Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Treatment of arterial hypertension in the very elderly: a meta-analysis of clinical trials

Abstract The benefits of lowering blood pressure are obvious for the population up to the age of 65 years, but whether and, if so, which treatment is beneficial in the very elderly population remains still a matter of debate. We conducted a meta-analysis of randomised controlled clinical trials with duration of at least 12 months and the analysis of cardio- and cerebrovascular endpoints in participants aged 75 years and over. MEDLINE, CENTRAL (Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials) and the WHO-ISH Collaboration register were searched until October 20, 2009. Further, references from reviews, trials and previously published meta-analyses were analysed. A total of 10 studies were included providing morbidity and mortality data with a total of 8667 participants in the meta-analysis, with separate analyses for studies on isolated systolic hypertension. There were 148 non-fatal strokes and 287 cardiovascular morbidity and mortality events among treated patients, compared with 176 non-fatal strokes (p = 0.02) and 366 cardiovascular morbidity and mortality events (p = 0.0001) among control patients. Rates of heart failure were significantly reduced (64 vs. 121 events; p = 0.00001), total mortality remained unchanged (odds ratio 0.97). Further, 9 studies with 6933 participants were included in the systematic review of blood pressure reduction trials. The average blood pressure achieved at the end of the studies was 164/83 mmHg in the placebo group and 150/83 mmHg in the treatment group. At the beginning of the study blood pressure was 170.6/88.6 mmHg in the placebo group and 175.4/94.6 mmHg in the treatment group. Changes were only significant for systolic blood pressure in the treatment group (p = 0.0008). Treating healthy subjects aged 75 years and older with moderate to severe hypertension reduces non-fatal strokes, cardiovascular morbidity and mortality and the incidence of heart failure but does not change total mortality.
Detection of Aspergillus Species by Polymerase Chain Reaction

Aspergillus species have recently caused increasing numbers of life-threatening acute invasive infections in immunocompromised patients (Kontoyiannis et al., 2002). The steadily increasing incidence of invasive aspergillosis over the last few decades is ascribable to the increasing number of patients undergoing chemotherapy, bone marrow or solid organ transplantation and intensive corticosteroid therapy (Yamazaki et al., 1999).
The use of arbitrarily primed polymerase chain reaction in cancer research

There is a great need for techniques that detect the genome alterations present in cancer cells. Here, we present a review of the arbitrarily primed polymerase chain reaction (AP‐PCR), a genomic mutation detection method with some unique advantages: (i) It can detect most types of mutations that usually occur in tumors (except point mutations). (ii) It is especially useful to detect moderate gains in DNA, which most methods currently in use cannot detect. (iii) It allows detection and cloning of alterations in a single experiment. (iv) It is inexpensive and does not require special equipment. We discuss some characteristics of this method and review some of its achievements in cancer research.
OpenBAN: An Open Building ANalytics Middleware for Smart Buildings

Towards the realization of smart building applications, buildings are increasingly instrumented with diverse sensors and actuators. These sensors generate large volumes of data which can be analyzed for optimizing building operations. Many building energy management tasks such as energy forecasting, disaggregation, among others require complex analytics leveraging collected sensor data. While several standalone and cloud-based systems for archiving, sharing and visualizing sensor data have emerged, their support for analyzing sensor data streams is primitive and limited to rule-based actions based on thresholds and simple aggregation functions. We develop OpenBAN, an open source sensor data analytics middleware for buildings, to make analytics an integral component of modern smart building applications. OpenBAN provides a framework of extensible sensor data processing elements for identifying various building context, which different applications can leverage. We validate the capabilities of OpenBAN by developing three representative real-world applications which are deployed in our test-bed buildings: (i) household energy disaggregation, (ii) detection of sprinkler usage from water meter data, and (iii) electricity demand forecasting. We also provide a preliminary system performance of OpenBAN when deployed in the cloud and locally.
FORMATION AND EVOLUTION OF PLANETARY SYSTEMS: PROPERTIES OF DEBRIS DUST AROUND SOLAR-TYPE STARS

