Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pregnant Women's Access to PMTCT and ART Services in South Africa and Implications for Universal Antiretroviral Treatment

Objectives We describe pregnant womens' access to PMTCT and HAART services and associated birth outcomes in South Africa. Methods Women recuperating in postnatal wards of a referral hospital participated in an evaluation during February–May 2010 during which their maternity records were examined to describe their access to VCT, CD4 Counts, dual ART or HAART during pregnancy. Results Of the 1609 women who participated in this evaluation, 39% (95%CI36.7–41.5%) tested HIV-positive during their pregnancy. Of the HIV-positive women 2.9% did not have a CD4 count done and an additional 31.3% did not receive their CD4 results. The majority (96.8%) of the HIV-positive women commenced dual ART at their first antenatal visit independent of their CD4 result. During February–May 2010, 48.0% of the women who had a CD4 result were eligible for HAART (CD4<200 cells/mm3) and 29.1% of these initiated HAART during pregnancy. Under the current South African PMTCT guidelines 71.1% (95%CI66.4–75.4%) of HIV positive pregnant women could be eligible for HAART (CD4<350 cells/mm3). There were significantly more preterm births among HIV-positive women (p = 0.01) and women who received HAART were no more at risk of preterm deliveries (AOR 0.73;95%CI0.39–1.36;p = 0.2) as compared to women who received dual ART. Nine (2.4%; 95%CI1.1–4.5%) HIV exposed infants were confirmed HIV infected at birth. The in-utero transmission rate was highest among women who required HAART but did not initiate treatment (8.5%) compared to 2.7% and 0.4% among women who received HAART and women who were not eligible for HAART and received PMTCT prophylaxis respectively. Conclusion In this urban South African community the antenatal HIV prevalence remains high (39%) and timeous access to CD4 results during pregnancy is limited. Under the current South African guidelines, and assuming that access to CD4 results has improved, more than 70% of HIV-positive pregnant women in this community would be requiring HAART.
Novel, 3D Display of Heart Models in the Postoperative Care Setting Improves CICU Caregiver Confidence

Background: Postoperative care delivered in the pediatric cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) relies on providers’ understanding of patients’ congenital heart defects (CHDs) and procedure performed. Novel, bedside use of virtual, three-dimensional (3D) heart models creates access to patients’ CHD to improve understanding. This study evaluates the impact of patient-specific virtual 3D heart models on CICU provider attitudes and care delivery. Methods: Virtual 3D heart models were created from standard preoperative cardiac imaging of ten patients with CHD undergoing repair and displayed on a bedside tablet in the CICU. Providers completed a Likert questionnaire evaluating the models’ value in understanding anatomy and improving care delivery. Responses were compared using two-tailed t test and Mann-Whitney U test and were also compared to previously collected CICU provider responses regarding use of printed 3D heart models. Results: Fifty-three clinicians (19 physicians, 34 nurses/trainees) participated; 49 (92%) of 53 and 44 (83%) of 53 reported at least moderate to high satisfaction with the virtual 3D heart’s ability to enhance understanding of anatomy and surgical repair, respectively. Seventy-one percent of participants felt strongly that virtual 3D models improved their ability to manage postoperative problems. The majority of both groups (63% physicians, 53% nurses) felt that virtual 3D heart models improved CICU handoffs. Virtual 3D heart models were as effective as printed models in improving understanding and care delivery, with a noted provider preference for printed 3D heart models. Conclusions: Virtual 3D heart models depicting patient-specific CHDs are perceived to improve understanding and postoperative care delivery in the CICU.
Cost-Minimizing Bandwidth Guarantee for Inter-Datacenter Traffic

