Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prolotherapy injections for chronic low-back pain.

BACKGROUND Prolotherapy is an injection-based treatment for chronic low-back pain. Proponents of prolotherapy suggest that some back pain stems from weakened or damaged ligaments. Repeatedly injecting them with irritant solutions is believed to strengthen the ligaments and reduce pain and disability. Prolotherapy protocols usually include co-interventions to enhance the effectiveness of the injections. OBJECTIVES To determine the efficacy of prolotherapy injections in adults with chronic low-back pain. SEARCH STRATEGY We searched CENTRAL (2004, issue 1), MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL and Science Citation Index from their respective beginnings to January 2004, with no restrictions on language. We consulted content experts to ensure we had not missed any references. SELECTION CRITERIA Randomised and quasi-randomised controlled trials comparing prolotherapy injections to control injections, either alone or in combination with other treatments, were included. Studies had to include measures of pain and disability before and after the intervention. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS Two reviewers independently selected the trials and assessed them for methodological quality. Treatment and control group protocols varied from study to study, making meta-analysis impossible. MAIN RESULTS We included four high quality studies with a total of 344 participants. All trials measured pain and disability levels at six months, three measured the proportion of participants reporting a greater than 50% reduction in pain or disability scores from baseline to six months.Two studies showed significant differences between the treatment and control groups for those reporting over 50% reduction in pain or disability. Their results could not be pooled. In one, co-interventions confounded interpretation of results; in the other, there was no significant difference in mean pain and disability scores between the groups. In the third study, there was little or no difference between groups in the number of individuals who reported over 50% improvement in pain and disability. The fourth study reporting only mean pain and disability scores showed no differences between groups. REVIEWERS' CONCLUSIONS There is conflicting evidence regarding the efficacy of prolotherapy injections in reducing pain and disability in patients with chronic low-back pain. Conclusions are confounded by clinical heterogeneity amongst studies and by the presence of co-interventions. There was no evidence that prolotherapy injections alone were more effective than control injections alone. However, in the presence of co-interventions, prolotherapy injections were more effective than control injections, more so when both injections and co-interventions were controlled concurrently.
Revisiting the Neural Basis of Acquired Amusia: Lesion Patterns and Structural Changes Underlying Amusia Recovery

Although, acquired amusia is a common deficit following stroke, relatively little is still known about its precise neural basis, let alone to its recovery. Recently, we performed a voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) and morphometry (VBM) study which revealed a right lateralized lesion pattern, and longitudinal gray matter volume (GMV) and white matter volume (WMV) changes that were specifically associated with acquired amusia after stroke. In the present study, using a larger sample of stroke patients (N = 90), we aimed to replicate and extend the previous structural findings as well as to determine the lesion patterns and volumetric changes associated with amusia recovery. Structural MRIs were acquired at acute and 6-month post-stroke stages. Music perception was behaviorally assessed at acute and 3-month post-stroke stages using the Scale and Rhythm subtests of the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA). Using these scores, the patients were classified as non-amusic, recovered amusic, and non-recovered amusic. The results of the acute stage VLSM analyses and the longitudinal VBM analyses converged to show that more severe and persistent (non-recovered) amusia was associated with an extensive pattern of lesions and GMV/WMV decrease in right temporal, frontal, parietal, striatal, and limbic areas. In contrast, less severe and transient (recovered) amusia was linked to lesions specifically in left inferior frontal gyrus as well as to a GMV decrease in right parietal areas. Separate continuous analyses of MBEA Scale and Rhythm scores showed extensively overlapping lesion pattern in right temporal, frontal, and subcortical structures as well as in the right insula. Interestingly, the recovered pitch amusia was related to smaller GMV decreases in the temporoparietal junction whereas the recovered rhythm amusia was associated to smaller GMV decreases in the inferior temporal pole. Overall, the results provide a more comprehensive picture of the lesions and longitudinal structural changes associated with different recovery trajectories of acquired amusia.
Does angiotensin-converting enzyme-1 (ACE-1) gene polymorphism lead to chronic kidney disease among hypertensive patients?