We present Spitzer photometric (IRAC and MIPS) and spectroscopic (IRS low resolution) observations for 314 stars in the Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems Legacy program. These data are used to investigate the properties and evolution of circumstellar dust around solar-type stars spanning ages from approximately 3 Myr–3 Gyr. We identify 46 sources that exhibit excess infrared emission above the stellar photosphere at 24 μm, and 21 sources with excesses at 70 μm. Five sources with an infrared excess have characteristics of optically thick primordial disks, while the remaining sources have properties akin to debris systems. The fraction of systems exhibiting a 24 μm excess greater than 10.2% above the photosphere is 15% for ages < 300 Myr and declines to 2.7% for older ages. The upper envelope to the 70 μm fractional luminosity appears to decline over a similar age range. The characteristic temperature of the debris inferred from the IRS spectra range between 60 and 180 K, with evidence for the presence of cooler dust to account for the strength of the 70 μm excess emission. No strong correlation is found between dust temperature and stellar age. Comparison of the observational data with disk models containing a power-law distribution of silicate grains suggests that the typical inner-disk radius is ≳ 10 AU. Although the interpretation is not unique, the lack of excess emission shortward of 16 μm and the relatively flat distribution of the 24 μm excess for ages ≲ 300 Myr is consistent with steady-state collisional models.
Perinatal Depression: Hiding in Plain Sight

Objective: To promote prompt identification and treatment of perinatal depression and enhance preventive care for women at risk. Methods: Using MEDLINE and PubMed searches, we reviewed the recent research on the origins, course, and consequences of pregnancy-related depression. Results: Depressive disorders are more common in pregnancy and postpartum than widely assumed, and there is no predictable protective effect of pregnancy. Relapse rates are high, and the postpartum period represents a time of increased vulnerability to depression. Conclusion: Early identification and treatment of perinatal depression will minimize morbidity and mortality for the woman, the child, and the family.
Opportunistic routing protocol with grid-based relay slot selection in Energy Harvesting WSNs

Energy Harvesting (EH) technologies are getting attractive to realize the battery-less wireless sensing networks (WSNs). In EH-WSNs, opportunistic routing that the intermediate nodes relay packets is preferred due to the extremely constrained energy. However, in the conventional scheme, intermediate nodes rigidly determine its relaying slot by calculating distances between a source and a destination and this causes heavy computation for nodes. In this paper, we propose a lightweight grid-based relay slot selection scheme in EH-WSNs. In our scheme, we use square-shaped grid and divide the network virtually to give each node primitive coordination and each intermediate node decides its relaying slot by calculating the differential of grid-index between a sender and a receiver. Based on grid-based coordination, our scheme turns multiplications into lightweight subtractions and this reduces the computational complexity and required memory. In addition, we also propose a probabilistic relaying scheme to reduce collisions in each relaying slot. We evaluate the conventional and proposed schemes through the computer simulation and show that our scheme reduces the computational complexity and achieves comparable throughput to the conventional scheme.
Decoupled-IFTTT: Constraining Privilege in Trigger-Action Platforms for the Internet of Things

Trigger-Action platforms are an emerging class of web-based systems that enable users to create automation rules (or recipes) of the form, "If there is a smoke alarm, then turn off my oven. " These platforms stitch together various online services including Internet of Things devices, social networks, and productivity tools by obtaining OAuth tokens on behalf of users. Unfortunately, these platforms also introduce a long-term security risk: If they are compromised, the attacker can misuse the OAuth tokens belonging to millions of users to arbitrarily manipulate their devices and data. In this work, we first quantify the risk users face in the context of If-This-Then-That (IFTTT). We perform the first empirical analysis of the OAuth-based authorization model of IFTTT using semi-automated tools that we built to overcome the challenges of IFTTT's closed source nature and of online service API inconsistencies. We find that 75% of IFTTT's channels, an abstraction of online services, use overprivileged OAuth tokens, increasing risks in the event of a compromise. Even if the OAuth tokens were to be privileged correctly, IFTTT's compromise will not prevent their misuse. Motivated by this empirical analysis, we design and evaluate Decoupled-IFTTT (dIFTTT), the first trigger-action platform where users do not have to give it highly-privileged access to their online services. Our design pushes the notion of fine-grained OAuth tokens to its extreme and ensures that even if the cloud service is controlled by the attacker, it cannot misuse the OAuth tokens to invoke unauthorized actions. Our evaluation establishes that dIFTTT poses modest overhead: it adds less than 15ms of latency to recipe execution time, and reduces throughput by 2.5%.
Further evidence of association between mutations in FGFR2 and syndromic craniosynostosis with sacrococcygeal eversion.