The emerging deployment of large-scale cloud applications incurs significant inter-datacenter traffic, which makes the scarce wide-area bandwidth across data centers become the performance bottleneck. To achieve the desirable network performance, bandwidth guarantee should be provided for the resulting inter-datacenter traffic. However, the existing bandwidth allocation methods mainly focus on intra-datacenter traffic, and cannot achieve the cost-minimizing bandwidth guarantee for inter-datacenter traffic. In this paper, we focus on the bandwidth guarantee problem for inter-datacenter traffic and present a novel bandwidth allocation model. Our model can ensure the bandwidth guarantee, minimize the resulting network cost, and efficiently avoid the potential traffic overload on low cost links. To solve the large-scale optimization problem in our model, we are motivated to develop a distributed algorithm by blending the advantages of alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) and the auxiliary variable method. Specifically, we efficiently decompose the optimization problem into many small sub-problems, which are allowed to be processed in a large-scale computing environment, where each server solves a few small sub-problems. We further present a theoretically proved globally, asymptotically stable algorithm to solve these sub-problems. Extensive evaluation results demonstrate that our bandwidth allocation method can effectively realize the bandwidth guarantee for inter-datacenter traffic with reduced network cost and outperforms the prior method PS-L. In particular, the total network cost is reduced by 59.57 percent on average.
What motivates serodiscordant couples to prevent HIV transmission within their relationships: findings from a PrEP implementation study in Kenya

Abstract With the planned scale-up of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV prevention among serodiscordant couples in resource-limited settings, gaining an understanding of what motivates serodiscordant couples to prevent HIV is critical. We conducted 44 semi-structured, in-depth individual or couple interviews with 63 participants (33 HIV-infected and 30 HIV-uninfected participants) enrolled in a prospective implementation study of oral antiretroviral-based prevention in Kisumu, Kenya. Transcripts were iteratively analysed using inductive content analysis. Findings point to the importance of maintaining the emotional and economic stability of the partnership and family as motivators in preventing HIV transmission. Female participants identified fear of blame or potential violence for transmitting HIV as a motivator. Furthermore, couples primarily held the HIV-infected individual responsible for HIV prevention, but also held women more accountable for the use of prevention methods such as condoms. These themes substantiate traditional gender norms but also reveal how dyadic interdependence challenges these norms. As programmes in resource-limited settings scale up PrEP access, they should simultaneously capitalise on HIV serodiscordant couples’ motivations for HIV prevention and address gender norms so women do not find themselves unduly responsible for the prevention of HIV transmission.
SISE: Self-Updating of Indoor Semantic Floorplans for General Entities

Indoor semantic floorplan is important for a range of location based service (LBS) applications, attracting many research efforts in several years. In many cases, the out-of-date indoor semantic floorplans would gradually deteriorate and even break down the LBS performance. Thus, it is important to automatically update changed semantics of indoor floorplans caused by environmental variation. However, few research has been focused on the continuous semantic updating problem. This paper presents SISE as a mobile crowdsourcing system that uses a new abstraction for indoor general entities and their semantics, enGraph, to automatically update changed semantics of indoor floorplans using images and inertial data. We first propose efficient methods to generate enGraph. Thus, an image can be associated with an indoor semantic floorplan. Accordingly, we formulate the enGraph matching problem and then propose a quality-based maximum common subgraph matching algorithm so that entities extracted from an image can be corresponded to entities in the indoor semantic floorplan. Furthermore, we propose a quadrant comparison algorithm and a region shrink based localization algorithm to detect and localize changed entities. Thus, the new semantics can be labeled and out-of-date semantics can be removed. Extensive experiments have been conducted on real and synthetic data. Experimental results show that 80 percent of out-of-date semantics of indoor general entities can be updated by SISE.
Efficacy and Safety of apatinib in patients with intermediate/advanced hepatocellular carcinoma: A prospective observation study

