Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Smoking and pulmonary tuberculosis treatment failure: a case-control study

ABSTRACT Objective: To determine the association between smoking and pulmonary tuberculosis treatment failure. Methods: This was a case-control study conducted at the Brazilian Institute for Tuberculosis Research in the city of Salvador, Brazil, between 2007 and 2015. We evaluated 284 patients treated for pulmonary tuberculosis, comparing 50 cases of treatment failure with 234 control cases in which the final outcome was cure. Results: Treatment failure was attributed to smoking and age rather than to gender, income, level of education, alcohol consumption, or marital status. Therefore, even after adjustment for age, the risk of treatment failure was 2.1 times (95% CI: 1.1-4.1) higher among the patients with a history of smoking. In addition, being over 50 years of age was found to increase the likelihood of treatment failure by 2.8 times (95% CI: 1.4-6.0). Conclusions: Smoking and aging are both associated with pulmonary tuberculosis treatment failure. Therefore, as part of a tuberculosis control program, health personnel should be prepared to offer strategies to promote smoking cessation and should be more careful with older patients.
Rating Autonomous Systems

Rating Autonomous Systems helps in establishing and maintaining mission critical Internet communication paths. We elaborate performance metrics, tools, and quality indicators to rate Autonomous Systems. An initial rating approach based on traceroute measurements led to the discovery of the frequent effect of non-increasing round-trip times in traceroute measurements. Our improved outlier-based rating approach addresses this issue and allows the real-time detection of Autonomous Systems causing poor Internet connection performance as well as the comparison of Autonomous Systems against each other over an extended period of time.
Top-k query processing in probabilistic databases with non-materialized views

We investigate a novel approach of computing confidence bounds for top-k ranking queries in probabilistic databases with non-materialized views. Unlike related approaches, we present an exact pruning algorithm for finding the top-ranked query answers according to their marginal probabilities without the need to first materialize all answer candidates via the views. Specifically, we consider conjunctive queries over multiple levels of select-project-join views, the latter of which are cast into Datalog rules which we ground in a top-down fashion directly at query processing time. To our knowledge, this work is the first to address integrated data and confidence computations for intensional query evaluations in the context of probabilistic databases by considering confidence bounds over first-order lineage formulas. We extend our query processing techniques by a tool-suite of scheduling strategies based on selectivity estimation and the expected impact on confidence bounds. Further extensions to our query processing strategies include improved top-k bounds in the case when sorted relations are available as input, as well as the consideration of recursive rules. Experiments with large datasets demonstrate significant runtime improvements of our approach compared to both exact and sampling-based top-k methods over probabilistic data.
Comparing a Social Robot and a Mobile Application for Movie Recommendation: A Pilot Study

Social robots can be used as interfaces to provide recommendations to users. While a vast literature compares the user’s behavior when interacting with a robot with respect to a virtual agent, in this paper, we conduct a first evaluation on how the user’s choices are affected if the recommendations are provided respectively by a mobile application or by social robots with different degree of interaction capabilities. This pilot study shows that the sole embodiment condition of the robot does not imply significant changes in the users’ choices that prefer to interact with the mobile application. However, the adoption of additional communication channels such as gestures, gaze and voice pitch, which change accordingly to the suggested movie genre, improves the users acceptability.
Skin cancer after renal transplantation: Results of a multicenter study in Iran.