BACKGROUND Pfeiffer syndrome (PS; OMIM #101600) is an autosomal dominant disorder characterized by craniosynostosis, midface hypoplasia, broad thumbs, brachydactyly, broad great toes, and variable syndactyly. CASE We report a case of PS (type 3) with tracheal and visceral involvement and sacrococcygeal eversion. The patient shows facial dysmorphism with macrocephaly, dolichocephaly, and trigonocephaly, and an asymmetric skull, bilateral and severe exophthalmia with shallow orbits and ocular hypertelorism, downslanting palpebral fissures, constant strabismus, short anterior cranial base, and midface hypoplasia. CONCLUSIONS Molecular analysis of the FGFR2 gene in this patient revealed a point mutation (c.890G>C NM_000141). This mutation leads to the substitution of the residue tryptophan at position 290 to cysteine in the protein (p.Try290Cys). These data reinforce the hypothesis that the p.Trp290Cys mutation is more often associated with a severe and poor prognosis of PS. Furthermore they suggest that the presence of sacrococcygeal defects is not associated with any specific FGFR2 mutation.
Alternative Filtering for the Weighted Circuit Constraint: Comparing Lower Bounds for the TSP and Solving TSPTW

Many problems, and in particular routing problems, require to find one or many circuits in a weighted graph. The weights often express the distance or the travel time between vertices. We propose in this paper various filtering algorithms for the weighted circuit constraint which maintain a circuit in a weighted graph. The filtering algorithms are typical cost based filtering algorithms relying on relaxations of the Traveling Salesman Problem. We investigate three bounds and show that they are incomparable. In particular we design a filtering algorithm based on a lower bound introduced in 1981 by Christophides et al. This bound can provide stronger filtering than the classical Held and Karp’s approach when additional information, such as the possible positions of the clients in the tour, is available. This is particularly suited for problems with side constraints such as time windows.
The Effect of Information Deception in Price Comparison Site on the Consumer Reactions: An Empirical Verification

Challenges in the ubiquitous networks deployment are to guarantee the information transparency in the distributed systems. In particular in online market, studies warned that information deception by online sellers and by price comparison site could be fatal in the success of e-marketplace. However, handful of studies had conducted this issue and the findings are still mixed and ambiguous. I challenged to empirically validate the impact of information deception by the price comparison site on the consumer behavioural intentions. I developed the research model based on the literature of information transparency, information deception, institution-based trust, psychological contract violation, and consumer reactions. I conducted the quasi-experiment in two types of price comparison sites. The results of this study had successfully captured the existence and impact of information deception, could contribute to providing more rigorous evidence for the theory, expand the consumer protection research area in IS filed, and suggest the need for the neutral price comparison site for the success of e-marketplace to the regulatory party.
WNK1 kinase and the termination factor PCF11 connect nuclear mRNA export with transcription

In this study, Volankis et al. present evidence for a new connection between gene transcription and mRNA export. They show that the kinase WNK1 phosphorylates termination factor PCF11 on its RNA polymerase II CTD-interacting domain (CID) and suggest that WNK1 and the associated phosphorylation of the PCF11 CID act to promote transcript release from chromatin-associated Pol II, which facilitates mRNA export to the cytoplasm.
Alterations in intracellular calcium handling associated with the inverse force-frequency relation in human dilated cardiomyopathy.