Abstract This prospective study aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of apatinib in patients with intermediate/advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The patients with intermediate/advanced HCC, who met predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria, underwent oral treatment of apatinib 500 mg daily. The drug-related adverse effects were monitored by regular follow-up and workup including laboratory tests and imaging examinations. Tumor response was assessed by response evaluation criteria in solid tumor criteria. The time to tumor progression (TTP) and overall survival rate (OS) were calculated using the Kaplan–Meier method. A total of 31 patients were enrolled in the study from October 28, 2015 to December 28, 2016. The number of patients with intermediate and advanced HCC was 4 (12.90%) and 27 (87.10%), respectively. The mean tumor size was 9.47 ± 5.48 cm (range: 1.2–19 cm). Vascular invasion was seen in 14 patients (45.16%). A total of 21 (67.74%) patients exhibited extrahepatic metastases. On the basis of first follow-up computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging at 6 weeks after treatment, 10 (32.26%), 15 (48.39%), and 6 (19.35%) of 31 patients achieved a partial response, stable disease, and progression of disease, respectively. Response rate and disease control rate were 32.26% and 80.65%, respectively. The median TTP was 4.8 months (95% confidence interval: 3.75–5.86 months). Furthermore, 6- and 12-month OS rates were 73.8% and 55.4%, respectively. Grade 3 thrombocytopenia (6.45%) and hypertension (48.39%) were the most common hematologic and nonhematologic toxicities. Grade 3 elevation of either serum total bilirubin or aminotransferase (6.45%) was observed as the top incidence among important indexes of liver function. Our preliminary findings suggest apatinib is a safe and effective therapy in intermediate/advanced HCC patients with high tumor response and survival rates.
Vital signs analysis algorithm detects inflammatory response in premature infants with late onset sepsis and necrotizing enterocolitis

Background Nonspecific clinical signs and suboptimal diagnostic tests limit accurate identification of late onset sepsis (LOS) and necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) in premature infants, resulting in significant morbidity and antibiotic overuse. An infant’s systemic inflammatory response may be identified earlier than clinical suspicion through analysis of multiple vital signs by a computerized algorithm (RALIS). Aim To evaluate the revised RALIS algorithm for detection of LOS and NEC in preterm infants. Methods In this nested case-control study, VS data (heart rate, respiratory rate, temperature, desaturations, bradycardias) were extracted from medical records of infants 23-32 weeks gestation. RALIS generated an output, with score >5 triggering an alert. Patient episodes were classified based on culture, radiograph, and antibiotic data into categories: LOS, expanded LOS, NEC, and controls. Paired t-tests, linear regression and cross-validation analyses were used to evaluate the relationship between RALIS alert and LOS/NEC. Results Among 155 infants with 161 episodes, there were 41 expanded LOS (+ blood, CSF, urine, respiratory culture), 31 LOS (+ blood, CSF, urine), 9 NEC, and 93 controls. RALIS alert was 43.1+/-79 hours before culture in LOS (p=0.012). There was a significant association between RALIS alert and LOS/NEC (β=0.72, p<0.0001). Sensitivity and specificity for LOS/NEC were 84% and 80%, (PPV=63%; NPV=93%). The regression model demonstrated an AUC of 89.9%. Conclusions For infants <32 weeks, RALIS detects systemic inflammatory responses in LOS and NEC in the first month of life. The algorithm identifies infection earlier than clinical suspicion, even for NEC with negative cultures. RALIS has high NPV to rule-out LOS and NEC, and may, after prospective validation, aid in antibiotic treatment decisions.
Classification of similar but differently paced activities in the KTH dataset

The KTH video dataset [1] contains three activities - walking, jogging and running - which are very similar but are carried out at a different natural pace. We show that explicit inclusion of a feature which may be interpreted as a measure of the overall state of motion in a frame improves a classifier's ability to discriminate between these activities.
Regulation of Hypoxia-Inducible Factor 1α during Hypoxia by DAP5-Induced Translation of PHD2

ABSTRACT Death-associated protein 5 (DAP5) is an atypical isoform of the translation initiation scaffolds eukaryotic initiation factor 4GI (eIF4GI) and eIF4GII (eIF4GI/II), which recruit mRNAs to ribosomes in mammals. Unlike eIF4GI/II, DAP5 binds eIF2β, a subunit of the eIF2 complex that delivers methionyl-tRNA to ribosomes. We discovered that DAP5:eIF2β binding depends on specific stimuli, e.g., protein kinase C (PKC)–Raf–extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) signals, and determines DAP5's influence on global and template-specific translation. DAP5 depletion caused an unanticipated surge of hypoxia-inducible factor 1α (HIF-1α), the transcription factor and master switch of the hypoxia response. Physiologically, the hypoxia response is tempered through HIF-1α hydroxylation by the oxygen-sensing prolyl hydroxylase-domain protein 2 (PHD2) and subsequent ubiquitination and degradation. We found that DAP5 regulates HIF-1α abundance through DAP5:eIF2β-dependent translation of PHD2. DAP5:eIF2-induced PHD2 translation occurred during hypoxia-associated protein synthesis repression, indicating a role as a safeguard to reverse HIF-1α accumulation and curb the hypoxic response.
Determining suicide risk in trauma patients using a universal screening program