BACKGROUND Incidence and risk factors for skin tumors following renal transplantation can vary geographically; therefore, a retrospective study was performed to determine the incidence of and potential risk factors for skin cancer at 14 Transplant Centers in Iran between 1984 and 2008. MATERIAL/METHODS We enrolled 11,255 kidney transplant recipients who were examined for all skin tumors. All skin cancers were established by histological examination. The data collection included the patient's age and sex, immunosuppressive regimen before and after diagnosis of tumor, rejection episodes, post-transplant latency period, other concurrent neoplastic problems, renal allograft function and outcome. RESULTS One hundred and twenty-eight (1.14%) renal recipients had skin tumor, representing half of all post-transplant malignancies (128 out of 245 cases). Kaposi's sarcoma was the most common post-transplant cancer compared with other skin tumors. Male recipients had more tumors than did females (P=0.04); the male-to-female ratio in the affected patients was 2.5:1. The age at transplantation of patients with skin tumor was higher compared to RTRs without skin tumor (47±11 vs. 38±15 years, P=0.000), and individuals older than 45 years were at higher risk (odds ratio=3.8, 95%CI 2.6-5.5) of skin cancers. Patients consuming azathioprine were at risk more of skin cancer compared with those were on MMF (odds ratio =2.9, 95%, CI 2.0-4.2). The overall mortality was low (7.8%) in cases with skin cancer. CONCLUSIONS This study showed that male sex, increased age, prolonged immunosuppression and azathioprine increased the risk of skin tumors after renal transplantation.
Dengue Virus Utilizes a Novel Strategy for Translation Initiation When Cap-Dependent Translation Is Inhibited

ABSTRACT Viruses have developed numerous mechanisms to usurp the host cell translation apparatus. Dengue virus (DEN) and other flaviviruses, such as West Nile and yellow fever viruses, contain a 5′ m7GpppN-capped positive-sense RNA genome with a nonpolyadenylated 3′ untranslated region (UTR) that has been presumed to undergo translation in a cap-dependent manner. However, the means by which the DEN genome is translated effectively in the presence of capped, polyadenylated cellular mRNAs is unknown. This report demonstrates that DEN replication and translation are not affected under conditions that inhibit cap-dependent translation by targeting the cap-binding protein eukaryotic initiation factor 4E, a key regulator of cellular translation. We further show that under cellular conditions in which translation factors are limiting, DEN can alternate between canonical cap-dependent translation initiation and a noncanonical mechanism that appears not to require a functional m7G cap. This DEN noncanonical translation is not mediated by an internal ribosome entry site but requires the interaction of the DEN 5′ and 3′ UTRs for activity, suggesting a novel strategy for translation of animal viruses.
Bidirectional Transformations in Database Evolution: A Case Study "At Scale"

Bidirectional transformations (BX) play an important role in database schema/application co-evolution. In earlier work, Terwilliger introduced the theoretical concept of aChannel as a BX-based mechanism to de-couple “virtual databases” used by the application code from the actual representation of the data maintained within the DBMS. In this paper, we report on considerations and experiences implementing such Channels in practice in the context of a complex real-world application, and with generative tool support. We focus on Channels implementing Pivot/Unpivot transformations. We present di↵erent alternatives for generating such Channels and discuss their performance characteristics at scale. We also present a transformational tool to generate these Channels.
Emotion Recognition by Integrating Eye Movement Analysis and Facial Expression Model

This paper presents an emotion recognition method which combines knowledge from the face and eye movements to improve the system accuracy. Our method has three fundamental stages to recognize the emotion. Firstly, we use a deep learning model to obtain the probability of a sample belonging to each emotion. Then, the eye movement features are extracted from an open-source framework which implements algorithms that demonstrated state-of-the-art results in this task. A new set of 51 features have been used to obtain related information about each emotion for the corresponding sample. Finally, the emotion for a sample is recognized based on the combination of the knowledge from the two previous stages. Experiment on the validation set of Acted Facial Expressions in the Wild (AFEW) dataset shows that the eye movements can make 2.87% improvement in the accuracy for the face model.
Circulating memory B cells and plasmablasts are associated with the levels of serum immunoglobulin in patients with ulcerative colitis