Abstract Background: Hypertension is one of the important contributing factors linked with both causation and development of kidney disease. It is a multifactorial, polygenic, and complex disorder due to interaction of several risk genes with environmental factors. The present study was aimed to explore genetic polymorphism in ACE-1 gene as a risk factor for CKD among hypertensive patients. Methods: Three hundred patients were enrolled in the study. Ninety were hypertensive patients with CKD taken as cases, whereas 210 hypertensive patients without CKD were taken as controls. Demographic data including age, sex, Body mass index (BMI), and other risk factors were also recorded. DNA was extracted from blood by salting out method. Genotyping of ACE gene was done by PCR technique. All the statistical analysis was done by using Epi Info and SPSS version 16 software (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL). Results: Mean age was higher in the control group (p < 0.05). Variables among two groups were compared out of which age, BMI, hemoglobin (Hb) was found to be statistically significant whereas other variables like systolic blood pressure, triglyceride and low-density lipoprotein were not. Blood urea and serum creatinine levels were statistically significant in the two genotypes (p < 0.05). Total and HDL cholesterol were statistically significant for DD genotype of ACE gene (OR = 1.42, 95% CI = 0.72–2.81). Similarly, the risk for CKD among hypertensive patients was also associated with D allele of ACE gene (OR = 1.25, 95% CI = 0.86–1.79). Conclusion: It is concluded that ACE-DD genotype may be a risk factor for the causation and development of chronic kidney failure among hypertensive patients.
A Steerable DC-1 GHz all-pass filter-Sum RF space-time 2-D beam filter in 65 nm CMOS

An electronically steerable broadband radio frequency (RF) filter-sum beamforming filter using 1st-order all-pass filters is proposed. The beamforming filter has the 2-D transfer function Ha (zx, sct), which uses M-section cascaded 1st-order all-pass filters and analog combiners as building blocks. Beam steering is achieved by tuning the group delay of the all-pass filters via a control voltage. For beam directions ψ ≤ 20o from array broadside, M = 1 provides close to ideal broadband response, and 1 <; M ≤ 4 is shown to provide nearly ideal broadband response for beam directions ψ > 20°. The array factor of the beamformer is evaluated using 65 nm CMOS BSIM 4 simulations of the all-pass filters and a 4-channel RF combiner for a linear antenna array of 4 antennas and is shown to provide steerable beams at 1 GHz. The CMOS simulations verify a broadband response from DC to 1 GHz.
Ankylosing spondylitis in West Africans—evidence for a non-HLA-B27 protective effect

OBJECTIVE To determine the prevalence of ankylosing spondylitis in the Fula ethnic group in The Gambia, and relate the disease prevalence to the B27 frequency and subtype distribution of that population. METHODS 215 first degree relatives of 48 B27 positive Fula twin pairs, and 900 adult Fula males were screened for ankylosing spondylitis by clinical and, where appropriate, radiographic means. The B27 prevalence was determined by PCR/sequence specific oligonucleotides on finger prick samples from 100 unrelated Fula, and B27 subtype distribution by SSCP on unrelated B27 positive individuals. This data were then compared with the prevalence of ankylosing spondylitis among B27 positive Caucasians. RESULTS No case of ankylosing spondylitis was seen. Six per cent of Fula are B27 positive, of which 32% are B*2703 and 68% B*2705. Assuming the penetrance of ankylosing spondylitis in B27 positive Fula is the same as in B27 positive Caucasians, the probability of not observing any cases of ankylosing spondylitis among the Fula examined is remote (P = 6.7 × 10-6). Similarly, the chance of not seeing any cases among those expected to be either B*2705 or B*2703 was small (P = 3.2 × 10-4 for B*2705, and P = 0.02 for B*2703). CONCLUSIONS The risk of developing ankylosing spondylitis in B27 positive Fula is lower than in B27 positive Caucasians. This is not explained by the B27 subtype distribution among Fula, and suggests the presence of some non-B27 protective factor reducing the prevalence of ankylosing spondylitis in this population.
Bargaining Power in Practice US Treaty-making with American Indians, 1784-1911

Native Americans are unique among domestic actors in that their relations with the United States government involve treaty-making, with almost 600 such documents signed between the Revolutionary War and the turn of the twentieth century. We contend that the changing nature of their treaty negotiations can be seen as part of a theoretical, bargaining framework familiar to scholars of international relations. We then construct a comprehensive new data set by digitizing all of the treaties for systematic textual analysis. Employing new ‘kernel methods’ to categorize the ‘harshness’ of the treaties, we are able to show that the time of the Indian Removal Act (1830) represents a systematic shift in language, corresponding to an increasingly unequal distribution of bargaining power. With a mind to earlier historical and legal literatures, we also show that the ‘broken’ treaties do not form their own cluster in the data, and that the post-1871 ‘agreements’ represent a straightforward continuation of earlier treaty policy in both style and substance.
Rhinovirus-Associated Hospitalizations in Young Children