BACKGROUND Trauma patients may be at elevated risk for subsequent suicide; however, it is unclear whether patients at risk can be identified during their initial presentation following injury. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the use of a standardized clinical decision support system for suicide risk screening developed by our hospital system and to determine the incidence of positive suicide screenings in our trauma population. METHODS Adult trauma patient screenings were performed by nursing staff during the triage process using the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale, Clinical Practice Screener, Recent (C-SSRS). Adult trauma patients who had a suicide risk screening completed from February 2015 to November 2015 were evaluated retrospectively. Patients were divided into cohorts consisting of those with positive and negative screening assessments. Significance was set at &agr; = 0.05. Statistical analysis was performed using Student t test and a &khgr;2 test where appropriate. RESULTS Overall, 3,623 of 3,712 patients (98%) completed a suicide risk screening during the study period. Those who went unscreened were not evaluated due to altered mental status/intubation/emergent surgery (97%), death (1%), or an unwillingness to cooperate (2%). The suicide risk screening result was positive in 161 of 3,623 patients (4%) in the study cohort. On univariate analysis, patients with a positive suicide risk screen result were more likely to be white (43% vs 32%; p = 0.01), identify English as their primary language (91% vs 73%; p < 0.01), have insurance coverage (48% vs 28%; p < 0.01), and were more likely to initiate a low-level trauma activation (27% vs 16%; p <0.01) than those who had a negative screening result. A positive suicide risk assessment result was moderately associated with patients of white race (odds ratio, 1.83; 95% confidence interval, 1.27–2.65) on multivariable logistic regression. CONCLUSION Our universal suicide screening process identifies an at-risk subpopulation of trauma patients. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE Prognostic study, level III; therapeutic, level IV.
Anesthesia-Associated Relative Hypovolemia: Mechanisms, Monitoring, and Treatment Considerations

Although the utility and benefits of anesthesia and analgesia are irrefutable, their practice is not void of risks. Almost all drugs that produce anesthesia endanger cardiovascular stability by producing dose-dependent impairment of cardiac function, vascular reactivity, and compensatory autoregulatory responses. Whereas anesthesia-related depression of cardiac performance and arterial vasodilation are well recognized adverse effects contributing to anesthetic risk, far less emphasis has been placed on effects impacting venous physiology and venous return. The venous circulation, containing about 65–70% of the total blood volume, is a pivotal contributor to stroke volume and cardiac output. Vasodilation, particularly venodilation, is the primary cause of relative hypovolemia produced by anesthetic drugs and is often associated with increased venous compliance, decreased venous return, and reduced response to vasoactive substances. Depending on factors such as patient status and monitoring, a state of relative hypovolemia may remain clinically undetected, with impending consequences owing to impaired oxygen delivery and tissue perfusion. Concurrent processes related to comorbidities, hypothermia, inflammation, trauma, sepsis, or other causes of hemodynamic or metabolic compromise, may further exacerbate the condition. Despite scientific and technological advances, clinical monitoring and treatment of relative hypovolemia still pose relevant challenges to the anesthesiologist. This short perspective seeks to define relative hypovolemia, describe the venous system’s role in supporting normal cardiovascular function, characterize effects of anesthetic drugs on venous physiology, and address current considerations and challenges for monitoring and treatment of relative hypovolemia, with focus on insights for future therapies.
Specialization to Extremely Low-Nutrient Soils Limits the Nutritional Adaptability of Plant Lineages