Humoural immunity is crucial for the pathogenesis of ulcerative colitis (UC), but the precise perturbation of B cell immunity is poorly understood. This study is aimed at evaluating the numbers of different subsets of circulating memory B cells, plasmablasts, and the levels of serum immunoglobulin in UC patients. Total of 23 patients with active UC and 14 healthy controls (HC) were examined for the numbers of different subsets of circulating memory B cells and plasmablasts before and after treatment with mesalazine for 8–12 weeks by flow cytometry. Disease activity was evaluated by the Mayo clinic score. The levels of serum immunoglobulin, C‐reactive protein (CRP) and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) were measured in individual subjects. In comparison with that in HC, significantly reduced numbers of IgG+ IgD− CD27+ CD19+ memory B cells, increased numbers of CD20− CD19+ plasmablast subsets, and higher serum IgG levels were detected in UC patients. The concentrations of serum IgG, the numbers of CD138+ CD38+ CD20− CD19+, and IgG+ CD38+ CD20− CD19+ plasmablasts were negatively associated with the numbers of IgG+ IgD− CD27+ CD19+ memory B cells. Furthermore, the values of Mayo clinic score, CRP, or ESR in UC patients were negatively correlated with the numbers of IgG+ IgD− CD27+ CD19+ memory B cells, while positively correlated with the serum IgG levels and the numbers of plasmablast subsets. Following treatment with mesalazine, the numbers of circulating IgG+ IgD− CD27+ CD19+ memory B cells were significantly increased, while the numbers of CD138+ CD38+ CD20− CD19+ and IgG+ CD38+ CD20− CD19+ plasmablasts were reduced in UC patients. These decreased IgG+ IgD− CD27+ CD19+ memory B cells and increased plasmablasts may be involved in the pathogenic process of UC.
Use of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health to identify preliminary comprehensive and brief core sets for Guillain Barre syndrome

Purpose. To identify the preliminary comprehensive and brief core sets for Guillain Barre syndrome (GBS), in a Delphi process using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). Method. Focus groups and a consensus process were used to identify ICF core sets for GBS. This included: preliminary ICF studies; empirical patient data collection for 77 GBS participants; review of the evidence base and treatment in GBS literature followed by a Delphi exercise with 23 physicians and allied health professionals in Melbourne, Australia. Results. The expert consensus selected 99 second level ICF categories (in three rounds) which identify health domains relevant to GBS for multidisciplinary assessment. These domains were consistent with current practice and existing GBS literature. The comprehensive core set includes: 27 (23%%) categories from the component ‘body function’, 7 (12%%) categories from ‘body structures’, 43 (36%%) from ‘activities and participation’ and 22 (29%%) from the component ‘environmental’ factors. The brief set comprised 20 categories, 20%% of categories in the comprehensive core set. Conclusion. The core set categories for GBS-related health need to be addressed in multidisciplinary care programs. Future clinical ‘rating’ of this set may facilitate scale development using the ICF in GBS. Further research is needed to confirm the generalisability of this set in clinical settings.
Microenvironment Produced by Acute Myeloid Leukemia Cells Prevents T Cell Activation and Proliferation by Inhibition of NF-κB, c-Myc, and pRb Pathways

Tumors produce a variety of immunosuppressive factors which can prevent the proliferation and maturation of a number of normal hemopoietic cell types. We have investigated whether primary acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells have an effect on normal T cell function and signaling. Tumor cell supernatant (TSN) from AML cells inhibited T cell activation and Th1 cytokine production and also prevented activated T cells from entering the cell cycle. These effects occurred in the absence of AML cell-T cell contact. We have demonstrated that AML TSN contained none of the immunosuppressors described to date, namely gangliosides, nitric oxide, TGF-β, IL-10, vascular endothelial growth factor, or PGs. Furthermore, IL-2 did not overcome the block, despite normal IL-2R expression. However, the effect was overcome by preincubation with inhibitors of protein secretion and abolished by trypsinization, indicating that the active substance includes one or more proteins. To determine the mechanism of inhibition, we have studied many of the major pathways involved in T cell activation and proliferation. We show that nuclear translocation of NFATc and NF-κB are markedly reduced in T cells activated in the presence of primary AML cells. In contrast, calcium mobilization and activation of other signal transduction pathways, namely extracellular signal-regulated kinase1/2, p38, and STAT5 were unaffected, but activation of c-Jun N-terminal kinase 1/2 was delayed. Phosphorylation of pRb by cyclin-dependent kinase 6/4-cyclin D and of p130 did not occur and c-Myc, cyclin D3, and p107 were not induced, consistent with cell cycle inhibition early during the transition from G0 to G1. Our data indicate that TSN generated by AML cells induces T cell immunosuppression and provides a mechanism by which the leukemic clone could evade T cell-mediated killing.
Stomach disorder detection through the Iris Image using Backpropagation Neural Network