Abstract Background. Rhinoviruses frequently cause the common cold but have not been considered important causes of acute respiratory hospitalizations in children. Methods. A population-based surveillance study was performed among children <5 years of age who were hospitalized with respiratory symptoms or fever and who resided within counties encompassing Nashville, Tennessee, or Rochester, New York, from October 2000 through September 2001. Data collected included questionnaires, nasal and throat swabs for viral culture and polymerase chain reaction testing, and chart review. Rates of rhinovirus-associated hospitalizations were calculated. Results. Of 592 children enrolled, 156 (26%) were rhinovirus positive, representing 4.8 (95% confidence interval [CI], 4.3–5.2) rhinovirus-associated hospitalizations/1000 children. Age-specific rates per 1000 children were 17.6 (95% CI, 14.9–20.6) for 0–5-month-olds, 6.0 (95% CI, 5.0–7.0) for 6–23-month-olds, and 2.0 (95% CI, 1.6, 2.4) for 24–59-month-olds (P<.01) Children with a history of wheezing/asthma had significantly more rhinovirusassociated hospitalizations than those without a history (25.3/1000 children [95% CI, 21.6–29.5/1000 children] vs. 3.1/1000 children [95% CI, 2.7–3.5/1000 children]). Conclusions. Rhinoviruses were associated with nearly 5 hospitalizations/1000 children <5 years of age and were highest in children with a history of wheezing/asthma.
Financial Inclusion in Rural Uganda: Testing Interaction Effect of Financial Literacy and Networks

ABSTRACT Based on the premise that financial literacy take place in networks to influence the level of financial inclusion, the study examined whether networks moderate in the relationship between financial literacy and financial inclusion among poor households in rural Uganda. Studies have revealed that financial literacy affects the level of financial inclusion. However, these studies have failed to incorporate the moderating role of networks in the relationship between financial literacy and financial inclusion. The results showed that networks positively and significantly moderates in the relationship between financial literacy and financial inclusion with both financial literacy and networks having direct and significant effects.
Fast single image super-resolution based on sigmoid transformation

Single image super-resolution aims to generate a high-resolution image from a single low-resolution image, which is of great significance in extensive applications. As an ill-posed problem, numerous methods have been proposed to reconstruct the missing image details based on exemplars or priors. In this paper, we propose a fast and simple single image super-resolution strategy utilizing patch-wise sigmoid transformation as an imposed sharpening regularization term in the reconstruction, which realizes amazing reconstruction performance. Extensive experiments compared with other state-of-the-art approaches demonstrate the superior effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm.
Anti-Jamming Power Control Game in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Networks

In this paper, the anti-jamming issue in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks is analyzed in a static game and a dynamic game. We investigate the effect of wireless channel fading characteristics from a UAV to a ground station and flying cost on the performance of a closed-form Nash equilibrium (NE) in the static game. Besides, in a Stackelberg dynamic game, wherein the system model is hard to determine, we propose a Q- learning based anti-jamming scheme and evaluate its performance via exhaustive simulations, which can achieve relatively higher average utility and Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) than a benchmark method.
CD28 Costimulatory Blockade Exacerbates Disease Severity and Accelerates Epitope Spreading in a Virus-Induced Autoimmune Disease

ABSTRACT Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus (TMEV) is a natural mouse pathogen which causes a lifelong persistent infection of the central nervous system (CNS) accompanied by T-cell-mediated myelin destruction leading to chronic, progressive hind limb paralysis. TMEV-induced demyelinating disease (TMEV-IDD) is considered to be a highly relevant animal model for the human autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis (MS), which is thought to be initiated as a secondary consequence of a virus infection. Although TMEV-IDD is initiated by virus-specific CD4+ T cells targeting CNS-persistent virus, CD4+ T-cell responses against self myelin protein epitopes activated via epitope spreading contribute to chronic disease pathogenesis. We thus examined the ability of antibodies directed against B7 costimulatory molecules to regulate this chronic virus-induced immunopathologic process. Contrary to previous studies showing that blockade of B7-CD28 costimulatory interactions inhibit the initiation of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, treatment of SJL mice at the time of TMEV infection with murine CTLA-4 immunoglobulin or a combination of anti-B7-1 and anti-B7-2 antibodies significantly enhanced clinical disease severity. Costimulatory blockade inhibited early TMEV-specific T-cell and antibody responses critical in clearing peripheral virus infection. The inhibition of virus-specific immune responses led to significantly increased CNS viral titers resulting in increased damage to myelin-producing oligodendrocytes. Following clearance of the costimulatory antagonists, epitope spreading to myelin epitopes was accelerated as a result of the increased availability of myelin epitopes leading to a more severe chronic disease course. Our results raise concern about the potential use of B7-CD28 costimulatory blockade to treat human autoimmune diseases potentially associated with acute or persistent virus infections.
Improved pseudoanalytical solution for steady‐state biofilm kinetics