BACKGROUND The present study was performed to test the hypothesis that the altered force-frequency relation in human failing dilated cardiomyopathy may be attributed to alterations in intracellular calcium handling. METHODS AND RESULTS The force-frequency relation was investigated in isometrically contracting ventricular muscle strip preparations from 5 nonfailing human hearts and 7 hearts with end-stage failing dilated cardiomyopathy. Intracellular calcium cycling was measured simultaneously by use of the bioluminescent photoprotein aequorin. Stimulation frequency was increased stepwise from 15 to 180 beats per minute (37 degrees C). In nonfailing myocardium, twitch tension and aequorin light emission rose with increasing rates of stimulation. Maximum average twitch tension was reached at 150 min-1 and was increased to 212 +/- 34% (P < .05) of the value at 15 min-1. Aequorin light emission was lowest at 15 min-1 and was maximally increased at 180 min-1 to 218 +/- 39% (P < .01). In the failing myocardium, average isometric tension was maximum at 60 min-1 (106 +/- 7% of the basal value at 15 min-1, P = NS) and then decreased continuously to 62 +/- 9% of the basal value at 180 min-1 (P < .002). In the failing myocardium, aequorin light emission was highest at 15 min-1. At 180 min-1, it was decreased to 71 +/- 7% of the basal value (P < .01). Including both failing and nonfailing myocardium, there was a close correlation between the frequencies at which aequorin light emission and isometric tension were maximum (r = .92; n = 19; P < .001). Action potential duration decreased similarly with increasing stimulation frequencies in nonfailing and end-stage failing myocardium. Sarcoplasmic reticulum 45Ca2+ uptake, measured in homogenates from the same hearts, was significantly reduced in failing myocardium (3.60 +/- 0.51 versus 1.94 +/- 0.18 (nmol/L). min-1.mg protein-1, P < . 005). CONCLUSIONS These data indicate that the altered force-frequency relation of the failing human myocardium results from disturbed excitation-contraction coupling with decreased calcium cycling at higher rates of stimulation.
Recognition of Dictyostelium discoideum lysosomal enzymes is conferred by the amino-terminal carbohydrate binding site of the insulin-like growth factor II/mannose 6-phosphate receptor.

The insulin-like growth factor-II/mannose 6-phosphate receptor (IGF-II/MPR) is a type I glycoprotein that mediates both the intracellular sorting of lysosomal enzymes bearing mannose 6-phosphate (Man-6-P) residues to the lysosome and the bioavailability of IGF-II. The extracytoplasmic region of the IGF-II/MPR contains 15 repeating domains; the two carbohydrate recognition domains (CRDs) have been localized to domains 1-3 and 7-9, and the high-affinity IGF-II binding site maps to domain 11. To characterize the carbohydrate binding properties of the IGF-II/MPR, regions of the receptor encompassing the individual CRDs were produced in a baculovirus expression system. Characterization of the recombinant proteins revealed that the pH optimum for carbohydrate binding is significantly more acidic for the carboxyl-terminal CRD than for the amino-terminal CRD (i.e., pH 6.4-6.5 vs 6.9). Equilibrium binding studies demonstrated that the two CRDs exhibit a similar affinity for Man-6-P. Furthermore, substitution of the conserved arginine residue in domain 3 (R435) or in domain 9 (R1334) with alanine resulted in a similar >1000-fold decrease in the affinity for the lysosomal enzyme, beta-glucuronidase. In contrast, the two CRDs differ dramatically in their ability to recognize the distinctive modifications (i.e., mannose 6-sulfate and Man-6-P methyl ester) found on Dictyostelium discoideum lysosomal enzymes: the amino-terminal CRD binds mannose 6-sulfate and Man-6-P methyl ester with a 14-55-fold higher affinity than the carboxyl-terminal CRD. Taken together, these results demonstrate that the IGF-II/MPR contains two functionally distinct CRDs.
Six Weeks of High-Intensity Interval Training With and Without β-Alanine Supplementation for Improving Cardiovascular Fitness in Women