Stomach is a digestive organ which is the most vulnerable to diseases which are caused by the increased stomach acid production due to wrong diet. Many people sometimes ignore, even worse underestimate this, but if it's been ignored too long, it will lead to death. Thus it's necessary for routine check to determine whether there is disturbance in the stomach organ or not. One simple way to check is through the iris or called iridology. Iridology in science is based on an analysis of the composition of the iris. In particular slice has specific advantages, which can record all state organs, body construction, also psychological condition. In this final project will be made a system which can detect the presence or absence of disturbances in someone's stomach. This software works by taking an image by camera. After that, system will do the feature extraction by using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and classify it with method Backpropagation Neural Network. From result of testing that has been done, the conclusion is the system is very good at doing classification process with one hidden layer and produce a level of accuracy up to 87,5% from 40 iris image data.
Anomaly detection in crowd scenes via online adaptive one-class support vector machines

We propose a novel, online adaptive one-class support vector machines algorithm for anomaly detection in crowd scenes. Integrating incremental and decremental one-class support vector machines with a sliding buffer offers an efficient and effective scheme, which not only updates the model in an online fashion with low computational cost, but also discards obsolete patterns. Our method provides a unified framework to detect both global and local anomalies. Extensive experiments have been carried out on two benchmark datasets and the comparison to the state-of-the-art methods validates the advantages of our approach.
AR-C155858 is a potent inhibitor of monocarboxylate transporters MCT1 and MCT2 that binds to an intracellular site involving transmembrane helices 7–10

In the present study we characterize the properties of the potent MCT1 (monocarboxylate transporter 1) inhibitor AR-C155858. Inhibitor titrations of L-lactate transport by MCT1 in rat erythrocytes were used to determine the Ki value and number of AR-C155858-binding sites (Et) on MCT1 and the turnover number of the transporter (kcat). Derived values were 2.3±1.4 nM, 1.29±0.09 nmol per ml of packed cells and 12.2±1.1 s−1 respectively. When expressed in Xenopus laevis oocytes, MCT1 and MCT2 were potently inhibited by AR-C155858, whereas MCT4 was not. Inhibition of MCT1 was shown to be time-dependent, and the compound was also active when microinjected, suggesting that AR-C155858 probably enters the cell before binding to an intracellular site on MCT1. Measurement of the inhibitor sensitivity of several chimaeric transporters combining different domains of MCT1 and MCT4 revealed that the binding site for AR-C155858 is contained within the C-terminal half of MCT1, and involves TM (transmembrane) domains 7–10. This is consistent with previous data identifying Phe360 (in TM10) and Asp302 plus Arg306 (TM8) as key residues in substrate binding and translocation by MCT1. Measurement of the Km values of the chimaeras for L-lactate and pyruvate demonstrate that both the C- and N-terminal halves of the molecule influence transport kinetics consistent with our proposed molecular model of MCT1 and its translocation mechanism that requires Lys38 in TM1 in addition to Asp302 and Arg306 in TM8 [Wilson, Meredith, Bunnun, Sessions and Halestrap (2009) J. Biol. Chem. 284, 20011–20021].
The Coloured Noise Expansion and Parameter Estimation of Diffusion Processes

Stochastic differential equations (SDE) are a natural tool for modelling systems that are inherently noisy or contain uncertainties that can be modelled as stochastic processes. Crucial to the process of using SDE to build mathematical models is the ability to estimate parameters of those models from observed data. Over the past few decades, significant progress has been made on this problem, but we are still far from having a definitive solution. We describe a novel method of approximating a diffusion process that we show to be useful in Markov chain Monte-Carlo (MCMC) inference algorithms. We take the 'white' noise that drives a diffusion process and decompose it into two terms. The first is a 'coloured noise' term that can be deterministically controlled by a set of auxilliary variables. The second term is small and enables us to form a linear Gaussian 'small noise' approximation. The decomposition allows us to take a diffusion process of interest and cast it in a form that is amenable to sampling by MCMC methods. We explain why many state-of-the-art inference methods fail on highly nonlinear inference problems, and we demonstrate experimentally that our method performs well in such situations. Our results show that this method is a promising new tool for use in inference and parameter estimation problems.
An Epistatic Interaction between Pnpla2 and Lipe Reveals New Pathways of Adipose Tissue Lipolysis