Simple algebraic expressions for the flux of substrate into a steady‐state biofilm are developed. This pseudoanalytical solution, which eliminates the need for repetitiously solving numerically a set of nonlinear differential equations, is based on an analysis of the numerical results from the numerical solution of the differential equations. The critical advantage of this new pseudoanalytical solution is that it is highly accurate for the entire range of substrate concentrations and kinetic parameters. The article also illustrates that previous pseudoanalytical solutions for steady‐state biofilm kinetics are seriously inaccurate for certain ranges of substrate concentration and kinetic parameters.
Improving extraction of protein — Protein interaction datasets from KUPS using hashing approach

The machine learning approaches frequently address the extraction of training datasets from the online databases to build computational or mathematical models. The training data downloaded from the online server and databases are most often carry redundancy and noise. Heuristics methods are most common to filter the data. Dataset filtering process is time consuming and researcher has to do this tedious work. We propose a more generic filter to detect frequent exceptions to increase the quality of generated datasets based on Perl Hash Programming and regular expression methodology. Future development of noise and error reduction approaches is important to make use of the full potential of available database knowledge. We make use of the datasets of protein - protein interaction generated by The University of Kansas Proteomics Service (KUPS).
Violations of Cpt in Mixed Gambles

This study conducts a classroom experiment and an online experiment to examine individual decision-making under risk. Like Levy and Levy (2002), the experiment uses pairs of mixed gambles with moderate probabilities to avoid the framing effect and certainty affect that may affect non-mixed gambles with extreme probabilities. Also, we use Stochastic Dominance criteria to avoid parametric specification of decision-maker preferences. Explicitly accounting for the Wakker (2003) comment, we find several serious violations of Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT). In fact, in a head-to-head competition between Second-order Stochastic Dominance (SSD) and CPT, most individuals choose the SSD alternative.
Mutation spectrum of Fork-Head Transcriptional Factor Gene (FOXL2) in Indian Blepharophimosis Ptosis Epicanthus Inversus Syndrome (BPES) patients

Aim The fork-head transcription factor gene (FOXL2) gene has been implicated in Blepharophimosis Ptosis Epicanthus Inversus Syndrome (BPES) type I and type II. The authors aimed to evaluate the involvement of FOXL2 in familial and sporadic cases of BPES in an Indian cohort. Methods The present cohort comprised clinically well-characterised BPES cases that included six affected families, two sporadic cases and 60 unaffected normal controls. The 5′ untranslated and coding region of FOXL2 was screened by resequencing and confirmed by restriction digestion. Further, genotype–phenotype correlations were done to understand the implications of the observed mutation. Results Six mutations were observed in eight cases (87.5%). These included a novel deletion (c.860delC), three previously reported duplications (c.663–692dup 30, c.672–701dup30 and c.843–859dup17), a frame shift (c.804dupC) and a homozygous missense mutation (p.E69K). The p.E69k mutation was seen in both heterozygous and homozygous form in a large four-generational family, and disease severity was found to be directly linked to the allelic dosage. Two SNPs (c.501C→T, c.536C→G) were also noted. An unusual coexistence of polycystic ovarian disease (PCOD) with BPES was also seen in one of the families. Discussion Mutations in the region downstream of the fork-head domain were predominantly responsible for BPES among Indian patients.
Singular value decomposition-based reconstruction algorithm for seismic traveltime tomography

A reconstruction method is given for seismic transmission traveltime tomography. The method is implemented via the combinations of singular value decomposition, appropriate weighting matrices, and variable regularization parameter. The problem is scaled through the weighting matrices so that the singular spectrum is normalized. Matching the normalized singular values, a regularization parameter varies within the interval [0, 1], and linearly increases with singular value index from a small, initial value rather than a fixed one to eliminate the impacts of smaller singular values' components. The experimental results show that the proposed method is superior to the ordinary singular value decomposition (SVD) methods such as truncated SVD and Tikhonov regularization.
Income Advantages of Poorly Qualified Immigrant Minorities: Why School Dropouts of Turkish Origin Earn More in Germany

We investigate an often overlooked implication of the signaling model of statistical discrimination: if immigrant minorities’ educational qualiﬁcations carry less signaling power, poorly-qualiﬁed minority members should experience positive statistical discrimination. We argue that the lower signaling power stems from disadvantages associated with insuﬃcient language skills and lack of supportive parental resources, which prevent minority students from achieving those educational qualiﬁcations that would reﬂect their high motivation and ambition. Yet, if education counts less, so does its lack. Using data from the German Microcensus, we compare log hourly personal income of 1.5 th and 2 nd generation Spätaussiedler and persons of Turkish origin to that of native Germans. Using (semi-parametric) generalized additive models, we ﬁnd solid support for our claim that poorly-qualiﬁed persons of Turkish origin experience income advantages; they frequently work in jobs for which they are underqualiﬁed. Once diﬀerent frequencies of over- and undereducation are taken into account, no ethnic diﬀerences in educational returns remain. Our results extend to other comparable immigrant groups in Germany.