Walter, AA, Smith, AE, Kendall, KL, Stout, JR, and Cramer, JT. Six weeks of high-intensity interval training with and without β-alanine supplementation for improving cardiovascular fitness in women. J Strength Cond Res 24(5): 1199-1207, 2010-The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effects of cycle ergometry high-intensity interval training (HIIT) with and without β-alanine supplementation on maximal oxygen consumption rate (&OV0312;o2peak), cycle ergometer workload at the ventilatory threshold (VTW), and body composition. Forty-four women (mean ± SD age = 21.8 ± 3.7 years; height = 166.5 ± 6.6 cm; body mass (BM) = 65.9 ± 10.8 kg; &OV0312;o2peak = 31.5 ± 6.2 ml·kg−1·min−1) were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: β-alanine (BA, n = 14) 1.5 g + 15 g dextrose powder; placebo (PL, n = 19) 16.5 g dextrose powder; or control (CON, n = 11). Testing was conducted at baseline (week 0), after 3 weeks (week 4), and after 6 weeks (week 8). &OV0312;o2peak (ml·kg−1·min−1) and VTW were measured with a metabolic cart during graded exercise tests on a corival cycle ergometer, and body composition (percent fat = % fat and fat-free mass = FFM) were determined by air displacement plethysmography. High-intensity interval training was performed on a corival cycle ergometer 3 times per week with 5 2-minute work intervals and 1-minute passive recovery with undulating intensities (90-110% of the workload recorded at &OV0312;o2peak) during each training session. &OV0312;o2peak increased (p ≤ 0.05) in the BA and PL groups at weeks 4 and 8, but did not change (p > 0.05) for the CON group. VTW increased (p ≤ 0.05) for all groups at weeks 4 and 8. Body mass increased (p ≤ 0.05) only for the BA group at weeks 4 and 8, whereas %fat decreased (p ≤ 0.05) and FFM increased (p ≤ 0.05) at weeks 4 and 8 for all groups (BA, PL, and CON). Although it is unclear why β-alanine supplementation increased BM, there was no additive effects for increasing &OV0312;o2peak beyond the PL. Overall, these results suggested that HIIT may be an effective and time-efficient method of training to improve maximal oxygen uptake.
An outlier-insensitive Linear Pursuit Embedding algorithm

Dimension reduction techniques with the flexibility to learn a broad class of nonlinear manifold have attracted increasingly close attention since meaningful low-dimensional structures are always hidden in large number of high-dimensional natural data, such as global climate patterns, images of a face under different viewing conditions, etc. In this paper, we introduce L1-Norm Linear Pursuit Embedding (L1-LPE) algorithm, aims to find a more robust linear method in presence of outliers and unexpected samples when dealing with high-dimensional nonlinear manifold problems. To achieve this goal, a new method based on a rather different geometric intuition L1-Norm is proposed to describe the local geometric structure. L1-LPE and L2-LPE is studied and compared in this paper and experiments on both toy problems and real data problems are presented.
Direct MPP Calculation in Terms of the Single-Diode PV Model Parameters

In this paper, new expressions are introduced for the determination of the maximum power point (MPP) of photovoltaic (PV) systems as explicit functions of the five parameters of the single-diode model employing the Lambert W function. These equations provide the voltage and current at MPP in a direct and straightforward manner, thus dispensing with any need for iterative solution. They are initially derived for a PV system operating under uniform conditions, and subsequently extended for mismatched conditions at the PV string level. The novelty of these formulae lies in their solid theoretical foundation, which supports their validity in the general case and offers a well-founded symbolic formulation for the MPP evaluation problem. Extended simulations and experimental validation are performed to verify the accuracy and computational efficiency of the proposed equations compared with other methods available in the literature.
On the Enlargement of Robust Region of Chaotic Tent Map for the Use in Key Based Substitution-Box (S-Box)

Robust chaotic maps with wide robust region are favored in cryptography as it extends the key length. Chaotic tent map has robust chaos for control parameter Âµ = 2. Perturbation of control parameter values beyond control parameter 2, results in orbit diverging towards infinity and trajectories vanish. Thus, to avoid trajectories diverging to infinity and to keep trajectories chaotic beyond parameter value 2, a new technique is proposed that makes use of modulo and scaling operators. The parameter space of non-smooth maps is never considered for enlargement. Herein, modified tent map results in larger parameter space that in turn can be used to design key based S-box. The recently published chaotic key based S-box with chaotic mapâs parameter space does not achieve large key space. For modified tent map, the modulo operation keeps trajectories in domain (0, 1) while scaling allows for uniform distribution of points in domain (0, 1). These operations keep chaotic orbits globally stable and robust. In results, the robustness of chaotic tent map and modified chaotic tent map is compared using bifurcation diagram. The improved robust region of tent map justifies the effectiveness of proposed method that results to design key based S-box.