White adipose tissue (WAT) lipolysis contributes to energy balance during fasting. Lipolysis can proceed by the sequential hydrolysis of triglycerides (TGs) by adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL), then of diacylglycerols (DGs) by hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL). We showed that the combined genetic deficiency of ATGL and HSL in mouse adipose tissue produces a striking different phenotype from that of isolated ATGL deficiency, inconsistent with the linear model of lipolysis. We hypothesized that the mechanism might be functional redundancy between ATGL and HSL. To test this, the TG hydrolase activity of HSL was measured in WAT. HSL showed TG hydrolase activity. Then, to test ATGL for activity towards DGs, radiolabeled DGs were incubated with HSL-deficient lipid droplet fractions. The content of TG increased, suggesting DG-to-TG synthesis rather than DG hydrolysis. TG synthesis was abolished by a specific ATGL inhibitor, suggesting that ATGL functions as a transacylase when HSL is deficient, transferring an acyl group from one DG to another, forming a TG plus a monoglyceride (MG) that could be hydrolyzed by monoglyceride lipase. These results reveal a previously unknown physiological redundancy between ATGL and HSL, a mechanism for the epistatic interaction between Pnpla2 and Lipe. It provides an alternative lipolytic pathway, potentially important in patients with deficient lipolysis.
Resource management with hoses: point-to-cloud services for virtual private networks

As IP technologies providing both tremendous capacity and the ability to establish dynamic security associations between endpoints emerge, virtual private networks (VPNs) are going through dramatic growth. The number of endpoints per VPN is growing and the communication pattern between endpoints is becoming increasingly hard to predict. Consequently, users are demanding dependable, dynamic connectivity between endpoints, with the network expected to accommodate any traffic matrix, as long as the traffic to the endpoints does not overwhelm the capacity of the respective ingress and egress links. We propose a new service interface, termed a hose, to provide the appropriate performance abstraction. A hose is characterized by the aggregate traffic to and from one endpoint in the VPN to a set of other endpoints in the VPN, and by an associated performance guarantee.Hoses provide important advantages to a VPN customer: 1) flexibility to send traffic to a set of endpoints without having to specify the detailed traffic matrix, and 2) reduction in the size of access links through multiplexing gains obtained from the natural aggregation of the flows between endpoints. As compared with the conventional point-to-point (or customer pipe) model for managing quality of service (QoS), hoses provide reduction in the state information a customer must maintain. On the other hand, hoses would appear to increase the complexity of the already difficult problem of resource management to support QoS. To manage network resources in the face of this increased uncertainty, we consider both conventional statistical multiplexing techniques, and a new resizing technique based on online measurements.To study these performance issues, we run trace-driven simulations, using traffic derived from AT&T's voice network and from a large corporate data network. From the customer's perspective, we find that aggregation of traffic at the hose level provides significant multiplexing gains. From the provider's perspective, we find that the statistical multiplexing and resizing techniques deal effectively with uncertainties about the traffic, providing significant gains over the conventional alternative of a mesh of statically sized customer pipes between endpoints.
TORQUE IMPROVEMENT BY THIRD HARMONIC CURRENT INJECTION INTO MULTI-PHASE MACHINES WITH HIGH SATURATION

One advantage of multi-phase machines is the possibility to use the third harmonic of the rotor flux for additional torque generation. This effect can be maximized for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machines (PMSM) with a high third harmonic content in the magnet flux. This paper discusses the effects of third harmonic current injection (THCI) on a five-phase PMSM with a conventional magnet shape. It is shown in simulation and measurement that the torque improvement by THCI increases with the grade of saturation, but the phase shift of the third harmonic of the rotor flux linkage has to be considered. Index Terms – Torque improvement, dq-model, third harmonic, saturation, non-linear effects, PMSM