ago. The study recommended a framework for medical records appraisal to eventual disposal to ensure effective support to healthcare service delivery and appropriate management support with the required resources.
Testing age as a moderator of the relationship between depression and healthy functioning in breast and gynecologic cancer patients

Ana Bártolo / Sara Monteiro / Filipa Aires / Elizabeth Castelo Branco / Ana Catarina Pinho / Anabela Pereira * Departamento de Educação e Psicologia, Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal / Centro de Investigação em Tecnologias e Serviços de Saúde, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal; ** Departamento de Educação e Psicologia, Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal; *** Instituto Português de Oncologia de Coimbra Francisco Gentil, Coimbra, Portugal; **** Departamento de Educação e Psicologia, Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal / Centro de Investigação em Didática e Tecnologia na Formação de Formadores, Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal
Time Point to Perform Lung Function Tests Evaluating the Effects of an Airway Clearance Therapy Session in Cystic Fibrosis

BACKGROUND: Lung function parameters are used as end points in most clinical and therapeutic trials in cystic fibrosis (CF) and to evaluate the effects of airway clearance techniques. The aim of the study was to identify at what time point after a physiotherapy session spirometry (FEV1 and FVC) should be performed to obtain the highest result compared to baseline and to determine whether there are inter-individual and intra-individual differences in children and adults with CF. METHODS: This was a prospective study. Twenty-four subjects with CF and mean FVC 70 ± 30% and FEV1 61 ± 30% of predicted were included. Each subject performed spirometry before their airway clearance session and then immediately after, 30 min after, and 1, 2, and 3 h after their physiotherapy session for 2 consecutive days. RESULTS: In adult subjects, mean FEV1 improved 30 min (P < .001), 1 h (P < .002), and 2 h (P < .006) after physiotherapy compared to baseline. In pediatric subjects, it improved immediately after the session but was not statistically significant for recommendation. There were no intra-individual variations, but there were inter-individual variations (not statistically significant). CONCLUSIONS: Performing spirometry 30 min (adults) and immediately (children) after a session might be optimal if individual peak time values cannot be used.
Lactic acid fermentation of peppers : isolation , characterization and evaluation of starter cultures

Strains of Lactobacillus plantarum, Lactobacillus brevis, Leuconostoc citreum, Lactococcus lactis, Weissella cibaria, Lactobacillus hilgardii and several Enterococcus spp. were identified from spontaneous fermentations (0 and 3% NaCl) of different peppers by partial 16S rRNA gene sequence and subjected to typing by PCR fingerprinting using M13 and (GTG)5 primers. Strains of Lb. plantarum, Lb. brevis, Lc. lactis and Leuc. citreum were selected to be used as starter cultures for controlled fermentations of bell and hot peppers, based on their kinetics of growth, acidifying ability and production of lactic acid. With the main goal of producing innovative products with dis tinct organoleptic and nutritional qualities, different pepper fermentations were assayed aerobically at 28oC. Hot and bell peppers pastes (0 and 5% of NaCl) were used and the selected strains were inoculated. Uninoculated pastes in same conditions were used as control. Cell numbers of starter cultures (9 log CFU mL1) were 1000 times higher than hypothetic lactic acid bacteria present in vegetables. The pH reduction and lactic acid production was higher in pastes with Lb. plantarum, while the sugar consumption was higher with Lb. brevis. PCR fingerprinting showed that Lb. plantarum strain was the best one persisting over fermentations, although Lb. brevis and Leuc. citreum strains also persisted in bell peppers pastes (0% and 5% of NaCl, respectively). Twelve days after fermentation, sensorial analysis showed that the pastes with lactobacilli have the best organoleptic properties. These assays revealed an association of quality of pepper pastes with lactic acid production and final fermentation pH.
Quantitative immunohistology: tissue section thickness, another glitch in the path to standardization.