Specialization to extreme selective situations promotes the acquisition of traits whose coadaptive integration may compromise evolutionary flexibility and adaptability. We test this idea in the context of the foliar stoichiometry of plants native to the South African Cape. Whereas foliar concentrations of nitrogen, phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium, magnesium, and sodium showed strong phylogenetic signal, as did the foliar ratios of these nutrients to P, the same was not true of the corresponding soil values. In addition, although foliar traits were often related to soil values, the coefficients of determination were consistently low. These results identify foliar stoichiometry as having a strong genetic component, with variation in foliar nutrient concentrations, especially [P] and [K], being identified as potentially adaptive. Comparison of stoichiometric variation across 11 similarly aged clades revealed consistently low foliar nutrient concentrations in lineages showing specialization to extremely low-nutrient fynbos heathlands. These lineages also display lower rates of evolution of these traits as well as a reduced tendency for foliar [P] to track soil [P]. Reduced evolutionary lability and adaptability in the nutritional traits of fynbos-specialist lineages may explain the floristic distinctness of the fynbos flora and implies a reduced scope for edaphically driven ecological speciation.
Micro and nano drug delivery systems in cancer therapyArticle

Summary The delivery of any drug at the right time and in the target where it is needed and at the level that is required is essential to realize the full potential of therapeutic molecules. These requirements are already more important in the case of cancer chemotherapies due to their high toxicity which could lead to serious side effects. In the last few years, a great number of new drug delivery technologies have been optimised including the micro and nano-systems as well as polymer conjugation. Together, these drug delivery systems would not only improve drug administration and the efficiency and safety of conventional chemotherapies, but also revolutionize the pharmaceutical and biomedical industries in cancer therapy.
Arabidopsis Protein Kinase PKS5 Inhibits the Plasma Membrane H+-ATPase by Preventing Interaction with 14-3-3 Protein

Regulation of the trans-plasma membrane pH gradient is an important part of plant responses to several hormonal and environmental cues, including auxin, blue light, and fungal elicitors. However, little is known about the signaling components that mediate this regulation. Here, we report that an Arabidopsis thaliana Ser/Thr protein kinase, PKS5, is a negative regulator of the plasma membrane proton pump (PM H+-ATPase). Loss-of-function pks5 mutant plants are more tolerant of high external pH due to extrusion of protons to the extracellular space. PKS5 phosphorylates the PM H+-ATPase AHA2 at a novel site, Ser-931, in the C-terminal regulatory domain. Phosphorylation at this site inhibits interaction between the PM H+-ATPase and an activating 14-3-3 protein in a yeast expression system. We show that PKS5 interacts with the calcium binding protein SCaBP1 and that high external pH can trigger an increase in the concentration of cytosolic-free calcium. These results suggest that PKS5 is part of a calcium-signaling pathway mediating PM H+-ATPase regulation.
Cognitive Radio With Self-Power Recycling

In cognitive radio networks, a secondary user (SU) equipped with radio frequency (RF) energy-harvesting circuits can not only harvest the RF energy from the primary transmitter, but also recycle its self-power when transmitting. In this paper, we are concerned with the following design metrics: SU's harvested energy, SU's energy efficiency, and SU's harvesting efficiency, which is defined as the ratio of the average energy harvested by SU over its average energy consumption. We are interested in two tradeoff designs: one is the tradeoff between energy efficiency and harvested energy and the other is the tradeoff between energy efficiency and harvesting efficiency. Multiobjective optimization is used to solve the tradeoff problems. To simplify the original problems, we propose two schemes to obtain the lower bounds of the objective functions. The sensing threshold, sensing time, and transmit power of SU are jointly optimized to solve the tradeoff problems. Efficient algorithms are proposed to derive these design parameters. Simulation results are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms, to show the two tradeoff designs, and to validate the effects of system parameters on these tradeoffs.
Network flows as least squares solvers for linear equations

This paper presents a first-order continuous-time distributed step-size algorithm for computing the least squares solution to a linear equation over networks. Given the uniqueness of the solution and nonintegrable step size, the convergence results are provided for fixed graphs. For the nonunique solution and square integrable step size, the convergence is shown for constantly connected switching graphs. We also validate the results and illustrate possible impacts on the convergence speed using a few numerical examples.