Immunohistology was introduced in anatomical pathology as a means of labeling cells to allow their identification. Through the labeling of proteins, enzymes, and other cellular products it became possible to specifically recognize cells that otherwise could not be distinguished on the basis of morphology alone. Immunohistochemistry served as a specific ‘‘special stain’’ that provided largely qualitative information, which, at best, was semiquantitative. Nonetheless, this qualitative function served the diagnostic role of immunohistology well and the technique has rapidly become entrenched as an important adjunct to morphologic diagnosis.
Factors affecting the termination propensity of inter‐firm relationships

Purpose – The decline of inter‐firm relationships remains an important, although little studied, topic within the channel management literature. Existing research on the topic tends to be fragmentary and largely occupied with the cataloguing of switching incentives and deterrents. This aim of this paper is to articulate a more comprehensive explanation of the process of decline.Design/methodology/approach – With special emphasis on those channels spanning international borders, this paper outlines a mediational model of termination propensity which exploits the tension between the switching and opportunity costs of maintaining the status quo. Specifically, the study examines how switching motivators and deterrents interact to tip the balance towards, or away from, the inclination to terminate.Findings – Two significant outcomes are achieved. First, it is proposed that the switching motivators identified in the literature are mediated through clients' satisfaction with their intermediary's current and anti.
This is a repository copy of Preserved retinotopic brain connectivity in macular degeneration

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SmartAd : Advertisement System for Next Generation Networks

Next generation networks and 3GPP/IMS framework opens a new series of business opportunities. Telecommunication operators have a new business model that allows the inclusion of services developed by 3 party developers. Through the composition of services it is possible to build innovative services that fully integrates with the network of operators. This paper presents a novel service designated SmartAd. The proposed service advertises publicity through a new channel, next generation networks. It takes advantage of the fixed-mobile convergence and is built using SOA methodology on top of 3GPP/IMS framework. A prototype was developed in order to demonstrate the technological viability of the project. Also a economic study as performed in order to demonstrate the economical viability of the project.
Population Growth in a Wild Bird Is Buffered Against Phenological Mismatch

Balancing Act Life cycles are strongly influenced by seasonal and interannual environmental and climate events. Such phenological timings are likely to shift as our climate changes, but species exist in communities, and not all species can be expected to shift in concert. Reed et al. (p. 488) used long-term data on European great tits to reveal how the negative consequences of phenological mismatch can be buffered: Lower fitness in individuals subject to mismatch-driven reductions of food availability was balanced by reductions in competition. Thus, overall, the population is resilient and has not declined. Warmer springtimes have induced great tits to lay their eggs earlier without affecting long-term fitness. Broad-scale environmental changes are altering patterns of natural selection in the wild, but few empirical studies have quantified the demographic cost of sustained directional selection in response to these changes. We tested whether population growth in a wild bird is negatively affected by climate change–induced phenological mismatch, using almost four decades of individual-level life-history data from a great tit population. In this population, warmer springs have generated a mismatch between the annual breeding time and the seasonal food peak, intensifying directional selection for earlier laying dates. Interannual variation in population mismatch has not, however, affected population growth. We demonstrated a mechanism contributing to this uncoupling, whereby fitness losses associated with mismatch are counteracted by fitness gains due to relaxed competition. These findings imply that natural populations may be able to tolerate considerable maladaptation driven by shifting climatic conditions without undergoing immediate declines.
Intrusion Detection System for In-Vehicle Networks

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In light of the security incident of the Jeep Cherokee in 2015, where a vehicle was illegally controlled remotely using spoofing messages inserted via a public mobile network, security measures have become one of the most crucial issues in the realization of autonomous driving and connected cars. Taking security measures for each unknown cyberattack requires quick detection of attacks that happen throughout the life cycle of the vehicles. This paper introduces an intrusion detection system (IDS) to detect spoofing messages at the central gateway. Additionally, we report on the detection performance of the system using messages from an actual in-vehicle network.